Although I have more respect for German Chancellor Angela Merkel than for her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, not everyone within the EU is so delighted with her leadership as some journalists and pundits would have you think. Germany's Der Spiegel magazine ran at least two very critical articles re: the EU 50th anniversary celebrations in Berlin and Britain's The Independent newspaper ran a series of op-eds criticizing not only Germany's present leadership of the EU but that of all 27 EU leaders. The Independent's articles drew an immediate response from some EU leaders and total silence from the rest of the gang. Here is an excerpt from The Independent:

Darfur: Europe's leaders respond to demands for action to stop the genocide, by Stephen Castle, Berlin 26 March 2007

Europe's leaders toughened their stand against mass murder in Darfur yesterday, issuing new threats against the Sudanese government, as their own 50th birthday celebration summit was thrown off balance by the unprecedented appeal from Europe's leading writers for action. Darfur forced its way on to the meeting's agenda after a coalition of European writers and intellectuals spoilt the self-congratulatory party with a devastating critique of the bloc's failure to act to end the violence in the Sudanese province. Today, about 2.5 million people are displaced and more than 200,000 civilians are dead as a result of government-sponsored violence.

Despite the scale of murder since the conflict began in 2003 - the US has described it as genocide - there has been no attempt to launch the kind of humanitarian intervention that saved civilian lives in Kosovo.

In a letter to the 27 leaders of EU states, published by The Independent, 10 of the continent's leading writers and thinkers recalled the atrocities of Auschwitz and Srebrenica in their call for immediate action against the Sudanese regime and President Omar al-Bashir.

The signatories included Tom Stoppard, Seamus Heaney, Harold Pinter, Dario Fo, Günter Grass, Umberto Eco, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Franca Rame and Václav Havel.

The intervention had an immediate effect on Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, which holds the EU presidency, who called on fellow leaders to consider stricter sanctions against the government in Khartoum.

She said the EU wanted President Bashir to allow UN peacekeepers into the country and comply with UN resolutions.

"We think of the people in Zimbabwe and Darfur. The suffering there is unbearable, We must look at stronger sanctions" she said

Tony Blair, who sent a letter to Ms Merkel pressing for talks on the issue, demanded renewed efforts at the United Nations to put in place a no-fly zone to prevent the Sudanese air force causing more loss of life.

In Berlin, Mr Blair held a meeting with one of the victims of the violence, Ishag Mekki, whose sister was murdered in her own home. "Had you leaders acted earlier and intervened, today I would have my elder sister alive," Mr Mekki said.

Yesterday's summit in Berlin was called to mark the EU's 50th birthday. The event involved a concert, a banquet and a formal lunch yesterday.

The issue of Darfur had not been scheduled for debate, though Europe's leaders were due to discuss Europe's role in the world. In the end the plight of the province was raised over a lunch of crab with bacon and broiled beef with beetroot, red wine and onion sauce.

Read more....
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2393302.ece

Here is the link to Darfur: An Open Letter from some of Europe's leading intellectuals and literary figures
March 24, 2007
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article2387820.ece

The text of the letter from some of my favorite writers follows:

On the fiftieth anniversary of the EU, a call to action
Published: 24 March 2007
To the leaders of the 27 nations of the EU,

How dare we Europeans celebrate this weekend while on a continent some few miles south of us the most defenceless, dispossessed and weak are murdered in Sudan?

Has the European Union - born of atrocity to unite against further atrocity - no word to utter, no principle to act on, no action to take, in order to prevent these massacres in Darfur? Is the cowardliness over Srebrenica to be repeated? If so, what do we celebrate?

The thin skin of our political join?

The futile posturings of our political class?

The impotent nullities of our bureaucracies?

The Europe which allowed Auschwitz and failed in Bosnia must not tolerate the murder in Darfur. Europe is more than a network of the political classes, more than a first world economic club and a bureaucratic excrescence. It is an inherited culture which sustains our shared belief in the value and dignity of the human being. In the name of that common culture and those shared values, we call upon the 27 leaders to impose immediately the most stringent sanctions upon the leaders of the Sudanese regime.

Forbid them our shores, our health service and our luxury goods. Freeze their assets in our banks and move immediately to involve other concerned countries.

We must not once again betray our European civilization by watching and waiting while another civilization in Africa is destroyed.

Let this action be our gift to ourselves and our proof of ourselves. And when it is done, then let us celebrate together with pride.

Umberto Eco
Dario Fo
Günter Grass
Jürgen Habermas
Václav Havel
Seamus Heaney
Bernard Henri-Levy
Harold Pinter
Franca Rame
Tom Stoppard

Ooops! Looks as if we have some more "unhappy EU campers" over at Foreign Policy magazine. Checkout the March 2007 issue for Alan Sked's article "Europe's 50th Anniversary Clown Show". Sked is a senior lecturer in international history at the London School of Economics. Here is the byline to the article:

The European Union’s absurd birthday bash says more about where the EU is headed than 1,000 bland pronouncements from the bureaucrats and politicians in Brussels ever could.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3757&fpsrc=ealert070326

I didn't think the affair was that bad, was it?