I throw away, you don't eat

Between yesterday and today, 219,000 people joined the dinner tables all around the world. Tomorrow, another 219,000 new world citizens will join us on this planet and another 219,000 the day after. They are born into a world that cannot feed them any more and that asks for higher and higher entry fees.

Until 2050, demand for food is expected to rise by 70%, says Oxfam in a new report published today. And within 20 years, global food prices could double as a result of climate change. The consequences look like this:



The EU has realized that it needs to act. At a food security conference organized by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) last week, Agriculture Commissioner Ciolos and Development Commissioner Piebalgs highlighted the responsibility that the EU has for food security in developing countries. The message is clear: agriculture in the global South has to become more efficient, more productive, more rewarding for the individual farmer and better governed through international, national, regional and local institutions. Sounds like an affair to be left to paper-producing bureaucrats.

But the help that the global North can give is not only about "capacity-building", it's not only about "technical support" from government to government. It starts with things as easy as reducing food waste. According to a recent study by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, a third of all products we buy are thrown away. But of course, demand for them drives prices up in the first place. Unless you are a trader of agricultural commodities, that should worry you.

Now, do I really need a luxury buffet for my XXth birthday that allows my guests a choice between 50 different kinds of food? Or could I cut it down to 15? And if there are leftovers, couldn't I put them in doggy bags and give them to a shelter?
And do I really need to throw away that two-day old cauliflower because I am leaving on a two-week vacation? Or could I put it in the freezer? There are a range of websites that offer advice on nutrition and consumer behavior, for example this one, this one, this one and a lot of others.

We all make choices every day - since we live in a global market, our consumer choices impact directly on others. Ask Spain if you don't believe me.

Shouldn't we be more responsible consumers?

As a courtesy, please don't +1 my blogposts.

Happily walking into the bubble

It’s Saturday and you’re walking through your favorite supermarket. You’ve invited friends for tonight and you’re planning to have a barbecue.

The first thing you look for is meat. As you’re stepping into the meat section, a freezer pushes itself in your way. It bears a note saying “Your colleague chose spiral sausages and chicken filets last week”. You take a peak inside the freezer, your hand finds the spiral sausages and they disappear in your cart. Never did you notice the beefsteaks across the aisle that were on a 20% discount.

Your hands push the cart further. You also need a proper barbecue grill to feed your guests. Just the other day, you remember reading about one in a leaflet and it that seemed quite nice. But as your getting to the section where barbecue grills are sold, only two of the available models are actually on display. All other are stocked on the shelves, hidden away in massive cardboard boxes. “Your mom bought me just yesterday” it says on one of the grills on display, while the other bears a sign “Three members from your football team bought me last summer”. Unnerved, under time pressure and unwilling to start unpacking the other models, you opt for the football team grill – it is less practical than the one you had read about, but it will work for tonight.

You remember that you also need to get a shampoo. Once arrived in the toiletry section, you look for the shampoo you’ve seen in a commercial the other day. It was produced with 100% organic materials, and obviously more expensive than most of the bottles you’ve got in front of you on the shelf. But your brand is nowhere to be found and all shampoos are screaming in your face “Gregory bought me!”, “Cedric bought me!”, “Dean bought me!” Exasperated, you brandish your arm and send bottles flying. In the last corner of the shelf, you find the brand that you were looking for. You cautiously put the trophy in your cart and your glimpse goes back to the other bottles, still scattered on the floor. You believe you can faintly hear them shriek “but your friends also bought us, why wouldn’t you do the same?”

Google +1 works with the same system as your shopping adventure. As you are searching information on the internet, Google puts you into a bubble of friends’ recommendations that obscure your view upon other options. The next time you search something, your friends' recommendations appear on top. This might not seem so much of a problem at first sight – isn’t it practical to have your social network prepare your decisions?

But what happens if you’re a Parliamentarian with a day to work out your position on prenatal diagnostics? Would you trust your social network enough to blend out contrasting opinions? What happens if you’re a journalist, looking for speedy information on the revolution in Yemen? Can you trust your social network to have closed all the information gaps?

The European Commission is currently investigating if Google illegally downgraded external services in its search results. By accepting +1, we would allow Google to upgrade information that we are prone to like and downgrade information that we’d likely oppose. Democracy doesn’t work like this.


Update: For more about the importance of global information and knowledge management, you may listen to this podcast. Google is certainly the fundamental player in this business.
Update II: Facebook has not paid me for writing this post.  
Update III: I've just seen that Blogger now added the +1 button to my posts...do me a favor, don't use it.   
Update IV: To see my love for Google as a research tool, see this more recent blogpost.

The Parliament clings to Strasbourg

MEP Ville Itälä is a brave man. In his report on "discharge in respect of the implementation of the European Union general budget for the financial year 2009" regarding the European Parliament, he proposed that the European Parliament

• Takes note of the budgetary constraints many Member States face as a result of the financial and economic crisis and the need to critically review potential savings at all levels including at Union level; in light of this situation, stresses that real savings could be achieved if Parliament only had one workplace in the same location as the other Union institutions; indeed, in the report of the Secretary-General on Parliament's preliminary draft estimates for 2011, the estimated annual cost arising from the geographical dispersion of Parliament has been estimated at around EUR 160 000 000, accounting for about 9% of Parliament's total budget; draws the attention to the fact that currently the decision to change this situation - and to make some EUR 160 000 000 of savings annually as well as to considerably lessen Parliament's carbon footprint - lies exclusively with the European Council (Member States); calls on the President of the European Parliament and on the Members who are negotiating the Union budget on behalf of the Parliament, to suggest to the European Council that they make it possible for the Union to make these savings. 
• Also points to the reply given by the Secretary-General to the discharge questionnaire, according to which the two sessions held in Brussels instead of Strasbourg in September 2008, due to the repair of the ceiling in the Strasbourg hemicycle, resulted in savings estimated at some EUR 2 500 000 ;

To suggest to the Member States the idea of scrapping Strasbourg was too much to ask from the European Parliament. In the version that MEPs adopted on Monday 9 May 2011, it only says that the European Parliament

• Takes note of the budgetary constraints many Member States face as a result of the financial and economic crisis and the need to critically review potential savings at all levels including at Union level; in light of this situation, stresses that real savings could be achieved if Parliament only had one workplace in a single location.

Thanks to Eva for making me aware of the vote.  

Update (13/07/2011): Now it seems as though a majority of MEPs wanted to axe trips to Strasbourg.

One year, little change. Happy Birthday Europe

Happy Birthday Europe. It's a sour birthday. There isn't really much to celebrate on Europe Day. The EU hasn't moved an inch closer to becoming a force to be reckoned with in the world, despite the establishment of the EEAS and the continuous decline of the US as a superpower.

The democratic uprisings in the MENA region left Europe, including Turkey, divided, driven, uninspired, even uninterested. While France pushed for a swift European response in Libya, Germany successfully embarrassed itself in front of the UN Security Council. They later subduedly committed more Awacs to Afghanistan to make up for it. In the end, the US took the baton from the squabbling Europeans and did the lion share of the job themselves. Even as the MENA uprisings touch home in form of North African migrants, the EU finds itself unable to pursue a common migration strategy. It prefers compromising the Schengen system and letting member states have it their own way.

Talking about the US, did anybody say the US would drop in European esteem after the release of thousands of diplomatic cables last year? It appears the EU doesn't even know how many European bank account details the US accesses on a daily basis, a right the European institutions willingly granted them. And European politicians were fastest to congratulate Barack Obama for the killing of Osama bin Laden, but when people started criticizing their attitude, they quickly highlighted that they lacked reliable information about how Osama really died.

No, the EU has definitely not become a stronger voice in the world. Even in the area where we have been most progressive so far, green energy, the EU allows itself to be surpassed. Despite all studies calling for a 30% emission reduction target by 2020, the EU prefers business-as-usual. China and Indonesia are showing the way to clean energy in an impressive manner. Yet, on a more positive note it seems that Spain and Germany have understood the importance of renewable energy and are committing more investment to the sector. 

While many things in external policy are far from perfect, there are also successes. The bright light in the obscure forest is Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, who has established the EU as a powerful donor of humanitarian aid in Haiti, Ivory Coast and Libya.

With regard to internal EU affairs, the picture looks a little brighter as well. The Belgian and Hungarian presidencies have been running ambitious agendas with a focus on sustainable development, Trans-European Networks and a stable European economy. It is to be hoped that the Polish presidency will follow in this line.

Yet, as we are heading into the new year, Euroscepticism is on the rise in Finland and France among others, European democracy hasn't improved much (where is the ECI?) and we are no step closer to a single-seat parliament than a year ago. Europe is entering into a year with a lot of things on the agenda. I hope it will be less disappointing than the last year has been.

Happy Birthday Europe, and a good start into the new year. You will need it

Work, sweat, pay - Internships in Europe

The European Youth Forum has produced an interesting short film on internships in Europe.



Internships are not a way to save money but a way to build up future leadership. If you're in favor of paid internships in the EU, join the European Youth Forum in their fight. If you have done an internship yourself before, please share your insights by filling out this survey.

I may add that young Chinese are facing similar problems as young Europeans. An interesting issue to raise during the EU-China Year of Youth.

A swimming pool for a kilo of beef

The Environment Committee in the European Parliament today established clearer rules for food labeling. Most importantly, on most meat products like pork or chicken, the place of origin must be indicated, including the place where the animal was born and the place where it was slaughtered. Furthermore, energy content, amounts of fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugars, protein and salt must be shown on the label as well. If the Council gives its ok, the EP Plenary can adopt the regulation in July 2011 (update: done).

You may remember that in June last year, the center-right in the EP strictly opposed a “traffic light system” on food items that would have meant that unhealthy products would have carried a red light and healthy products a green light (rapporteur then and now was Renate Sommer, EPP). The new regulation-to-be is certainly a good thing with regard to information, provided that it will apply to imports just as it applies to EU products. But I am still missing information on products, namely water and carbon footprint.

I would like to know that by choosing to consume a kilogram of beef, I am consuming 100,000 liters (equivalent to a 10m x 10m x 1m swimming pool) of virtual water. And when I choose to eat pork, I want to be aware that it requires around 8.8 kg of CO2 emissions/kg, transportation not counted. As a consumer, I want to have the possibility of making an informed choice, even though I admit that some consumers would probably be overburdened and confused with so much information.

But my hope is that one of the most important areas of our daily life, namely food quality, could be put under the same kind of political control as the public sector. In the past, enterprises in Europe have repeatedly broken food safety regulations to make a profit, and demanding a transparent production process would force more cheating enterprises out of business.

Calculating environmental data will undoubtedly be expensive for an enterprise*. Yet, it doesn’t appear so difficult for a food chain to conduct worldwide price analyses and to conclude sourcing agreements without taking externalities into consideration. Including water and carbon cost into the analysis only takes it a step further. And maybe, some enterprises would reconsider their sourcing decisions when they are put into the bright light of popular scrutiny.

But for all that, we first need to elect a more radical kind of European Parliament.


*Have a look here (p.15) how Arjen Hoekstra calculated the water footprint.


Update (20/04/2011): Between "set-back" and "right decision" - read here what MEPs say about the package that they adopted. 
Update (12/07/2011): It appears that there is some cautious movement on water footprint and carbon footprint labeling. 

Leaving a European country in the lurch

At the European Council in Tampere, October 1999, European Head of States agreed to establish a Common EU Asylum and Migration Policy. “The European Union needs a comprehensive approach to migration addressing political, human rights and development issues in countries and regions of origin and transit,” they said. “The European Council calls for closer co-operation and mutual technical assistance between the Member States' border control services, such as exchange programmes and technology transfer, especially on maritime borders, and for the rapid inclusion of the applicant States in this co-operation.”

At today’s Home and Justice Ministers Council, nothing of that European spirit was left. Today it was politics, dirty bargaining at its best. Germany and France rejected Italy’s demand for a European solution and told the country to deal with its Tunesian migrants on its own. Yesterday, Bavaria’s home minister had already said that Italy is large enough to accommodate 23000 Tunesian migrants, threatening border controls at the German-Austrian border.

Certainly, both countries have accepted more migrants than Italy in the past (Germany from Afghanistan, Iran and the Balkans, France from the Maghreb) and therefore have powerful arguments against Italy. And there is a thing called the Dublin II Regulation stipulating that migrants have to ask for asylum in the country through which they enter the European Union (a debate for another time). Still, all this doesn’t justify leaving a European country in the lurch. There are many more ways to deal with the problem than allowing Tunesians into French or German social systems. Providing technical support, ships or equipment to Italy to deal with migratory flows, for example. But ministers today chose confrontation over cooperation.

We pride ourselves with an integrated European market, with free flow of goods, with a high standard of living that is achieved through cheap imports from abroad. We pride ourselves with the possibilities of investing and withdrawing millions of Euros from companies all over the world. We gladly take the benefits that globalization has to offer. But when it comes to people entering into Fortress Europe, every country has to deal with migration on its own.

What we need is a common European effort, a common European approach to the challenges. The Home Ministers Council was a step in the wrong direction.

Update: The Council Conclusions are here (but I haven't had time to have a look yet)


Update (10 May 2011): Everybody sometimes heads in the wrong direction and my viewpoint has changed with more information. I maintain that we need a European migration policy and a European response to North African migrants, but I see Italy's role far more critically now. While other European countries have dealt with far more than 25,000 migrants, Italy is creating a problem where there shouldn't be a problem. And Sarkozy is happy to blow up the migrant issue to a security question. To get a better idea of the issue, I can only recommend today's debate in the EP (from 15h25), and there in particular Mr Weber, Mr Schulz and Mr Verhofstadt.