Well, from early projections it looks as if the Swiss like Romania and Bulgaria enough to let them into their labour market on the same terms as other workers from EU states. I’m not intimately familiar with Swiss politics, so I don’t know how the run up to the vote went, but it’s encouraging to see that the idea of allowing people to move around and work in Europe freely isn’t dead or dying.

An interesting referendum on allowing Bulgarian and Romanian citizens access to the Swiss labour market will be taking place tomorrow. It’s interesting because it will test whether the sentiments expressed in the UK with the recent strikes at the Total oil refinery are more widespread than they might seem (of course, other factors will also weigh in on the vote). Also of note are the potentially widespread consequences of a ‘no’ vote, which would terminate the bilateral treaties between Switzerland and the EU, and might threaten the state’s position in the Schengen Area.

Ho hum, it’ll be interesting to see what happens tomorrow.

I blame Russia. Poland has joined the ranks of European states planning to expand nuclear power (Bulgaria is planning to reopen closed stations, Sweden has just reversed a ban on nuclear, and Britain is committing to new stations in England). This is crazy for reasons that all environmentalists will know. They can’t be brought online in time to solve the energy gap from declining fossil fuels; they create insanely hazardous and difficult to store waste; Uranium is a finite resource; and they are far from being carbon neutral (how are they built, how is fuel transported to them &c.). The problem is, they’re a pre-existing technology, that is seen as “tried and tested”. Why’d anyone want to develop the mix of renewables and energy efficiency when you can just build nuclear?

The problem just now, and the reason I blamed Russia at the start of this post, is that at least two of the recent re-commitments to nuclear aren’t motivated by environmental concern, rather they are motivated by a well founded fear of energy security. In the UK, we might feel as if we’re suffering if energy bills go up as a result of instability in supplies. Try Bulgaria, where gas was cut, in midwinter, by the Russia-Ukraine dispute. Thousands of people simply didn’t have heating.

The temptation to run back to the gleaming nuclear future is just too easy to give into. And I’d venture a guess that more states will envisage that future, so long as Europe is reliant on gas, and thus Russia. In the long term, Azerbaijan can’t meet Europe’s gas demand, so while the Nabucco pipeline will diversify supply, we’re still getting our bulk of gas from Russia. The Nord Stream and South Stream pipelines still leave us beholden to Russia, not to mention the potential for widespread environmental damage from these projects, Nord Stream in particular.

In grasping at nuclear, Bulgaria and Poland have almost got the right answer to energy security, but they miss out environmental concerns completely. Yes, we need to have a more diverse energy supply to avoid reliance on one potentially hostile state, but the only solution which can be sustained in the long term is a renewables mix and reducing our demand.

North America

The Montreal Gazette is reporting that the Greens of Canada are considering using the courts to have their Party leader, Elizabeth May, included in televised debates for Federal elections. This comes at the same time as the Green Party in the US attempts to have presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney treated as a realistic candidate by the media and the two main parties, and also seeks a viable voter demographic.

Europe

Bulgaria is charging ahead to a brilliant atomic future with the construction of a second nuclear power plant in Belene. The project has strong backing from the European Commission, as part of a move to “low carbon” energy systems.

The European Parliament has supported the introduction of a mandatory organic label for produce sold within the Union. The initiative still has to gain support from the Council of Ministers, and it may be worth hiring a marketing agency before putting out any more radio ads. Have a listen.

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The EP has also supported the EC’s plans to promote development of hydrogen cars, but has called for a network of hydrogen filling stations to be established across Europe.

In Sweden, the Green party, Miljöpartiet, is reconsidering its approach to the EU, with the possibility of dropping a section of their manifesto which calls for Sweden’s withdrawal from the Union. This follows from calls by the leader of Vänsterpartiet for green and left party co-operation in the 2010 general election.

There is a possibility that Serbia may be granted EU candidate status in 2009, if it catches war-crimes suspects and continues reforms.