★ Pax-Europa ★

As the European Union becomes stronger — it now has 27 countries, and more have applied for membership — airports in Europe are devoting more space to “EU” arrival lanes at immigration. That means anyone who lives in the EU can speed through pretty quickly.

As I’ve been reporting in Europe, I’ve seen a change from previous visits in how Europeans view America. The fact is, the United States is simply becoming more irrelevant.

The United States is barely mentioned on TV news networks like the BBC, Sky News, Deutsche Welt, or in newspapers, but when it is, it is with condescension. I’m not sure why, but it’s a big change from a few years ago. I can feel it: The United States is losing — or has lost — its mojo in Europe. Fewer people care what we’re doing or why. Fewer people look up to us. Our reputation is as low as the value of a dollar here, and that’s pretty low.

Sunday, BBC London reported on high oil prices and efforts to seek alternative energy.

One commentator said to another: “We’re even behind the United States.”

“Really?” the other commentator lamented, shaking her head.

“Cuban sanctions will be lifted,” EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told reporters after foreign ministers of the 27-nation bloc clinched agreement at a summit dinner in Brussels.

European Union states agreed on Thursday to scrap sanctions against Cuba in a move aimed at encouraging democratic reforms on the Communist island, officials said.

The lifting, agreed despite U.S. calls for the world to remain tough on Havana, will pave the way for a new dialogue with Cuba but come with calls that it address human rights concerns and free political prisoners.

Relations would be reviewed in one year, they said.

Central banks have done a “very good job” of managing liquidity in a coordinated fashion during months of turmoil in credit markets, Lagarde added.

French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said on Friday that the European economy, in general, has been more resilient than expected in the face of the global credit crunch and U.S. slowdown.

Solid growth has been seen recently in Germany and France, Europe’s two largest economies, Lagarde told reporters after a speech to the Executives’ Club of Chicago.

“It’s good to have two powerful engines to drive the process,” she said.

“I’m willing to bet the dollar will weaken against other currencies over the longer term, so I feel no need to hedge those currencies.”

Warren Buffett has fuelled suspicions that he is set to turn his sights on British companies by declaring he is now particularly focused on buying European businesses.

While family-owned companies in mainland Europe are at the top of his list, the investor indicated that his business may also focus on groups whose main operations were in pounds or euros.

This weekend, at the annual general meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, Mr Buffett said he was keen to diversify away from companies whose business was largely in dollars, since he expects the US currency to lose more value in the coming years.

He said: “We are happy to invest in businesses that earn their money in the euro, or in companies that derive their earnings in Germany, or from the sterling in the UK, because I don’t have a feeling that those currencies are going to depreciate in a big way against the dollar”.

At the start of its EU presidency in July, France is set to intensify negotiations on EU defence co-operation with the UK, the bloc’s other main military power.

President George W. Bush on Wednesday signalled a softening of long-standing US resistance to stronger European Union defence capabilities, suggesting for the first time this could help rather than weaken Nato.

The signal came in a speech ahead of Wednesday’s Nato summit in Bucharest, in which Mr Bush said European governments should spend more on defence – but suggested it did not matter whether it was to support Nato or EU operations.

Washington has long seen the EU’s plans to develop independent military capabilities as subtracting from capabilities that should properly lie with Nato.

But in recent months US diplomats have indicated that this suspicion of the European Security and Defence Policy was coming to an end. Victoria Nuland, US ambassador to Nato, has said that the ESDP was now being viewed as complementing rather than supplanting Nato.

The automated systems that allow it to track down an object (the ISS) moving at 27,000km/h, and attach itself with an accuracy of 2cm, are beyond what other space-faring nations have at the moment - including the Russians and the US.

Europe’s sophisticated new space truck, the ATV, has docked with the International Space Station (ISS).
The unmanned vessel carries just under five tonnes of food, water, air, fuel and equipment for the orbiting platform’s three astronauts.
The Automated Transfer Vehicle used its own computerised systems to make the attachment at 1445 GMT.

The European Space Agency’s (Esa) station programme manager, Alan Thirkettle, said it was a great engineering achievement.
He told BBC News: “This is a first in the world - this is a fully automatic spacecraft that docked with the space station, totally under its own control, and that’s never been done before by anybody at all; so from a purely technical point of view, it’s really quite incredible.”

This continues to suggest to us that the ECB is unlikely to feel under pressure to intervene and, with the U.S. unlikely to act, the euro should be able to scale the [$1.60] region

Germany’s Ifo Institute said its March business climate index rose to 104.8 after a reading of 104.1 in February, according to news reports. Markets were expecting a reading near 103.4, according to a survey of economists by Dow Jones Newswires.
Earlier, France’s Insee statistical agency said its French business sentiment index improved slightly, rising to 109 from 107 in February. Markets were expecting a decline to 106.

Despite the US slump, German exports to other countries saw robust growth. Among Germany’s 15 most important export partners, exports to Poland last year registered the highest increase, soaring by 24.3 percent to 36.1 billion euros.

Flagging economic growth in the US and the strong euro have dented German exports to the US, Germany’s biggest export partner outside Europe, the Federal Statistics Office reported this week.

German exports to the United States last year dipped by 5.9 percent to 73.4 billion euros ($115 billion), the country’s federal statistics office revealed this week.

Still, Germany saw overall exports jump in 2007 to 969 billion euros, a surge of 8.5 percent. The BGA expects the rise to continue and increase by another five percent this year to surpass the one trillion euro mark for the first time.