Plenary focus - December

The ECB 2012 activity report shows that the European institutions have not learned the lessons from the current crisis. While it states that the European recession is not mainly linked to a lack of access to credit, it fails to acknowledge that one of the main reasons is, in fact, the collapse of demand due to austerity policies. On the contrary, the report emphasises the need to attach strict conditionality to the OMT programme, confirming that this mechanism is designed to implement Troika policies by other means.

The new Common Fisheries Policy insists on a centralised management but what is needed is proximity management, involving communities and taking into account the huge diversity that characterises fisheries in the EU. It ignores the fact that economic, social, and environmental aspects of fisheries are closely linked and interrelated. If the aim is to make fisheries more sustainable, it would be necessary to adopt a broad package of measures extending to the environmental, but also to the social and economic spheres, otherwise the same path of destruction will be pursued.

This agreement became necessary after Bulgaria and Romania joined the European Union in 2007. This accession meant losses for China with regard to tariffs agreed under the WTO. The new agreement is a positive example of a dispute settlement with China that provides the country with adequate compensation.