TalktoEU doesn't feel like talking?

PanchoVilla

It seems to be over a month since anyone from TalktoEU has posted anything on this forum. Is this campaign just another massive waste of European taxpayer's money? I read the website and it just seems to be a platform for the Commission to tell us all how great the EU is and how everything will be fine if we just keep working and keep paying our taxes. It just stinks of propaganda to be honest.

How much money is TalktoEU getting for this campaign? How much money is TalktoEU: John getting for this and does he think he's doing an adequate job? As a taxpayer I believe I have a right to know.

TalkToEU: John

Hi PanchoVilla,

Thanks for the post.
In terms of our activity on boards.ie, it's actually something we're addressing and have been discussing with the guys from boards.ie over the past few weeks. We both agreed that the placement of the forum wasn't doing much for our visibility and that it would be great to have more interaction and make better use of our Talk to account.

As a result of this, the Talk to - Talktoeu forum has merged with the EU Politics forum. We hope that this will also allow us to engage more with boards.ie users and take part in topic discussion. We'd like to take our boards.ie activity from being a small part of the overall campaign to being a lively centre of discussion.

A lot of our activity lately has been focused on re-development of the talktoeu website and the planning of new initiatives after the initial talktoeu campaign ended in the summer.

In terms of content on our website, our goal is to inform people about how the EU works and to help answer any questions they might have.
Much of the current content on the website is actually in response to what we learned from website visitors and the questions they asked over the course of the past year and recent months.
In the coming days, we'll be rolling out our latest initiative which will help Irish citizens find out how they can travel and work across the EU with the experience and qualifications they have, and what they need to know to find work in certain industries.
This initiative is a direct response to a large number of queries we've have into the website about rights as Irish citizen and working/living abroad in the EU. Given the economic problems in Ireland, this has been a hot topic.

We'll also be launching an initiative relating to environmental and energy issues to coincide with the UN climate change conference in Cancun this December. Then, in the new year we will be launching an initiative that aims to demonstrate the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty since many of the large numbers of questions that we've received since the campaign started have been related to the related Lisbon Treaty.

We're also in the process of updating all of our county reports as these have been extremely popular and useful to a large number of people who have visited our website seeking information about the local role EU funding plays.

In relation to the funding behind the talktoeu initiative, you can read the project specifications here.

Thanks again,
Talktoeu

rumour

PanchoVilla wrote: »

It seems to be over a month since anyone from TalktoEU has posted anything on this forum. Is this campaign just another massive waste of European taxpayer's money? I read the website and it just seems to be a platform for the Commission to tell us all how great the EU is and how everything will be fine if we just keep working and keep paying our taxes. It just stinks of propaganda to be honest.

How much money is TalktoEU getting for this campaign? How much money is TalktoEU: John getting for this and does he think he's doing an adequate job? As a taxpayer I believe I have a right to know.

Did any of your questions get answered?

I love this bit.......

In the coming days, we'll be rolling out our latest initiative which will help Irish citizens find out how they can travel and work across the EU with the experience and qualifications they have, and what they need to know to find work in certain industries.
This initiative is a direct response to a large number of queries we've have into the website about rights as Irish citizen and working/living abroad in the EU. Given the economic problems in Ireland, this has been a hot topic.

Presumably the advice for Germany will be

no dogs or Irish

For anything other than cleaning the toilet.

Scofflaw

Lads, you've either got a political point or not, and I'm not seeing one here. I appreciate we haven't had a "Talk To" section in Politics before, but the TalktoEU posters get the same treatment as any other posters, which means that you troll them and you get banned, personalise the debate and you get infracted.

moderately,
Scofflaw

PanchoVilla

rumour wrote: »

Did any of your questions get answered?

I love this bit.......

Presumably the advice for Germany will be

For anything other than cleaning the toilet.

No, not really many questions answered but the link to the tendering process was interesting. Apparently the contract was given to ZOO Digital Group, which is not even an Irish company, in fact it's a British firm with offices in the U.S. The contract was also for €100,000, which seems a bit high for a website. Apparently, www.zoodigital.ie, the website given on the tendering application, doesn't even work. That's a bit strange considering they design websites professionally.

PanchoVilla

Scofflaw wrote: »

Lads, you've either got a political point or not, and I'm not seeing one here. I appreciate we haven't had a "Talk To" section in Politics before, but the TalktoEU posters get the same treatment as any other posters, which means that you troll them and you get banned, personalise the debate and you get infracted.

moderately,
Scofflaw

Sorry, this isn't a personal attack on anyone and I apologize the John if that's the way it came across. It's a question of value for money. The EU paid ZOO media, a non-Irish company, €100,000 for a website about EU projects in Ireland and I'm just wondering if this is value for money. The EU seems to be very good at spending incredible amounts of money on PR projects while calling for cuts to vital services in this country. I'm just wondering if this is little more than a well funded PR project as none of more pressing concerns have been addressed.

Scofflaw

PanchoVilla wrote: »

Sorry, this isn't a personal attack on anyone and I apologize the John if that's the way it came across. It's a question of value for money. The EU paid ZOO media, a non-Irish company, €100,000 for a website about EU projects in Ireland and I'm just wondering if this is value for money. The EU seems to be very good at spending incredible amounts of money on PR projects while calling for cuts to vital services in this country. I'm just wondering if this is little more than a well funded PR project as none of more pressing concerns have been addressed.

This bit is fine:

How much money is TalktoEU getting for this campaign?

and you seem to have answered it yourself - the information is available for EU contracts.

How much money is TalktoEU: John getting for this and does he think he's doing an adequate job?

This bit is not fine - the first bit is too personal, as well as meaningless, and the second part is pointless - what is he expected to say, exactly?

As a "taxpayer" - and given we're not actually net contributors to the EU budget, you're hardly that in any meaningful sense, unless you're British, German, French, Italian, or from some other net contributory Member State - you have the right to know what a public body like the EU has paid, but you don't have the right to ask a private individual or company in receipt of such money to account to you. Virtually everyone in Ireland is in receipt of state or EU subsidy in some form or another, be it child benefit, use of infrastructure, education, CAP, or whatever, either directly or indirectly - and that doesn't give us the right to pry into each other's use of that money.

So there's a line - you're welcome to ask whether a communication project is a good outlay, but you don't get to ask another poster how much his company pays him, because it's none of your business.

moderately,
Scofflaw

PanchoVilla

Scofflaw wrote: »

This bit is not fine - the first bit is too personal, as well as meaningless, and the second part is pointless - what is he expected to say, exactly?

As a "taxpayer" - and given we're not actually net contributors to the EU budget, you're hardly that in any meaningful sense, unless you're British, German, French, Italian, or from some other net contributory Member State - you have the right to know what a public body like the EU has paid, but you don't have the right to ask a private individual or company in receipt of such money to account to you. Virtually everyone in Ireland is in receipt of state or EU subsidy in some form or another, be it child benefit, use of infrastructure, education, CAP, or whatever, either directly or indirectly - and that doesn't give us the right to pry into each other's use of that money.

So there's a line - you're welcome to ask whether a communication project is a good outlay, but you don't get to ask another poster how much his company pays him, because it's none of your business.

moderately,
Scofflaw

Ok, fair enough. Again, I apologize to John for my last comment and will refrain from asking personal questions in the future. I would like him to address the threads which have not been replied to yet, as I believe this whole thing is a bit pointless and a waste of money if we can't get answers to serious concerns regarding the EU. I feel my thread on migrant workers and the value of the euro in this country is particularly important.

Amberman

I'm not sure if John can cover this, but I'd like to know his response to a hint from Prof Kelly that Irish politicians recently decided to bail out the UK/French/German banks at the expense of bankrupting the Irish state.

September marked Ireland’s point of no return in the banking crisis. During that month, €55 billion of bank bonds (held mainly by UK, German, and French banks) matured and were repaid, mostly by borrowing from the European Central Bank.

Until September, Ireland had the legal option of terminating the bank guarantee on the grounds that three of the guaranteed banks had withheld material information about their solvency, in direct breach of the 1971 Central Bank Act. The way would then have been open to pass legislation along the lines of the UK’s Bank Resolution Regime, to turn the roughly €75 billion of outstanding bank debt into shares in those banks, and so end the banking crisis at a stroke.

With the €55 billion repaid, the possibility of resolving the bank crisis by sharing costs with the bondholders is now water under the bridge. Instead of the unpleasant showdown with the European Central Bank that a bank resolution would have entailed, everyone is a winner. Or everyone who matters, at least.

Any comment?

Martin 2

Amberman wrote: »

I'm not sure if John can cover this, but I'd like to know his response to a hint from Prof Kelly that Irish politicians recently decided to bail out the UK/French/German banks at the expense of bankrupting the Irish state.

September marked Ireland’s point of no return in the banking crisis. During that month, €55 billion of bank bonds (held mainly by UK, German, and French banks) matured and were repaid, mostly by borrowing from the European Central Bank.

Until September, Ireland had the legal option of terminating the bank guarantee on the grounds that three of the guaranteed banks had withheld material information about their solvency, in direct breach of the 1971 Central Bank Act. The way would then have been open to pass legislation along the lines of the UK’s Bank Resolution Regime, to turn the roughly €75 billion of outstanding bank debt into shares in those banks, and so end the banking crisis at a stroke.

With the €55 billion repaid, the possibility of resolving the bank crisis by sharing costs with the bondholders is now water under the bridge. Instead of the unpleasant showdown with the European Central Bank that a bank resolution would have entailed, everyone is a winner. Or everyone who matters, at least.

Any comment?

I think it's extrapolating quite a bit to say that Prof. Kelly is hinting that "Irish politicians recently decided to bail out the UK/French/German banks at the expense of bankrupting the Irish state", in fact the only times he used the words bank bailout were in relation to the Irish banks, Anglo and AIB, so if anything, he's saying that the Irish politicians are bailing out Irish banks "at the expense of bankrupting the Irish state". Now much of the Irish bank debt is indeed held by UK, French and German banks but any bailing out they receive is an indirect result of the direct bailout of Irish banks. Let's be realistic here these foreign banks probably dwarf our own banks and Irish bank bonds probably only represent a fraction of their bond portfolios so really the only banks that we can realistically bail out are our own.

However, I believe he is saying that the ECB is concerned about the solvency of French and German lender banks and that an Irish default could lead to much more serious, in value terms, Spanish and Italian government defaults and this in turn could threaten these banks and the stability of the eurozone. The real problem for us is that the Irish government has effectively turned Irish private bank debt into sovereign debt and the government now has a certain responsibility towards this debt(wrt future borrowing & rates) and to the stability of the Euro. The bank guarantee scheme under which this happened was entirely an Irish government policy. In fact it was the policies of the Irish government over the last 10 years which has left us entirely dependent on EU/ECB goodwill and severe government cuts for our economic survival -well done Fianna Fail!

Btw, commissioner Rehn has made a speech today outlining what the EU intends to do to prevent a repeat of similar economic crises so I'd definitely recommend reading that; see link.

Amberman

The bond holders in the Irish banks (the ones who owed the debt) were UK/French/German banks. The Irish banks debts need not have been honoured as there was likely mis representation by the Irish banks, according to Kelly.

You seriously don't get that he's making this point...semantics aside?

Amberman

Thanks for that link Martin, but alas it's just more of the same...surveillance of this and tweaking of that.

If Brussels simply got out of the way and let banks fail who actually have failed, we'd all be better off. The pain might be very severe for a while, but we wouldn't be building up to 2 lost decades in the way that Japan has done.

All this intervention is the problem, not the solution.

PanchoVilla

Amberman wrote: »

Thanks for that link Martin, but alas it's just more of the same...surveillance of this and tweaking of that.

If Brussels simply got out of the way and let banks fail who actually have failed, we'd all be better off. The pain might be very severe for a while, but we wouldn't be building up to 2 lost decades in the way that Japan has done.

All this intervention is the problem, not the solution.

Sure what good are peasants if you can't exploit them?

Amberman

If I was Lord of the Manor, I wouldn't be very comfortable with the mindset of the peasants right now...or the police.

Martin 2

Amberman wrote: »

The bond holders in the Irish banks (the ones who owed the debt) were UK/French/German banks. The Irish banks debts need not have been honoured as there was likely mis representation by the Irish banks, according to Kelly.

You seriously don't get that he's making this point...semantics aside?

No, you seriously don't get the point I'm making!

The article makes a number of points one of which was that many of the bondholders in the Irish banks are UK, German and French banks and nothing in my post suggested otherwise. I also get his point that banks misrepresented the facts and that that could possibly be used as the basis not to provide a bail out. Personally, I can't understand why we guaranteed the bondholders of Anglo, it didn't seem to be a systemic bank to me but I don't know the full story. I would have preferred if we just guaranteed customer deposits and let the bondholders take the pain. I was also making the point that the decision to guarantee Anglo was a decision of the Irish government and not the EU.


My main point is very specific which is that it's a distortion of Prof. Kelly's article to say that he is suggesting that the Irish government is bailing out UK, French and German banks, and by bailout I mean saving from collapse.

So tell me which UK, German or French bank has the Irish government bailed out?

The Irish government has bailed out Anglo-Irish and AIB amongst others, all Irish banks, whose bondholders happen to be British, German, French, Swiss and numerous other nationalities.

I believe you are using Prof Kelly's article as a cat's paw to criticise the EU and EU banks for something that is primarily the fault of the Irish government and Irish banks.

Martin 2

Amberman wrote: »

Thanks for that link Martin, but alas it's just more of the same...surveillance of this and tweaking of that.

If Brussels simply got out of the way and let banks fail who actually have failed, we'd all be better off. The pain might be very severe for a while, but we wouldn't be building up to 2 lost decades in the way that Japan has done.

All this intervention is the problem, not the solution.

My understanding is that it was the Irish government who offered the bank guarantee and who wouldn't let the banks fail not the EU.
Once we had guaranteed the banks their debts effectively became sovereign debt and became a lot more interesting to the EU because defaulting on sovereign debt could have implications for the stability of the eurozone, a zone of several hundred million people.

What we need is more reviews of Irish economic policy from the EU not less, as I said before we could have prevented much of the bubble if we had listened to rather than ignored previous EU warnings on inflationary budgets. If we sign up to a stability pact then we should stick to its requirements and the EU should admonish us should we break the rules and that goes for all members.

Amberman

I think we differ in our definition of bail out. A bail out doesn't necessarily have to be prevention from bankrupcy...it could be to prevent serious injury...but whatever...semantics aside.

Your understanding is correct, Irish politicians did make the decision on the surface of it...but to think that the decision was made in a bubble separate from Brussels is foolish at best. Look at the pressure brought to bear on Iceland when there was even a whiff that they would tell the banks holding the debt in their failed national lenders to swing for it. If you don't think there is tremendous personal pressure placed on peripheral politicians at points like this, I think you misunderstand the process, the influence and the actors.

There are a lot of commentators who believe that the Greeks were bailed out to make the French/German banks whole at the expense of the Greek tax payers. I happen to agree.

I think this is more of the same.

I think there is significant pressure coming from the political centre to put peripheral tax payers on the hook for debts which should be shouldered by large eurozone banks...much to the detriment of the citizens, as Kelly alludes to. The entire thing could have been legitimately done and dusted, according to him by not repaying that 55bn...job done. Ireland back on its feet, albeit not bankrupt but with a damaged reputation.

If Irish politicians had the choice to walk away from Irish banks and let the Eurozone banks take the bond hit, and make Ireland whole, or put the entire mess onto the tax payers, the fact that they chose to put it onto the tax payers and doom the country is a strange choice, which you seem to understand. IT IS A STRANGE CHOICE. Why did they do it? You could argue that they were incompetent...but I think thats a cop out. It doesn't take a huge leap to understand perfectly why they did it.

But if we consider that these bailouts are nothing but collusion between central and peripheral politicians to save bondholders (using the bailing out of state banks as an excuse...but which masks the real goal of bailing out bond holders in the politically powerful center) and to hell with the Irish prolls, then the picture changes significantly to a vision of corporatism....a combination of the state and corporations to exploit the citizens.

Iceland...Greece...Ireland. All similar...centrally powerful politicians foisting the debts of Eurozone banks on the population by any means possible...and in the case of Iceland, branding 300,000 people terrorists in the process!

Whatever it is, its not capitalism and its not democracy. But of one thing I'm glad. At least people all over Europe can now see it for what it is.

dan_d

Iceland is not in the Euro. The stakes (for the euro) were much higher for Ireland.

Our politicians did what they thought was right at the time - I'm not sure it wasn't motivated by a desire to give the impression that Ireland was still open for business rather than a desire to save the economy as such.

But I'm all for the EU looking at our policies and advising (and by advising I mean - telling us what to do). We might learn a few things. They could take a look at the HSE too - given that it's sucking up a massive amount of the public finances. I know it's not in their remit, but...maybe??

Amberman

Yeah, they did do what they thought was right...for someone...but right for who...I think thats my point.

Where are their loyalties? To the European project? The Irish people? The domestic banks? The bondholders? To their own political futures as highly paid eurocrats in Brussels (which if they shafted the bondholders would have been over for certain IMO)?

What pressure was brought to bear to bail out the Irish banks (an d therefore pay off the bond holders?)

You;re right...Iceland wasn't nearly as important as Ireland to the Euro...and look at the incredible pressure brought to bear on them?

Do you think less would have been put on Ireland if one whiff of bond holders being hung out to dry was in the air?

There are conflicting objectives here and many actors. The Irish people got shafted.

What does that tell you?

Corsendonk

Can we rename this the " I got a gripe with EU" Thread? Full of preaching.

Amberman

it deserves to be renamed something...Mr EU isn't very talkative when tough questions are asked.

Corsendonk

Amberman wrote: »

it deserves to be renamed something...Mr EU isn't very talkative when tough questions are asked.

Where they tough questions? I thought you already had your version of the answer.

Amberman

"Were" not "where"

Another poster stepped into his shoes. Still interested in his comments/justification re: saving the banks and shafting the country.

Scofflaw

Amberman wrote: »

"Were" not "where"

Another poster stepped into his shoes. Still interested in his comments/justification re: saving the banks and shafting the country.

The difference between the TalktoEU guys and other posters is that they're actually here to answer factual questions rather than debate politics. That means they're not really there to answer leading questions of the kind you're asking. Complaining that they're not answering a non-factual question is like complaining that the Citizens' Advice Bureau won't explain why the government has chosen to front-load the budget cuts.

moderately,
Scofflaw

Corsendonk

Well I don't know about you but I was always brought up that if you borrowed money you always paid it back. You seem to call it been shafted that we are going to pay back our debts rather than say "I know nothing" or "it wasn't me it was the corrupt bankers and politicians and Europe". Remember it was your spending that drove the developers and banks into a greater frenzy of borrowing and lending. You had to have the capitalist dream.

The banks, politicians or Europe didn't make you buy that house abroad, or the new cars each year, or the new house in the middle of nowhere in the country, or the sun holiday outside Europe that you could brag in work about, the New York shopping breaks or the Winter Skiing holiday. You did!

So you can talk about Bondholders and Europe forcing us to do this and that but at end of the day we have to pay the money back and get our accounts in order and ensure it doesn't happen again.

View

Amberman wrote: »

I think we differ in our definition of bail out. A bail out doesn't necessarily have to be prevention from bankrupcy...it could be to prevent serious injury...but whatever...semantics aside.

Your understanding is correct, Irish politicians did make the decision on the surface of it...but to think that the decision was made in a bubble separate from Brussels is foolish at best.

You must have missed that the politicians from the other EU member states were livid when our government went off and issued the bank guarantees in the middle of the night. They - rightly - believed they would be forced to follow suit.

As it is, the reason trotted out to justify this at the time by our government politicians was that it was necessary to protect the Irish banks. They only offered to extend it to non-Irish banks operating in Ireland after the threat of legal action.

I suspect the decision was largely motivated by economic nationalism in the midst of a panic situation.

Going Forward

PanchoVilla wrote: »

It seems to be over a month since anyone from TalktoEU has posted anything on this forum. Is this campaign just another massive waste of European taxpayer's money?

Yes.

PanchoVilla wrote: »

I read the website and it just seems to be a platform for the Commission to tell us all how great the EU is and how everything will be fine if we just keep working and keep paying our taxes. It just stinks of propaganda to be honest.

I agree. Dont worry, you and I are paying for it.

PanchoVilla wrote: »

How much money is TalktoEU: John getting for this and does he think he's doing an adequate job?

Like MEP's expense payments, the publishing of such costs may not be mandatory.

But dont shoot the messenger. We must accept that John, masquerading as one the European Commission's more silent representatives in Ireland was only acting as a go-between.

Maybe he is a little shy. I said shy.

Scofflaw

Perhaps you should read what has already been posted elsewhere, rather than resurrecting old threads.

OK, I've just found out that the contract under which a private PR company provided the TalktoEU service expired back in June, which might explain the deafening silence.

I'm also told that the contract is up for renewal, but is currently out to tender again, so whether the winner of the new tender continues to provide this facility is an open question, as is when it might be resumed.

moderately irritated,
Scofflaw