The scholarships include travel to and from Berlin and full boarding. HBS will also try to offer exclusive interviews with all speakers. A competent representative from the Heinrich Böll Foundation will be available at all time. All your blog entries will be aggregated into the conference website and your blog will be featured in the relevant policy dossiers of the HBS.

All interested bloggers can apply for the scholarship. HBS will select a mix of interesting applicants. Your application should consist of a short (1-3 paragraphs) motivation, a link to your blog, some information of your blog’s outreach (if available) and potential topics of the conference that you are keen on blogging about.

More information at their website.Photo: Jorge Quinteros / Creative Commons License

You can find my study here – and it should be available on the GEF website once it goes fully online later this month.

In light of the discussions about a Green New Deal (GND) the Green European Foundation (GEF) was curious to find out about the job potential of an accelerated green investment programme. Based on a (limited) number of scenarios I found, I have put together a number of projections in the study. Moreover, I am discussing to what extent a GND as a spending programme makes sense – and in what way it makes most sense (“shovel-readiness”). So far I thought that the ongoing debate in Green circlues about a Green New Deal was loosing momentum with the passage of the massive stimulus packages in the US, South Korea, China, Europe and other countries. Most of these include specific and often considerable amounts of money target particular at the Green Collar Economy and commentators agree that South Korea has probably the most effective one in terms of its low-carbon impact. But by now I am not so sure about the timing of the economic take-off anymore. The longer the current stagnation is going on, the likelier further stimulus packages become over summer and autumn. My hope would be that they take the lessons from the first packages and put greater emphasis on truly green effects. This might be particularly helpful to motivate a good outcome at the Copenhagen climate summit in December. Moreover, I also mention in the study, that more research is quickly needed on the usefulness of green investments as part of countercyclical spending and stimulus packages.

But besides the (right) symbolical choice for the delivery of Obama’s speech in Berlin, the speech itself was actually good. There are three things that I will keep remembering. First was his insistence on freedom. “Freiheit” is a notion that is unfortunately not a key value in German politics. There is too much talk of protection and too little insistence on the rights (and responsibility) of the individual. I hope that a future president Obama can convince the Germans (and Europeans?) of the greatness of freedom as a value. The second message which was going far beyong than what I had expected was his call to bury nuclear weapons. Obviously this was a key reference to the Iranian nuclear programme but he did not claim anywhere that the US was excluded from his goal. Thirdly, Obama was calling on all societies to value immigration. This is probably taken for granted in the US, but for (half of) the German psyche this idea is still to be swallowed. I hope that in particular Merkel’s CDU got this point – and new inspiration.

[Picture taken from bild.de]

According to the analysis only few industries would be affected (metals, paper, chemicals, cement) and here either the share of energy costs is very little or all of its production can be sold at world markets due to production shortages in any case. But read the well-written article for the full argument.

I am very happy to read that first studies hint in this direction because it is high time to move forward in CO2 capping – both in the US and the EU. Secondly, I haven’t yet heard of any reasonable system that would be a fair way of calculating eventual carbon tariffs. So, luckily the economic evidence suggests that we can stop thinking about it and focus our efforts on convincing the US to finally introduce a cap-and-trade system.

Top 15 emitters (random order) holding elections until December 2009: US, India, Germany, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico – and the European Parliament.

Other top 15 emitters (random order): Australia, China, France, Italy, Brazil, South Korea, UK, Russia.

Obviously most of the countries holding elections are key countries for a global climate accord and it is worthwhile investing capacities in raising the issue in those countries. For my own country (Germany) I am absolutely sure that the Greens will present their own new innovative concepts to bring attention to the issue. This will hopefully raise the game and bring clarity in a current discussion which is blurred by big words and rather unproductive action. The two most interesting aspects in the German debate will possibly be how to involve the individual further in climate-friendly behaviour and secondly how the transport sector can better contribute to efforts.

However, it might be the European Parliament elections in early June 2009 that hold the key to Europe’s climate change policies. Only if the newly-elected Commission comes to Copenhagen with an ambitious target and the willingness to move ahead – with bold unilateral steps if need be – enough pressure on others can be exercised and an upward spiral can be imagined. – I hope for the best.

This lack of scrutiny is also a reason for why Jon and I have started the WhoDoICall.eu initiative. We want the Commission President to be EU (Council) president at the same time. And at least s/he is (supposed to) follow some sort of democratic scrutiny and will be chosen in light of the outcomes of the EP elections.

But take aside the EU president and look at the more crucial selection of the EU executive, the Commission, and you find a high number of similarities between the EU and US systems: 1) both races are of contintenal scale, 2) both have some sort of multi-seat constiuencies (member states in the EU, states in the US), 3) in both the EU and US there are somehow different rules within each multi-seat constiuency, 4) the demographics (incl. language) of each constituency vary very strongly, 5) on a very broad scale the EU constituencies are also dominated by two big political families (EPP and PES – as opposed to Democrats and Republicans on the other side), 6) new campaign and polling instruments are increasingly moving back and forwards between east and west coast of the Atlantic, 7) campaigns in our advanced democracies are increasingly relying on indirect communication (particularly media) making them ever more expensive.

My assumption is that the 2008 US campaign will have a very high impact on the EP elections in June 2009. Not only will Europeans look for the latest campaign tricks and techniques. Political parties might also face the most expensive campaign ever with an increasing pressure to maximise the European perspectives of the campaign while staying in touch with the local/national message. There are two big questions for the European 2009 campaign that will decisely determine whether the EP elections will become more serious (and equally more American): 1. Will the European political parties (i.e. EPP and PES) massively politicise and visualise the campaign by presenting their respective candidate for the Commission President openly ahead of election day? (at least this would be in the spirit of the new Lisbon Treaty/Constitution), and 2. Will the European political parties increase the stakes of the race – and their own media outreach – by holding national primaries to crown their candidate for the Commission President?

If fewer things change in 2009, I would suppose that this EU campaign will still be the last run under primarily national premises. 2014 will really bring us into a continental scale election of the American sort. I am looking forward to this because it would finally increase the stakes of European democracy and democratic scrutiny of the candidates. Successful politics can only be successful and fullfil our expectations on democracy if faces and programmes go hand in hand.

European (well, at least German) quality media has jumped on the trail and is covering the primaries very extensively. My impression is that generally Europeans favour Democrats over Republicans and Barack Obama has a little more sympathy than Hillary; Edwards is simply a sidenote (the other Democratic candidates are not even mentioned normally). But until recently Hillary was the clear frontrunner in terms of sympathy here. When Barack’s chances grew and he became more known, maybe now there is more sympathy for him. On the Republican side I assume that McCain and Rudy Giuliani are the best known candidates in Germany/Europe. McCain is probably still known from his maverick primary campaign against George W through which he gained support in Europe (mainly because already then people here completely disrespected Bush and liked the honest-politics approach of McCain as well as his engagement in transatlantic issues that has only increased over the last years). Giuliani is simply known through his New York city mayoral time. But on the left he is equally disregarded for his “zero tolerance” policy against crime in the streets of NY.

I was surprised recently to find out that hardly any of the candidates on both sides has any particular views on the European Union. The only references you can find (if any) are often related to NATO which is not really where major global policy initiatives start these days… Richard Laming wrote a good overview on the candidates’ position about Europe for the Federal Union blog (here). I simply wonder if the lack of reflection on the EU is due to a lack of education and understanding of Europe or because the EU is irrelevant for candidates.

For a European to follow the US elections – particularly the primaries at the moment – I would suggest two US sources for finding the latest and best information. On the one hand there is my favourite US blog TalkingPointsMemo.com that has a special election portal tpmelectioncentral.com which has a very well updated first-glance overview of recent trends – and incoming results during electoral nights. Secondly, there is the most detailed overview on all the primaries and candidates at the CNN website http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/. Here you can find primary results broken down to counties and the most recent overview of the electoral votes candidates have gathered.

And if you want to understand the US political system (or presidential elections) I think that watching the West Wing series (wiki description) is the only way to go

Fazit: Trotz aller Rufe nach größerer Steuergerechtigkeit und dem Vorurteil, dass die Reichen keine Steuern zahlen, wird sowohl in den USA wie auch in Deutschland der Großteil des Einkommensteueraufkommens von “den Reichen” erwirtschaftet. Dass ihr Anteil am Gesamt(einkommen)steueraufkommen in den USA noch viel höher als in Deutschland liegt, kann nun an zwei Gründen liegen (die sich nicht notwendigerweise ausschließen):

1. Das US Steuersystem hat weniger Schwachstellen, d.h. wer viel Geld verdient, kann sie nicht durch Schlupflöcher den Abgaben entziehen.

2. Die Einkommen der Reichen in den USA sind so viel höher (viele Studien weisen darauf hin, dass die Einkommensverteilung in den USA viel stärker gespreizt ist), dass sie egal bei welchem Steuersatz oder -system trotzdem noch höhere Steuereinnahmen anfallen.

Meine Berechnungen (Daten für 2003) sind hier nachzuverfolgen. Quelle ist das Statistische Bundesamt.

Neben Berechnung des Einkommensteueraufkommens habe ich auch versucht zu verstehen, wie die “lineare Progression” der deutschen Einkommensteuer funktioniert, bin aber an der sowas von behördlichen Sprache des Bundesfinanzministeriums gescheitert. Die Berechnung meines Steuersatzes bleibt mir darum auch weiterhin ein Mysterium.

The story behind its success is as simple as this. A freelance journalist started to put some of his unpublished articles on a blog. But more than that he started to try a follow-up to issues which he deems highly relevant for the US’s political life – but which were not taken up by the leading but careful mainstream newspapers. It all started off with the Florida recount and has lately led to the strong criticism and obvious abuse of powers by the US attorney-general (read European: minister for justice). Apparently his assistants were trying to get rid of illoyal federal attorneys all over the country. As long as this is perceived as an individual issue by the individual attorney and their local/state-wide public, no one would become suspicious. But only thanks to the adding up of several such cases over the whole country, the matter became one of significance.

What is interesting about this particular case is that it resembles some parallels to the lack of control of European multi-institutional affairs. Without any functioning or established network of pan-European investigative journalism similar cases would probably go unnoticed. And with investigative journalism I mean also to include the European blogosphere which is still far from play a significant role in making EU news (look for reasons at the Euroblogger study here). Now, you could argue that no such case of relevance as that in the US can happen in Europea because the “federal” powers are still weak. But imagine this. A more self-confident Commission president makes sure that a good “buddy” from the same “colours” occupies the oversight of DG Communication and its prerogatives in running the national Commission representations. No one would notice if they installed skilled party-friends at the posts of deputy heads of the Commission representations and friended press persons. With the right persons in place and a good coordination you could pretty much run the show on EU news.

A more constant concern is the scrutiny of Council voting behaviour of national governments, in particular in fields outside crucial “national” interest. Any voting against own party premises would never go unnoticed if conducted on Länder level inside Germany. On EU-level there is no outcry whatsoever when any creepy subsidies to “outermost regions” (i.e. booming Canary Islands) are granted, or the big agro-holdings increase their share on export subsidies. Maybe farmsubsidy.org was a first turning point in which journalists teamed up with academics to have a better grip on agricultural spending. But so much more needs to be scrutinised when it comes to Council-led action in the EU. Another crucial institutional issues is parliamentary control of the IGC – and more recently its preparation (= Sherpa-IGC). A more truly pan-European media would possibly have wondered, and therefore compared, how the individual national parliaments are taking it with the interaction with the Sherpas (see my German comment from late June).

My believe is that traditional press (and even less so TV or radio) can hardly cover these issues by themselves. That is until the point when they would (be forced to?) form coalitions in order to follow EU issues and their national back-up more closely. Until then the pan-European interaction of freetime, part-time and “professional” journalists through blog-like forums is possibly the only way to establish closer scrutiny of coordinated and non-coordinated wrongdoings at European level. I would hope that at least the EP elections in 2009 could find the next step after farmsubsidy and the first kind of European campaigning – with a European press chasing the inconsistencies of the European political actors.