Analysis

Speaking to the European Parliament on Jan. 18, current EU President and Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said the European Union should establish a tax on short-term financial investors, aircraft fuel and shipping in order to create a new source of EU funding.

Were the European Union a federal entity, such a suggestion would make excellent financial and political sense. But the union is not -- so it does not. This is doubly the case considering that the dramatic failure of the EU constitution just six months ago in core EU states France and the Netherlands brutally laid bare the strength of the European anti-federalist impulse. Moreover, the last EU presidency to support the creation of an EU-wide tax system was Belgium, the term of which ran during the second half of 2001. Deep resistance to granting the European Union any sort of tax authority relegated Belgium's term to the ranks of the least successful presidencies in EU history. Should Austria proceed on the same course, it will join this unfortunate club.

That would be unfortunate. Austria has promulgated a number of ideas with a strong chance of securing broad support. The two most important relate to enlargement and energy.

Austria wants the union to engage in a deep discussion over the shape of the European Union's ultimate borders. Enlargement already has proved stressful to the EU member states that joined before 2004. The fact that all the potential countries on the enlargement docket are the poorest on the Continent represents another potential stressor to enlargement. Ultimately, even if Austria does not succeed in establishing final lines on the map, beginning a discussion on the goals -- and end picture -- of the union is essential.

An issue with major ramifications to the union that arose on the Austrian EU presidency's clock was the Russian-Ukrainian natural gas dispute of Jan. 1-3. This quarrel pressed home to EU states how vulnerable they are to political pressure from Moscow. As such, Schuessel is pushing for the union to commence efforts quickly for the establishment of alternate sources of natural gas. Though he is obviously attempting to steer the discussions in the direction of plans that would benefit Austria, the broader topic is both germane and timely.

But there is another issue Schuessel could be forced to deal with, one that Austria -- and any EU president -- would rather avoid completely: violence.

On Jan. 17, 6,000 French dockworkers marched on the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, protesting a bill under discussion that aimed to increase competition at Europe's ports. Protests and work stoppages occurred throughout the union, but in Strasbourg, they turned violent -- both on the part of the protesters and the authorities. The dockworkers shattered dozens of windows at the parliament building before being beaten back with a combination of fire hoses and tear gas.

Putting aside the issue of the parliament agreeing with the dockworkers and voting down the measure by a ratio exceeding 4:1, a much bigger issue is in play.

Protests -- particularly worker protests -- are ubiquitous in France, but they almost never turn violent. Nevertheless, France is a country with a robust history of political violence, which tends to cluster around times of extreme political flux. That France has seen violent protests twice of late -- the other being the recent racial riots -- is worrying enough in and of itself.

Protests against the European Union are also common, particularly during summits. But again, with the exception of some anarchist spasms, they generally do not turn violent.

Stratfor does not engage in normative work; it is our place to analyze and forecast -- not to recommend specific action. But we often wonder about the awareness of political leaders at various levels. France's history of political violence has crossed paths with not just the European Union, but the European Parliament -- the only truly democratic body in the entire EU organizational structure. That strikes us as something that at the very least needs to be discussed, most of all by the current EU president and the European Parliament.

The president's speech occurred a day after the dockworkers were shattering the parliament's windows. But the issue of violence received no mention.