Russia EU member state or trading partner?

[Gregz]

Understanding that larger things are made of smaller component parts. The EU now slowly expands a step at a time. By securing, standardizing and centralizing are resources. We will be free to cultivate and invest in are peoples development and to play a more important role in the wider world. The European powers must however work harder on developing progressive forms of moral government and make the transitional cultural reforms necessary to further enlargement.

Where do you believe the future of Russia lies in relation to the EU and why?

Gregz


"Taken to excess, the most agreeable things become extremely disagreeable." - Democritus

[Andrej_]

I don't see Russia as a member for at least the next 20 years, but then again this has not been a goal either. I think bi-literal trade is the best way to engage.

[Andrej_]

Thats not true, Oil & Gas exports only account for about 50% of exports, but that is still too much.

[Andrej_]

That is essentially true. Russian 'businessman' all got 9mm's under their pillow. An American businessman is a Yale graduate and is not built to play this game. Doing business in Russia on a small scale is more like a romantic adventure or a thriller rather then a business practice. You gotta aproach the right people, bribe them if necessary, these are skills a Western businessman lacks, but the yeilds on returns are also much greater.

[HATALbR]

Privyet Andrej_:

I really enjoy your pictorials; Four cubes of you stamped with Russian State emblem...

Now smoking cigarettes, dark, mysterious....beckoning.

You do realize that you project a subtle & sexy quality.

**********************************************************
How old are you?

Do you have a private e-mail?
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I expect a response, or:

A) I'll assume you are under the age of 18.

B) You are trapped under something heavy & are physically unable to respond.


Natasha

[Andrej_]

Laf first off Natasha, yeah Im actually 17, but time means nothing, its a rough measurment of existance and progress.

Im glad you like my signatures, not everyone seems to agree with you, but I don't let that phase me. You can e-mail me if you want, click on my profile.

Its true, theres a very high factor of uncertainty in Russian business culture, rules are rough guidelines, to be surpassed by 'regulations'. Concidering 40-60% of the Russian economy is shadowy, it is likely tht a legitemate businessman will come at odds with the crew from the dark side.

[titoman]

This is cut out from one of the Prospects on http://www.marxist.com


The European Union

The European capitalists, only a year ago, were boasting that they would avoid the recession. Now these boasts are shown to be hollow. Ironically, the worst affected sector is the communications industry (mobile phones), which was supposed to be the main motor of a new period of expansion for European capitalism.

Vodafone, the big British mobile phone company, announced pre-tax losses of £8.4 billion ($12 billion) in the six months to the beginning of December 2001. Profits at Siemens, the German engineering giant, fell by 76 percent to the end of September, including restructuring charges and a write-down of assets in its mobile and fixed-line telephone divisions. German unemployment now stands officially at 8 percent of the workforce.

We have already dealt with the reasons why the EU was formed in earlier documents. It is true that we underestimated the degree to which the European capitalists could arrive at a compromise and push towards greater economic and monetary unification. We did not think that the Euro would succeed to the degree that it has. This was only possible on the basis of the prolonged world boom, which benefited Europe and enabled the different capitalists to put aside their differences (temporarily).

Now the Euro has been introduced as a common currency in 12 of the EU states. This is an important development. A common currency is the first condition towards European integration. It ought to boost internal trade and thus act as a powerful stimulus to the development of the productive forces. But the Euro has been launched at the worst possible moment. Under conditions of world crisis, rising unemployment and a struggle for markets, the rigid framework of the Maastricht agreement will aggravate the crisis and increase the contradictions between the states of the EU.

The Economist drew a negative balance of the Euro's achievements: "When the Euro was conceived a decade ago, there was much heady talk of how it would boost competition in Europe, of all the structural reforms it would promote, even of how Europe would displace America as the world's economic dynamo. Yet, as a recent report by the European Commission concluded, the gap between Europe and America in both productivity and GDP per head has widened rather than narrowed over the past decade. This year's theory that, thanks to the Euro, Europe would largely escape the effect of a global recession has also proved false, as its biggest economy, Germany, has shuddered to a halt. As if to trumpet Europe's failings, the Euro has spent most of its first three years of ethereal life testing new lows against the dollar." (The Economist, 1/12/2001) The recent improvement of the euro in relation to the dollar is more a reflection of the weakness of the latter than the strength of the former.

Contrary to the hopes of the European bourgeois, the Euro has been a weak currency from birth. The need to maintain its level is one of the reasons why interest rates in Europe have not been reduced as fast as in America. This will aggravate the crisis in Europe and increase unemployment in the coming months. Paradoxically, the Germans, who were the most adamant in demanding strict adherence to the Maastricht rules, are now suffering the consequences in the shape of four million unemployed. The German economy, which ought to act as the main motor-force for Europe, is stalled.

The stubborn refusal of Duisenberg and the European Bank to lower interest rates has set the stage for conflict between the Bank and the European governments. They would like to see a further fall in the Euro to boost exports - the main reason for the relative success of the countries of the Euro zone in the last period. But despite this success, the performance of the core countries, especially Germany and Italy has been miserable, and their problems will now increase. Unemployment is beginning to climb again.

One effect of the introduction of a common currency will be to increase cross-border competition. The aim is to increase productivity by eliminating weak companies. But this places countries like Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal at a disadvantage. Increased competition spells more bankruptcies, factory closures and unemployment. From this, new contradictions arise. In the past, Italy got out of difficulties by devaluing the currency. But this is now ruled out by the Maastricht agreement. Devaluations by nation states are not allowed, and neither is any other state permitted to help Italy. Therefore, the full weight of the crisis will be placed on the shoulders of the working class. The Italian employers are already putting pressure on Berlusconi to take action. The stage is thus being set for an explosion of the class struggle in one European country after another.

This will lead, not to European integration, but to increased tensions and antagonisms between the national states. In the end, it is probable that the Euro experiment will break down amidst mutual recriminations. Already there are indications of conflict between the states in the Euro zone, as each government tries to protect its own capitalists against foreign competition. Of course, if the perspective was one of uninterrupted capitalist upswing for the next 20 years, it would be possible for European capitalists to obtain further economic integration. But this is not our perspective.

Two years ago, at the Lisbon Summit, the EU heads of government agreed to a programme of further liberalisation with the aim of making the EU the world's most competitive economy by 2010. What has happened? France has implemented only minimal energy liberalisation and blocked the setting of any deadline for a total opening-up of the market. Full competition in the postal services has been delayed. Germany has put its boot through an EU directive on take-overs that took 12 years to work out and then introduced new rules to protect German owners. The Lamfalussy Plan to liberalise wholesale financial services has been sabotaged by procedural manoeuvring in the European parliament, even though it was unanimously endorsed in Stockholm in March. An agreement on a EU-wide patent regime has been prevented by disagreements on language policy. And so on and so forth.

53. What this shows is that each national government, while paying lip service to the "ideal of European integration", is mainly concerned with the defence of "national interests" - that is to say, the interests of its own bourgeoisie. Thus, Germany's decision to sabotage the law on take-overs was dictated by its desire to protect its domestic companies against foreign take-overs - such as Vodafone's bid for Mannesmann. The French opposition to energy liberalisation has been designed to support its state-owned giant, Electricité de France. The French government protects its national monopoly, which is meanwhile pursuing an aggressive policy of taking over the companies of states with more open markets.

Behind the "European" rhetoric stands the interests and ambitions of the most powerful European states, especially Germany and France, which seek to dominate Europe. Only the smaller countries take the rhetoric about the European ideal seriously, since they are too weak to stand on their own and foolishly imagine that they can be important players on the European scene. In addition, they have their own selfish interests to defend.

Belgium benefits from being the main seat of the "European institutions" - which brings in a tidy sum to the national exchequer. They are therefore the most convinced "Europeans". The weaker economies like Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain are enthusiastic "Europeans" only to the extent that they have done very well out of European subsidies. But when these are sharply reduced or abolished, which is already happening, their enthusiasm will cool rapidly. And that is inevitable in the next period when the economic crisis begins to bite and Germany, which pays most of the bills, gets tired of this role.

The truth is that the smaller states of Europe count for very little. This was shown recently in the aftermath of September 11. Britain (a semi-satellite of America) decided everything together with France and Germany. The others were not even invited to dinner in London. The Italians protested loudly. The others grumbled also: "We are being treated like candidates to join the EU. Decisions are made and then we are just informed." But that is just the real state of affairs. Only it is not supposed to be made public. Only Blair's characteristic crudity made it too obvious. The recent row at Laeken over the distribution of secondary EU institutions led to Berlusconi vetoing all decisions. When the Swedish Prime Minister complained that his country had got no institution, Chirac said maybe they "would like the headquarters for EU model agencies as they had such "pretty girls"! Such is the contempt shown for the smaller EU countries by the big Four.

A further expansion of the EU will exacerbate the problem. Does anyone seriously believe that Germany, France and Britain will accept that they cannot have a discussion without inviting 22 other European leaders? The German capitalists are pushing for the entry of their client states in Eastern Europe: Poland and the Czech Republic. France, which is opposed to this, proposes the entry of Romania. This is yet another example of the conflict of interests between Germany and France. In the end, it is likely that the expansion will go ahead. But in that case, the bigger EU states will find a way of dominating the show anyway.

The ambiguous attitude of the British bourgeoisie to Europe and the Euro is explained by several factors. There is a sharp division between the manufacturing sector which trades with Europe and does not want a continuation of the high pound, and the parasitic finance sector based on the City that has grown immensely in power in recent years. Having lost its empire and being reduced to a second-rate power off the coast of Europe, the British ruling class is reluctant to relinquish its dreams of being a world power, and is hesitating between a role in Europe and that of a satellite of US imperialism. But the weakness of the Euro and doubts about its future are undoubtedly important factors in its calculations.

The developing crisis will intensify the contradictions between the nation states of Europe, and particularly between Germany and France, with Britain manoeuvring between them. But it is unlikely that the EU will break up, because of the need to compete with the USA. The European capitalists must hang together, for fear of hanging separately. But the dream of a united Europe on a capitalist basis remains what Lenin said it was: a reactionary utopia.