October 15, 2009

Senator Richard Shelby

I called to see Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama last week to discuss the forthcoming United States legislation on the financial sector. The European Union would like to ensure that United States and EU legislation on this vital subject are mutually compatible. Finance has become globalized and, if it is to be supervised properly on behalf of taxpayers, that must be done on a globally cooperative basis, in particular by systematic exchange of information between regulators and by setting equivalent and mutually recognizable standards.

Senator Shelby was very receptive on these points. He is a very important player, as he is the leading Republican on the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee of the Senate. He was first elected to the US Senate in 1986, and to the Alabama State Senate in 1970.

Senator Jack Reed

I also called to see Jack Reed, Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, who serves as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment within the Senate Banking Committee, to discuss the same topic.

Jack Reed served in the US Army in the 82nd Airborne Division. During his time in the army, he took a masters programme at Harvard University.

He has been a member of the Senate since 1996 when he succeeded the legendary Claiborne Pell.

He told me of his concerns about the impact of the economic recession on Rhode Island and of his work to help low income families in these difficult times.

Congressman Spencer Bachus

Spencer Bachus is the leading Republican Congressman on the Financial Services Committee of the House. I put the same case to him, as I had put to Senators Reed and Shelby, on making sure that United States and European rules on the financial sector are mutually compatible.

Spencer Bachus has authored legislation to protect consumers from identity theft and entitling them to a free credit report.

He has also worked to protect the environment, passing legislation to establish the Cahaba River Wildlife Refuge in Alabama.

Spencer Bachus was first elected to Congress in 1992, and previously served in the Alabama State Legislature.

The abolition of the Death Penalty

Last week the Swedish Ambassador Jonas Hafström, and I held a press conference to stress the European Union's worldwide campaign in favour of the abolition of the death penalty. Last year 2,390 people were put to death in 25 different countries, but over 90% of these executions took place in just five countries: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Pakistan.

Within the United States, 35 states retain the death penalty, while 16 states - Alaska, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin - do not have the death penalty. Based on the 2000 census, this means that roughly 24% of the population of the United States live in states that do not have the death penalty.

The European Union disagrees with the death penalty on principle. We do not believe it is an appropriate penalty because of the EU's stance on respect for human life. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union says in Article 2:

 "Everyone has the right to life."

 "No one should be condemned to the death penalty, or executed."

There are pragmatic grounds for objecting to the death penalty, too.

There is little international evidence to suggest that it actually deters people from committing capital crimes. For 2008, the average murder rate in death penalty states was 5.2, while the average murder rate in states without the death penalty was 3.3, i.e. the rate for non-Capital Punishment states is 40% lower than for states with the death sentence.

Death is final. If a person is wrongfully convicted and put to death, they cannot be brought back to life when new evidence is uncovered that establishes their innocence.

There is an increasing trend in the United States of people condemned to death being found not to be guilty of the crimes for which they were condemned to death. Five condemned people on death row have been exonerated so far in 2009 alone, as against an average of 3 per year being exonerated in the past thirty years.

The Severity of the Criminal Justice System

Apart from the widespread use of the death penalty, one of the surprising things to a European living in the United States is the rate and duration of imprisonment. The United States has less than 5% of the world's population, but it has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners, who tend to stay in prison longer. For every 100,000 people, the United States has 751 people in prison, ahead of Russia (627), England (151) and Germany (88).

Efforts to combat illegal drugs play a major rôle in explaining long prison sentences in the United States. In 1980, there were about 40,000 people in American prisons for drug crimes. Now there are almost 500,000.

Most state court judges and prosecutors in the United States are elected and are therefore sensitive to a public that is, according to opinion polls, generally in favour of tough crime policies.

Given that penalties are so severe, there is a special obligation to ensure that those who are convicted are actually guilty. Many of those who come before the courts are unable to pay for their own legal defence. It falls to public defenders to defend them. But an individual public defence lawyer may be handling up to a hundred cases at a time, and may not have much time to spend studying the circumstances of each case. Many cases are settled by plea bargains, where a defendant gambles on pleading guilty to a lesser charge to avoid facing a full trial on a more serious offence with a more severe penalty. If every defendant opted for a full jury trial, the courts system would clog up completely. But there is a real risk that an entirely innocent defendant, unless properly advised by a lawyer who has the time to examine all the circumstances, may decide to plead guilty to a lesser charge, because he or she is frightened of facing a full trial on the greater charge and of taking on the high-risk gamble that a full trial would involve.

I have no doubt that such dilemmas exist in all criminal justice systems. But society needs, as Tony Blair once said, to be as tough on the causes of crime, as well as on crime itself. One of the continuing causes of crime is untreated and/or undiagnosed mental illness.

Wilfried Martens

The President of the European People's Party (the largest party in the European Parliament) was in Washington last week for the launch of the English language version of his autobiography.

Wilfried Martens has been a full-time politician for the past fifty years, starting in the youth wing of his party in his native Belgium. Subsequently, he served as Prime Minister of Belgium from April 1979 to April 1981 and from December 1981 to March 1992.

He is a strong proponent of Christian Democratic thought, which emphasises the unique value of the human person in all his or her aspects - not merely as an individual economic actor, but as a member of wider communities like the family, neighbourhood, nation and religious faith.

Wilfried Martens was born on a farm in Sleidinge not far from the Dutch border. As he puts it, "you can take the boy off the farm, but you cannot take the farm out of the boy." He remembers his father rising at four in the morning to collect milk. He remembers the assault by German artillery in May 1940 and the "horses gone mad, running in all directions."

His childhood experience of war has made Wilfried Martens into a dedicated proponent of European unity and this is reflected in the title of his book: Europe: I struggle, I overcome.

I worked closely with Wilfried Martens for more than a decade in the European People's Party, and I know that his struggle has been a very worthwhile one.

Visit of Commissioner Kuneva

EU Consumer Protection Commissioner Meglena Kuneva was in Washington to discuss with her counterparts at the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Trade Commission opportunities for closer cooperation on better protecting consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. Europe and the United States face similar challenges and there is broad scope for cooperation in areas such as product safety, retail financial services and online commercial activities. Commissioner Kuneva discussed ways to improve the traceability of products and ensure that unsafe products do not arrive on our markets. We need to have a mechanism to remove unsafe products quickly and efficiently.

Commissioner Kuneva said:

"We are witnessing a growing recognition of the consumer as a primary driver of economic activity. A sound consumer policy can lay the foundations for business and for competition to thrive to the benefit of all."

EU-US high level meeting on education

Last week I hosted a reception to celebrate the first meeting of the EU-US education policy forum on October 8-9. It was a first step for senior officials from the European Commission and the US Department of Education to strengthen education cooperation across the Atlantic and exchange ideas on challenges in the areas of higher education reforms. A series of joint follow-up actions was agreed, such as reinforcing the joint ATLANTIS (http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/extcoop/usa/index_en.htm) programme and engaging in a joint EU-US "Tuning" project, which does conduct comparative studies on university credit systems across the Atlantic and exchange best practices on entrepreneurship and access to higher education for disadvantaged groups. The next dialogue will take place in a year's time in Brussels.

US Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter	EU Education, Training, Culture and Youth Director General Odile Quintin