The day the computers died

150,000 simultaneous e-mails sent the European Parliament’s system crashing — that’s lobbying

DEAR Neena... began the e-mail from Sue Cannon on March 11 to Neena Gill, the UK socialist member in the European Parliament, explaining why she should vote against a proposed legislation on food supplements.

Similar e-mails, from different people, but with similar content, flooded Gill’s fellow parliamentarians’ mail boxes over the week till, at 9 am on March 13, a whopping 150,000 such mails were simultaneously sent, the combined load of which eventually crashed the European Parliament’s computer system for several hours. Now that’s lobbying!

In Brussels for a week at the invitation of the European Union, that’s one of the things you heard a lot of — the stories of successful lobbying by the Indian government and its failures in what’s becoming one of the world’s biggest markets. So, for example, when the European Commission was piloting a legislation on standards for milk products, one of the proposals was to measure the bacteria levels when the cows were being milked.

Now this would have been sure death for Indian milk exports — you’ve seen the conditions at our gowshalas, haven’t you? Well, the Indian mission at the EU got to know of it by chance, and the mission’s head, Pradeep Kumar Singh, went and met Pascal Lamy (the EU trade commissioner) to explain that it made more sense to measure the bacteria levels after processing — Lamy saw the logic, and the legislation eventually passed didn’t hurt India’s interests.

While many European parliamentarians concede that India’s lobbying efforts have improved over the last year or so, there’s still too much left to chance, and not enough systematic working of the networks — in the European Commission, in various committees, in Parliament’s working groups, and so on.

It doesn’t help that, in recent months, when Indians come calling on parliamentarians, they spend the first several minutes bitching about the Pakistanis! One member, for instance, had to interrupt this monologue to specifically ask the Indian staffer if there were any other issues, and was then told, “There is this issue about dumping duties on bed linen exports.” And you wonder why the Pakistanis are scoring diplomatic victories.

Indo-EU Partnership: Just before leaving for Brussels, a senior columnist told me, to the embarrassment of a staffer from the EU’s India mission also present, that there was this great India-EU partnership going — both want to protect their economies, both want status quo.

Even so, it was a bit disconcerting to hear a senior EU trade official saying the EU position on agriculture was a bit like India’s — agriculture is not just about the production, it performs a social function as well, preserves a part of your heritage, is good for the environment, and so on. (That’s how, by the way, the EU justifies its 400-plus per cent tariffs on some lines of beef, or the average of 160 per cent on sugar or 100 per cent on milled rice.)

The EU, by the way, could teach India a lesson or two in how to circumvent reforms. Though a lot has, no doubt, been achieved by the adoption of the Euro as a common currency, a lot clearly needs to be done to achieve common taxation policies.

One attempt, for instance, has been to get member countries to agree to near-common rates as far as indirect taxes are concerned. So, on automobiles, some countries have a similar sort of tax rate as the others, but then charge a huge “numberplate tax”, or the charge for getting a new license plate, vital for a new car — as Shakespeare would have said, call a tax by any other name, and it’ll still smell just as bad.

Is the EU working: You decide, but just last week the French refused to allow complete freeing up of the EU energy markets by 2003 — the entire French electricity market is controlled by the public sector Electricite de France.

Instead, a compromise was reached, and partial liberalisation is to be allowed, by 2004, and that too for “commercial users” — those familiar with the EU say arriving at a consensus on what is “commercial” will be another long haul. Jose Maria Aznar, the prime minister of Spain and the holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, called it a significant step while addressing the Barcelona summit.

That’s on the record. Off the record, as CNN reported while citing UK newspapers, thinking his microphone was off, after his speech about the great progress made at Barcelona, Aznar said something to the effect, “what a load of nonsense I’ve just said.”

Bush-whacked: A genuinely European common market, along the lines of the US, may be a long time away, but you’ve got to hand it to the Europeans for humour. With President Bush targetting them for anti-dumping duties on steel, the EU’s decided to hit him where it hurts most — at the ballot-box.

The EU’s imposing anti-dumping duties on a series of US products — like Harley-Davidson motorbikes, Tropicana and other fruit juice brands — produced in states critical for Bush’s attempt to retain control of the House of Representatives in elections later this year.

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