Strategies and Cheese

I just can’t not comment on is the very unconvincing, thoroughly shameful hearing of Bulgaria’s EU commissioner designate R. Jeleva (here’s a link to the full hearing).

Right now it’s on the front pages of blogs, newspapers and media all over Europe. The Economist, European Voice, just to name a few. I will abstract from details, but Jeleva was basically attacked on two fronts – her non-compliance with the EU conflict of interest regulations regarding non-affiliation with private businesses as a MEP from 2007-2009 and her lack of familiarity and inability to convince the EP of any deep knowledge of the assigned portfolio – humanitarian aid. Even given the current situation in Haiti alone, it is most definitely not an insignificant portfolio.

Rumiana Jeleva’s lack of preparation for this hearing was a disgraceful display of the same poor leadership qualities that lead to the withdrawal of EU funds from Bulgaria’s previous socialist government: arrogance, disregard for European practices, disregard for transparency, lack of honesty and accountability. Jeleva should have prepared better, no matter how certain that EU commissioner post may have seemed to her.

Following the hearing, prime minister Borisov, not much unsurprisingly, did two poor moves. Firstly, he claimed “he had spoken to the right people to convince them our candidate was good”. Guess what? Everyone saw her poor performance, “calling people” in the same old crony capitalistic, police manner it is done in the Balkans will not cut it; Europe is more or less democratic now and things work differently. In fact, I am proud to be a European; this is a clear case, actually a monumental case for the enacting the Lisbon treaty, whereby the interests of the Union prevail against the interests of a single country. Secondly, in an attempt to cover up the fact that Jeleva acted against the law by not declaring an active participation in her consultancy firm, the deputy minister of justice Lyudmila Petrova issued a legal opinion that Jeleva may have made a breach of a seemingly insignificant regulation, but not an actual violation of the Bulgarian law. (New Europe has the original and translated documents). Notwithstanding, Jeleva did in effect mislead the EP in stating that she did not have commercial conflicts of interest after 2007.

It is indeed a major disaster on Bulgaria’s government part and also a tough hit on the EPP as well. We’ll have to wait a bit to see how things play out. The EPP is now probably mad at GERB and the Bulgarians for not doing their homework. But my guess is, eventually prime minister Boyko Borisov will appoint another candidate (the much better qualified and eloquent current defence minister Mladenov). The costs of plowing through and keeping Jeleva will be too much to bear for the EPP and for Bulgaria.

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In addition, I’d also like to post a link to a petition to stop software patents in Europe that is currently gaining momentum.

The petition is aimed at promoting innovation in software. Copyright protection should be ensured whilst also removing the widely misused software patents that are still in many cases accepted in European court decisions. The petition lists a number of funny “methods” of doing things online that seem to be actually patented — e.g. paying with a credit card, video streaming, web shops, shopping carts, getting a key via SMS, etc.

I’m not a big supporter of signing random online petitions, but it is worth taking 2 mins and signing this one.