The hidden propaganda

The Daily Mail and other assorted newspapers have been getting excited about a comic book portraying two fictional EU commission bureaucrats as humanitarian heroes.

This is being sent to schools and homes across the UK and mainland Europe at a cost of £200,000 to the taxpayer. It is printed in English, French, German, Italian and Dutch. Polish and Spanish translations are possibly to come later.

One can certainly understand the concern, both for the fact that the EU is once again indulging in naked propaganda, and wasting an amount of money into the bargain. But when it comes to either or both, this is just one tiny – and possibly least effective – part of the EU propaganda machine.

Another EU venture into schools, for instance, is a project called CARBOSCHOOLS+, linking carbon science laboratories with secondary schools to develop partnerships where "young Europeans" learn and conduct experiments about climate research and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. As opposed to the roughly €250,000 spent on the comic book venture, €1.43 million is being poured into this, with €981,553 coming from the EU.

Children aged from 7 to 12 years are the target of the Children's university, a project currently costing €666,086, for "the most radical opening towards the general public that universities can undertake."

However, the commission has found through a number of Eurobarometer polls, the main way the "European Public" absorbs its information is through television. And, as one example of how it is using that finding, it is running a project called GREENTRANSPORT-TV to "contribute to the development of public awareness on the European research on Greening transport in all European countries through the professional use of television media." That is costing €822,865.00 with the EU contributing €691,910.

The EU also recently commissioned a project called "Science in Europe 2020" (SC2020). Funded to the tune of €1,500,000 – with a million of that contributed by the EU - this is a measure to support the "promotion of science by audiovisual means via European co-productions and the circulation of science programmes". Essentially, it is a bribe on offer to independent television producers to make films which "enhance the knowledge and the awareness of scientific research in Europe."

Nor is just money on offer. The lucky applicants are also be given access to "the leading world-wide broadcasting organisation, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)". It has agreed to put at the disposal of this project "its unique position on the audiovisual market" – thereby ensuring the work is aired.

The EU is at pains to tell you that they exercise no influence over editorial content – this being left to the film-makers, but what we are seeing here is a relatively subtle attempt to create "agents of influence".

The effect can be seen in the behaviour of Geraint Tarling, head of ecosystem dynamics for the British Antarctic Survey. Having begun his own research career with funding from the EU Commission's Third Framework Programme, he went on to give EU funded presentations (in cooperation with the British Council) at a series of so-called cafés scientifiques, trying to explain "why climate change in Polar Regions should concern us all." That project cost €1.07 million, of which the EU paid €798,862.

So pervasive is the EU that, in every nook and cranny of public-funded scientific activity, you will find EU money – and influence. This, as with the film-making, extends way beyond financing research, even though much of the money actually comes from the research budget.

Thus, when the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) held its World Climate Conference 3 (WCC 3) in Geneva last year – at an overall cost of €2.93 million – the EU was right there with its cheque book, contributing €200,000 to the proceedings.

It would not have needed to impose conditions. WCC-3 was aimed at furthering "the scientific basis to explain and predict changes in the global climate in the context of both natural and anthropogenic forcing with an emphasis on contributing, from the science perspective, to the development of policy options for appropriate responses to global changes."

Then, throughout Europe (not just the EU), the commission is funding a series of researchers nights, typically offering between €60-65,000 for efforts to "raise public recognition" of European science, usually promoting an EU core issue.

Along those lines, researchers from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2008, working under the aegis of the EU-sponsored "Researchers' web in society", told the public about their involvement in the climate change and greenhouse effect research and tried to "raise the alarm concerning the new global changes."

For that, the university was paid €60,580 – one of eight of such projects funded in Greece alone, out of a total of over 120 similar events Europe-wide, costing in total around €700,000. Even more money – just short of a milliom (€992,076) was spent on project 2WAYS, communicating European research about life sciences with science festivals & science centres/museums, and holding "Science Parliament" debates.

Museums are often used as a mechanism to convey propaganda, with another project – this one called ACCENT - currently in progress. At a cost of €1.35 million (including €1.02 million from the EU), fifteen relevant science centres, science museums and aquariums are being mobilised "to move the campaign on climate change from informative to the active phase."

Debates and conferences are a general favourite of the EU, one of the more egregious examples being GENDERA. At the cost of €1.03 million – of which the EU is contributing €798,666, this project involves a series of debates and a conference, the intention being to contribute to changing the conscious/unconscious "male-is-better" attitude widespread in research.

Competitions for "young scientists" are also grist to the mill, this one costing a relatively modest €300,000. For the full Monty, though, there is the 21st EU Contest for Young Scientists at €1.07 million.

The trouble is that none of these events, far more influential and costly than a crass comic book, have quite the same news appeal. Largely, therefore, they are ignored – or even supported by local media, despite even just the examples here amounting to well over €13 million. Strangely, although money "talks", it doesn't necessarily get noticed by the media.

COMMENT THREAD

Ought I be flattered?

An e-mail arrived today from Gallup-Europe, inviting me to share my expertise. Hmm, I thought. I do make quite a good loaf of bread, even though I say so myself and my apple chutney is quite popular. But really and truly my expertise lies in making cabbage pie.

None of that, alas. Gallup-Europe and Friends of Europe want me to participate in a questionnaire that will eventually feed into a report on how the EU can best communicate with member states.

As encouragement they told me:

In October 2004, Friends of Europe, together with partners from the communication sector, launched its "Can EU Hear Me?" report to the then-incoming European Commission and European Parliament. This influential report can still be downloaded here. This previous report, which integrated useful suggestions from many high-level communication officials, is still used as a reference by the Commission.

Well, goodness me, I thought. If I fill in the questionnaire my opinions might be used as a reference by the Commission. Worth a go, I thought. Then I read the next paragraph:

Now, five years later, with the lowest turnout for the European elections in history and the troubled Lisbon Treaty ratification process, the need still exists for a better communication policy from the EU.

So, that communication exercise was a huge success. I wonder how low the turn-out for the European elections would have been if the report had not been produced.

COMMENT THREAD

Dirty work at the crossroads

This morning, like a number of people, I received an e-mail from my good friend Antony Coughlan, one of the leading lights of the Irish eurosceptic movement. It consisted of the text of an article in the Irish Daily Mail, whose journalists have found something quite interesting:

The Government has hatched an elaborate plan to deceive voters over the forthcoming EU treaty referendum, the Irish Daily Mail can today reveal. A leaked email shows that ministers are planning a deliberate campaign of misinformation to ensure that the Lisbon Treaty vote is passed when it is put to the public as required by the Constitution.

Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern has even been personally assured that the European Commission will "tone down or delay"’ any announcements from Brussels "that might be unhelpful".

Oh dear. I am not going to make that comment again about being shocked, shocked, shocked. Still it is good to know that these people run true to form. Can't say I am proud of our government's behaviour but then one rarely is proud of one's government.

Here is a link to the whole article and a discussion of it. Enjoy, if that is the right word.

In the country of the blind

An article in today’s International Herald Tribune once again quotes Henry Kissinger’s fatuous comment about wanting one number to phone Europe and shows that neither the journalist in question nor numerous other people on both sides of the Atlantic have understood the EU any more than the former Secretary of State did in the 1970s.

A poll conducted online from January 10 to January 21 by Harris Interactive, in partnership with France 24 and the Trib itself asked 6,676 adults in Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the United States asked a number of questions, not least who they thought was the person whose phone number every American Secretary of State should have.

When asked what country is the leader of Europe today, a majority of Germans, perhaps unsurprisingly, picked Germany: 57 percent, the same figure as among Spaniards. Among the French, that figure rose to an astonishing 68 percent. The Italians and British were divided on the question between Germany and Britain.

On the other side of the Atlantic, 63 percent of Americans saw Britain as Europe's leading nation.

Looking to the future, the breakdown was roughly the same across the board when people from the six nations were asked about which country will have the most influence in Europe over the next decade.

When asked about political personalities, Europeans chose Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, as No. 1, with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France as a distant second choice. Americans, by contrast, named Brown, the prime minister of Britain, as most influential.

The basis of that assertion is a clear misunderstanding of what is happening in Europe. The aim of the ongoing process is to create a completely new political structure – this has already happened to some extent – in which individual member states and their leaders are not actually going to have any great influence at all.

Any discussion as to what Europe’s future might be has to start with that and to ask whether it is what the people of Europe and its countries want. It is reasonably clear even from the poll that whenever there is a clear proposal for political integration, such as the creation of a European president, there is opposition.

For all of that, the article and the two experts it quotes, two European (whatever that may mean) political bloggers, Jan Seifert and Jon Worth, whose site “whodoicall.eu, has a petition calling for a merger of the two presidencies”, the two being the envisaged European president and the remaining Commission president.

Mind you, that petition is considerably more logical than the endless supposedly eurosceptic ones that call for the abolition of European Parliament’s sittings in Strasbourg. Messrs Seifert and Worth do not exactly hide their sympathies, though the article does not mention that the former is the president of JEF-Europe (Young European Federalists and the latter was that in the past, as well as being a member of the Labour Party and having experience in various NGOs, but you can’t have everything.

It is, therefore, unfortunate that their views are seen as an objective analysis by a newspaper that claims some objectivity in the matter, even if that objectivity extends only to a discussion of what the best way is of overcoming or circumventing doubts about the way the European Union is developing.

The full results are supposedly here but I am finding it hard to open the pdf.

When I want their opinion I'll ask for it

It is inevitable that one finds news items that report the appearance of the Constitutional Reform Treaty in all the languages on the web. Let’s face it, anything is more interesting than reading that treaty for the third time – in its first version in 2005, the second version this summer and, heigh-ho, the version that will be approved at the IGC Summit.

So what do I find when I read the AFP report on the subject? A most extraordinary farrago, worthy of some of the best MSM’s editorializing when editorials are not needed.

Take the first paragraph:

The European Union unveiled Friday its new draft treaty of sorely-needed reforms to replace the failed constitution but major political hurdles must be overcome before the text can be adopted.

Who says those reforms are sorely needed?

I suppose describing the IGC’s negotiations are “rubber-stamping” the text is near enough to the truth, though a better phrase could have been found. But what are we to make of this:

It contains many positive elements of the constitution, which was torpedoed by voters in France and the Netherlands in referendums two years ago sparking the bloc's worst-ever crisis.

However it amends parts of the other EU treaties and does not replace them, as the constitution would have done. Many of the symbolic trappings -- references to a European flag and anthem -- have also been dropped.

Positive elements? Torpedoed? A tad emotional, is it not, ladies and gentlemen of AFP?

Furthermore, whether this treaty amends parts of the other treaties without replacing them is a matter for discussion not for straightforward reporting. Since when has AFP been the propaganda unit for the European Commission?

The “report” ends with the words:

EU leaders want the treaty to enter force on January 1, 2009 so that public confidence in the European project is not undermined by the problem during elections to the European Parliament that year.

A few quotation marks would not come amiss. Not quite in the Green Helmet Guy category but an honourable mention, I think.

COMMENT THREAD

The European Council on Foreign Relations is finally launched

Well, it has been long time a-coming, considering the solid financing behind it (hint: George Soros and his various interests) but an item on EUObserver alerted me to the great event of the year: the European Council on Foreign Relations has finally been launched.

It now has a brand new website, which tells us that George Soros, the Council’s “onlie begetter” will launch it at a forum attended by all the great and the good, where he will discuss Europe’s global role. One can’t help feeling that Mr Soros is more interested in his own global role but that may be my infamous cynicism. Madeleine Bassett would never think that.

How can one resist an article by François Godemont, a member of the French great and the good fraternity that tells us that we must persuade Burma’s military junta that it makes more sense to have a political process. Sounds like another great common platform for the European Union.

There are fifty founding members from all the member states with impeccable credentials. (I am always rather sorry to see Bronislaw Geremek on lists like this, as I rather admire the man.)

The Statement of Principles starts off with a predictable and completely unlikely appeal to the governments of European Union:

We call on the governments of the European Union to develop a more coherent and vigorous foreign policy, informed by our shared values, dedicated to the pursuit of our common European interests, and sustained by European power.

As a matter of fact, I am rather impressed that in this case the reference is to the European Union and not to Europe. This could not have been written by Mark Leonard, the overall director of this enterprise. When I last debated with him on Radio 4 he showed complete ignorance of how the EU worked and declared said ignorance in ringing tones. He lost the debate, anyway.

Mark Leonard, the wunderkind of the soft-left europhile think-tank world, is the man who wrote not that long ago a book, entitled “Why Europe will run the 21st century?”. It had a great deal about soft power and “Europe’s” unseen influence on countries, if memory serves correctly, such as Russia and Rwanda. One wonders whether he will continue to believe so but, of course, he must go on believing that “Europe’s” power works like an unseen hand in all the member states. It’s just he will not go on saying it quite so openly, I expect.

As a matter of fact, he may be a little disappointed with that plan to run the 21st century. On the new website he says:

Europe needs to come of age. We need to stop complaining about what others are doing to the world, and start thinking for ourselves. We want a can-do foreign policy, where European power is put at the service of European values.

Quite so. Just as soon as we have a European power and can define European values.

COMMENT THREAD

Hmmmm

As we have written before, George Soros, the indefatigable and unsuccessful warrior against President Bush, whose entirely legitimate and somewhat left-of-centre presidency he has compared to the Nazi regime, is planning to set up a European Council on Foreign Relations.

Its website has the catchy address of onevoiceforeurope. Its aim is to unite and strengthen "Europe" for it to stand up to the terrible United States, particularly as long as Bush is President.

Sadly, if things go on as they have done, there may well be a new President by the time Mark Leonard, the europhile wunderkind can take over as Director of this new organization. The website is still just a temporary one with the real one promised late in 2007. Make that very late.

We must assume that the plan will come to fruition at some point and we shall have this very well funded think-tank trying to influence politics within the European Union, which means in Britain among other countries.

In that connection, it is worth having a look at this posting on a blog called Sweetness and Light. The title, I assume, is meant ironically. Steve Gilbert, the author, got hold of some documentations, which the Open Society Institute presumably is obliged to make public, about its income.

According to that temporary website it will be the Soros Foundation Network that will be donating money to it, not the Open Society Institute but there seems to be a certain overlap, financially speaking, between all these different bodies.

It is interesting to note that money had been received from the Federal Government, an astonishing idea when one considers Soros's frenzied attempts to destabilize its constitutional structure, and also from the United Palestinian Appeal, a relief charity whose name speaks for itself. What does not speak very clearly is any reason why the Soros outfit should be getting money from them.

I just thought our readers might like to know this.

COMMENT THREAD

Oh dear, they've noticed

[Health warning: this is not a Toy posting. There will be no mention of Toys in this piece. Some of our readers might, therefore, decide to skip this. But, let me repeat: there will be no Toys.]

Just recently we have noticed that there is excitement abroad (in every sense of the word) about the Euroblogosphere. It is being discussed and analyzed in a way it has not been before.

Euractiv has produced a list of blogs that might be considered to be relevant with, as you would expect it, heavy emphasis on the more official “clogs” (corporate blogs) – Commissars, members of the Toy Parliament and journalists – but there are some blogs, including this one, that are outside the Pale.

It may be that the opinion, frequently voiced by us, that it will be the issue of further European integration and the future of the European Union (short, we hope) that will make the blogosphere on this side of the Pond as important politically as it has been for some time in the United States is now shared by the Euro-establishment.

Scholars at the University of Hamburg are labouring on a more profound sociological and philosophical analysis of the blogosphere and its possible developments and outcomes. Their, possibly interim, conclusion is interesting in the way it tries to come to terms with a basically unknown and uncontrollable force:

In conclusion, it is not in the hands of the EU to organize the Euroblogosphere but it is in its hands to provide a basis for this partial public sphere to grow, fostering collective incentives, which are fundamental for the development of collective action and community. Doing this is one of the necessary steps that the EU has to take if it wants to act according to its motto of “closing the gap” between citizens and European institutions.

Earlier paragraphs make it clear that the opinion of this paper is that the importance or otherwise of blogs depends entirely on the attitude taken by the various governing strata who are encouraged to use the blogosphere for their own purposes. Can’t help feeling that these people are in for a shock.

My colleague and I have been wondering whether it is entirely a coincidence that so soon after we have found these and other discussions, there have been two (so far) perfectly courteous messages telling us about projects and websites that are supposedly “discussing” the European project though not quite as openly as we are.

One link, sent to our forum by a delightful new correspondent, is to a site called Tomorrow’s Europe, which is running a discussion forum at the European Parliament in September. The participants will be “a truly representative sample of ordinary citizens from all 27 countries in the EU”, 400 in number, the population of the EU being around 490 million. And, of course, the 400 will have no personal views or agendas of their own at all.

Let me add that the main organizer of Tomorrow’s Europe is Notre Europe, the think-tank set up by Jacques Delors, the last talented President of the European Commission and one of the sponsors, indeed the main organizational one, is George Soros’s Open Society Institute from which Lord Malloch-Brown has probably resigned. (It is good to have all one's enemies in one basket, so to speak.)

(Actually, I am not sure what happened there but the original idea had been to bring together 500 representative ordinary citizens. That 100 might have made all the difference. What went wrong? Were they purged for saying the wrong thing and supporting Snowball instead of Napoleon?)

We have also received an e-mail about another website in the making that is set to advocate the advantages of no borders in Europe. Having spent some of my life traveling round the place, I can appreciate that notion, though I should like to point out that travel across Europe was very easy before the First World War (unless one ran into a revolution or some local massacre) so there is nothing terribly new in the idea of borders being unimportant.

Its not totally literate mission statement reads:

In a rapidly changing environment where high mobility is a key element of success and where the post war cooperation initiatives in Europe have generated dynamics of peace and mutual understanding, we anticipate a trully united European continent without borders and without barriers of any kind.

We pledge to work hard on raising awareness on the benefits of a borderless Europe and broadcasting the will of the people of Europe towards the higher levels of administration.

There is a forum but it is not fully functional yet. We are looking forward to the developments in Europe/no-borders.

In the meantime, we can but smile at the thought of all these groups, organizations, academic seminars, old Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all getting so excited and worried about the euroblogosphere. Long may that continue.

COMMENT THREAD

Pervasive it is…

We are going to see a flood of this, over the next few days – retrospectives of the last 50 years, to "celebrate" the fiftieth anniversary of Treaty of Rome.

Latest off the stocks is the IHT with a piece produced by our old friends, Associated Press. It is headed: "Key EU accomplishments over the past 50 years," and, in pride of place, what do we see but this:

SECURING FOOD SUPPLIES (TO EXCESS): The war was barely over for a dozen years when the forebear of the EU was created. Hunger was not a distant memory. With chilling efficiency, the Brussels bureaucracy created a farm system so effective that containing excess surpluses of wheat, butter and wine lakes became one of the bloc's biggest challenge within a few decades. It remains so to this day…

What utter, utter garbage this is, and what a sad reflection it is on the pervasive power of the myth that so many people buy into it. The proper place for EU propaganda is here.

COMMENT THREAD

Some you lose and some you lose

My colleague has already written about the risible list of 50 reasons why ignorant Independent journalists think the rest of us should love the EU. Let me concentrate on just one.

Reason number 18 says that one of the glories of the EU is a Europe-wide travel ban on tyrants such as Robert Mugabe. As it happens, it is perfectly possible to have a travel ban on tyrants across any kind of territory, should the countries in question wish to enact it. One does not need the European Union with all its paraphernalia for that.

The problem with that item is that it is not even true. The ban on Mugabe has been in place for some years. For all of that, President Chirac saw nothing wrong with inviting him to an African summit in 2003. The summit was yet another attempt on the part of the outgoing French president to prove that France was a significant international player. If that meant wining and dining some of the worst tyrants in the world and breaking EU sanctions on Robert Mugabe, well, tant pis.

There were attempts by human rights groups to arrest Mugabe while he was in Paris. These failed because of intervention by the French police.

Two years before that Peter Tachell had attempted to arrest Robert Mugabe in Brussels on charges torture under the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture. Under the benign gaze of the Belgian police and secret service agents Mugabe’s thugs attacked Tatchell and beat him unconscious.

For the record, though the British police have not behaved anything as badly, their zeal in arresting peaceful protesters outside Zimbabwe House yesterday does not fill one with great joy.

Now we come to the present. There is a meeting of the EU, Caribbean, African and Pacific MPs in Brussels going on, and it is best not to comment on the quality of the various political systems that are included.

Suffice it to say that Zanu-PF delegates are attending the meeting though Glenys Kinnock is making the usual tut-tutting noises and regretting their presence. As one who is chairing the meeting she, presumably, had some say as to who was and who was not invited. No use regretting things now.

All of which is happening a week or so after the badly beaten members of the opposition, arrested during a peaceful rally and march, appeared in court. The picture on the right tells its story, though for some reason AP captions it as

Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, center, appeared in a Harare court two days after a mass arrest. He and others were injured in custody.

Injured? How did they happen to get injured? Did they slip while playing cricket or go into a particularly rough scrum during a rugby match?

As our readers will recall, Nelson Chamisa, a member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, was badly beaten at Harare airport when he tried to board an aeroplane to go to Brussels. So he is not there and neither are any of the other MDC members who can barely move after attention by Mugabe’s thugs last week.

But one person who is in Brussels is Edward Chindori-Chininga, a former government minister, who is on the list of 100 Zimbabweans banned from entering the European Union.

It seems that he applied for a visa in Johannesburg (Thado Mbeki has still not made the slightest effort to control his colleague Mugabe) under the shortened name of Edward Chininga. No-one thought of checking and the visa was issued.

As AFP reports, it was all a bit of a mistake. The foreign ministry spokesman, who has been muttering about that mistake, has said that Belgium has taken steps to ensure that Mr Chindori-Chininga does not enter Belgian territory. So, where is the man? In the European Union or not? Nobody seems to know.

What of that reason number 18 for loving the EU?

COMMENT THREAD

Hooray for Hollywood!

Many of our readers will feel well-merited contempt when I acknowledge a weakness for the Oscars razzmatazz. I am quite looking forward to all those comments on the forum that show how superior the commenters are to me.

The reason is that I like films, though I rarely prefer films of the last thirty years to those that had been made before. Still, one likes to know what is going on in the film world (which is why I am addicted to the Libertas site) and, beside, the Hollywood luvvies are always good for a laugh.

A good deal of attention has been given to the preposterous spectacle of Leonardo di Caprio looking with deep reverence at Al Gore while presenting him with the Oscar for best documentary for “An Inconvenient Truth”. Some of those who wrote about it, including this blog, pointed out that it is highly unlikely that either of them had arrived to the presentation in a horse and buggy. It is much more likely that they and all the other luvvies, who applauded Gore to the skies, had come in large, gas-guzzling limousines, some, including Gore, having flown in on polluting Gulf-Stream jets. (Oh wait, I forget, they have all purchased carbon offsets. Or something.)

There were a few interesting aspects, not least the fact that quite a few of the prizes appeared well deserved. And, of course, we know who won the Best Actress award: our own Dame Helen Mirren, one of the best actresses of her generation, who had appeared in a spectacularly attractive dress and clutching a Union Flag. Her acceptance speech included words of admiration for the Queen, whom she had played in the eponymous film.

A successful British film (a rarity in itself these days), favourable words about Her Majesty and that Union Flag. Dear me. No wonder the film was ignored by the Commissar responsible for the Media, Viviane Reding, even though, as EU Business reports, she was quick to claim a bit of the Oscars glamour, saying that Europe’s film makers continue to “fight hard and with confidence for market success also outside Europe”. But not, of course, the British ones who show the Queen in a good light.

Well, what are these film makers and how is it that Commissar Reding can claim credit for their success?

When it comes down to it, there was only one: the winner of the Best Foreign Language Film award, a young German director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, with his work: “Das Leben der Anderen” (“The Lives of Others”). It was noted that Cate Blanchett seemed utterly stunned when she handed over the prize. This was …. Sshhh …. Whisper who dares …. An anti-Communist film.

The main character is a Stasi officer who begins to understand the wrongness of the system he serves through one of his jobs. Needless to say, Herr von Donnersmarck was asked by the journalists whether it had any relevance to the United States under Bush and replied tactfully. One does wonder about the sheer idiocy of somebody who can ask a question like that.

One also wonders how the Hollywood luvvies took to him thanking “Schwarzenegger for teaching me that the words "I can't" should be stricken from my vocabulary”.

Now, where does Commissar Reding come in? Well, it seems that the film “benefited from the EU's Media programme of support for the European audiovisual industry”. Not, I hasten to add, in its production, which may be why the EU was omitted from the acceptance speech, but some money had been handed over to help with the distribution.

The 500,000 euros (660,000 dollars) of EU funding for the film went not to producing the film, but to help boost its distribution in cinemas and on DVDs outside Germany.

Is that enough to claim kudos for the European Community?

There are two other reasons for the EU claiming that bit of Hollywood glamour. One is that Al Gore’s somewhat hysterical “documentary” drew on some results produced by the EU-funded EPICA environmental project and the other is that “the technical achievement Oscar went to a collaborative project supported by the EU's Marie Curie Research Fellowships”.

Well, the second one is a little more complicated than that.

Dr. Bill Collis, Simon Robinson and Ben Kent from The Foundry, a British visual effects company, together with Dr. Anil Kokaram from Trinity College Dublin and video processing group Sigmedia were honoured with an Oscar for the development and design of editing software known as the Furnace.

The collaboration between the two teams was supported by the EU's Research Framework Programme through its programme of Marie Curie Fellowships.

The Furnace software helps to delete from the screen any actors, wires or other objects which the director would rather not reveal to the viewer.

The software has been used on a range of high profile films including Casino Royale, The Da Vinci Code and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

What any of this has to do with European film-making or its achievements, is anybody’s guess.

COMMENT THREAD

Return to Eurohistory

We all need reminding in the midst of the present political controversy that UKIP has its uses and would be sorely missed if it disappeared (and not just for its entertainment value).

England Expects tells us that it was UKIP that fed the story to the media about the proposed common European history textbook, though it was Graham Brady, the Conservative Europe spokesman who managed to get most of the huffing and puffing in.

Actually, this is not a particularly new idea and, our readers might recall that this blog covered a similar story that emerged from Belgium a couple of years ago. There have been many attempts to create a European history textbook that would avoid all the – how can describe it – difficult passages, which just happen to be the most interesting ones as well.

While both the Sun and the Daily Telegraph blamed Germany for this idea, one imagines the French are not exactly averse to imposing a single European view of the past. But which past would that be?

There is, as the article in the Telegraph points out, a model for this hilarious idea, a Franco-German project, which would not surprise anyone.

The Franco-German Histoire Geschichte was launched last May, with a first edition covering history since the end of the Second World War. The text is taught as part of the higher curriculum in both French and German schools and has the expressed aim of overcoming old enmities.

Speaking at the launch event, Gilles de Robien, the French education minister, said: "The great lesson of this story is that nothing is set in stone – antagonisms that we believe are inscribed in marble are not eternal."

Much of the first book of Franco-German history is devoted to the creation of the EU. "Through its willingness to co-operate with the Third World, its attachment to multilateralism, its dialogue with other regions, the EU appears as a model on the international scene," says the text.

Ten historians, five from each country, contributed to the book, which is published in both German and French and retails for €25 (£17).

Of course, M de Robien is right in his statement that nothing is set in stone, not even the European Union. On the other hand, given the CAP, the CFP, protectionist trade deals and many millions of euros spent on subsidizing bloodthirsty kleptocrats in position of power, I would question the EU’s record as a good world team player.

Mind you, one cannot help laughing over the following:

But political differences between Germany and France have surfaced over the role of the United States in Europe. "For France, traditionally the US is considered a great power which is a sort of rival," said Peter Geiss, one of the book's publishers. "That's not possible in Germany. For Germany, the US after 1945 has never been a rival. The reconstruction of Germany is associated with American presence."

How to deal with Communism has been another problem. While the Communist movement was of political importance in France in the 1950s and 1960s, it was associated in Germany with dictatorship, the East German regime and Soviet expansion.

While 80 per cent of the book's content is identical in the two languages, assessments of the US and the history of the Communist German Democratic Republic differ.

Other areas where French and German historians could not agree was on French colonial history and the Christian church.

What on earth is left in the textbook to fill up that 80 per cent? Not, I presume, the two world wars, or not in any detail, the occupation of France or French collaboration, the Franco-Prussian War, the invasion of German states by revolutionary and Napoleonic France or the Thirty Years’ War at the end of which France managed to grab a decentish chunk of territory, such as Alsace and Metz.

Personally I cannot wait for the book to be published in Britain.

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Cut-price Yanks

In addition to its 745-acre Ithaca campus in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, Cornell University operates the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and now the Weill Cornell Medical College in Doha, Qatar.

At first sight, therefore, it does not strike one as a poverty-stricken institute deserving of the charity of debt-laden European taxpayers.

However, that does not seem to be the view of the EU Commission which perhaps has a different agenda - like propaganda. To that effect, it is funding the University's Institute of European Studies (IES) to the tune of $100,000. And, it looks like it is getting a bargain.

The grant, we are told, is being awarded to the University "in honour of the EU's 50th anniversary" (honest, I am not making this up). Some of it goes to a "town twinning" project with Elios Proni in Greece Unite, part of a "Getting to Know Europe" local outreach project. But the IES also plans to conduct "The EU and U" business seminars, which will aim to "educate local businesses and small value-added enterprises about opportunities to do business with the countries of the EU".

Additionally, part of the EU grant will be used to fund IES's comprehensive "K-12 outreach program", which is designed to "inspire local students to understand and appreciate the European Union."

Of this, the "EU Curriculum Grant Contest" is one of the noteworthy initiatives. For its money, the IES will encourage teachers from Upstate New York schools to develop curriculum materials focusing on the politics, the history and the culture of the European Union.

Selected educators will be awarded $1,125 to implement the most promising programs and plans are in hand to run a "Europe Day Poster Contest" which will let youngsters explore their artistic talents while drawing upon the theme of the recently unveiled European Anniversary logo, "Together". And, of course, winners will be announced during the Europe Day 2007 celebration on 9th May.

David Wippman, vice provost for International Relations, said that the grant will "provide an excellent opportunity to advance the outreach and international mission of Cornell University by enlightening local residents about the important work of the EU, the rich cultural history of Europe and the abundant US-EU business and investment opportunities."

Well, they certainly bought him cheap. And for a "mere" $100,000, it seems Cornell University - reputedly the third richest in the USA - has been bought and paid-for as an organ of EU propaganda. One suspects the EU Commission is rubbing its hands with glee at obtaining so many cut-price Yanks.

You would have thought, though, that if Cornell academics were intent on selling themselves to a foreign power, the interests of which are inimical to those of the United States, they would have charged a little more.

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