Just in time before the first business failures caused by several-day-long flight losses, the air traffic in Western and Central Europe slowly got off the ground after the complete flight ban. A good opportunity to take stock and to summarise what one can learn from the political crisis caused by a comparatively small volcanic eruption. I would like to leave the presumption of a possible story behind the story of the Icelandic ash cloud to one side and focus on what generally accessible media communicated. It grabs one’s attention that the problem is not the volcanic eruption, but the inability of the European and national authorities to deal with it reasonably.

“We have rarely experienced such a brainless actionism in Europe.” That’s how specialised journalist Jan Brill judged the handling of European and German authorities with the ash cloud of the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull on 19th of April 2010 in ‘Pilot und Flugzeug’. Brill concludes his analysis with the following bitter comment: “The technological degree of development of a society is not recognized by how everyday life is mastered, but how new challenges are handled. The Icelandic ash cloud is a new challenge. The European Union and Germany answered with bureaucracy, instead of required authority, flexibility and initiative. The result fails accordingly. The only ray of hope on the ash horizon could be seen in the confrontation of a majority of the population with borders and lack of practical relevance of problem solving in aviation.”

Unfortunately, Brill does not mention that the behaviour of the authorities quite corresponds to the “precautionary principle”, unanimously adopted in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. This principle grants politicians and bureaucrats a permanent position on the safe side, because any political arbitrariness is permitted, any decision can be justified and any claims for compensation of affected companies can be rejected. The precautionary principle means: Not eliminated doubts about the security of products and actions are not allowed to be used as apology for postponing cost-pregnant renouncement or preventive measures if there is reason to suspect serious environmental or health endangerment. Manufacturers of products or service providers are to prove the safeness of their goods and services prior to market introduction. Until recently, however, this burden of proof was considered impossible by the rules of court and by Karl R. Popper’s science theory. We cannot prove in advance that something is sure but only ensure by a systematic evaluation and documentation of our negative experiences that we do not repeat the same errors.

Nevertheless, the precautionary principle found its way into the Maastricht Treaty, the Lisbon Constitutional Treaty and into the French constitution. The politically unsuspected ‘Commission Attali’,appointed by the French president Nicolas Sarkozy at least appealed for a cancellation of the precautionary principle in their final report of 2008, as the precautionary principle creates juridical insecurity and becomes a major investment and growth obstacle, as long as the question whether and to what extent protection measures may be subject to cost-benefit analysis remains unanswered.

The entitlement of this criticism has already been shown for example in the over-reactions on the swine flu and now even more significant in the European-Ash-Festival. Precaution measures are without a doubt quite meaningful, as long as they seek to avert risks, whose probability of occurrence is to some extent calculable and which therefore are also insurable. However, it is obviously that the precaution principle does not permit any rational handling of badly or incalculable life risks, if it is applied to the letter. The risk and crisis management often has to choose between two evils. The underlying all-or-nothing nihilistic figure of thought behind the precaution principle is, however, not able to discern the lesser evil. Instead it almost invites for playing in populist manner ‘good’ safety interests against ‘bad’ economical interests and therewith ultimately accepting an economic suicide. Only death is really sure (and for the believers eternal life in the other world).

Lessons about Precaution from the Swine Flu Vaccine Fiasco

The French government under the ever-energized President Nicolas Sarkozy became aware at the beginning of the year that it was threatened to sit on more than 90 million doses of Swine flu vaccine, hastily ordered last year to face an allegedly advancing pandemic. Only five out of currently more than 60 million French people got vaccinated to date against the exaggerated threat of a planetary swine flu pandemic. According to estimates by physicians, at the same time more than 20 million French people got immunized against the new flu variant free of charge, by responding to infection with barely perceptible slight flu symptoms. More than one billion euros seemed to be set in the sand. In the German federal states, the situation is similar but not quite as bad as in France. Since the ordered batches are in part not yet produced, France and Germany managed to cancel at least part of their orders. Especially in France the following questions remain unanswered: Why almost 100 million vaccines were ordered – three times more than what would have been necessay for a reasonable coverage of the population? Why did the government invest simultaneously on a vast storage of the controversial flu drug Tamiflu (one third of total world reserves!)? Why were expensive gas masks purchased, but only available for top officials and managers?

I’m not looking for responses like those given by libertarians and conspiracy theorists, whereby the virus itself H1N1 and his propagation is imputed to worldwide machinations of pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Sanofi-Pasteur and Novartis. I restrict myself rather to the official justification of action by the “precautionary principle”. This decision scheme was invented in Germany at the beginning of the 70s and became known worldwide after the 1992 “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro under the following definition: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” (Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration). Subsequently, this principle was introduced into the Maastricht Treaty, the Lisbon Constitutional Treaty and the French Constitution. As Nicolas Sarkozy has himself set upon overrun the Germans with preventive rhetoric, he gave his officers orders to try hard to follow the principle consistently. But just by doing that they have created the problems they are now facing. Because unlimited provision is an absurd idea. Those who constantly concentrate on precaution, forget to live. The precautionary principle is useful only insofar as it is not consistently applied. Healing is much more important than prevention, even though the welfare state’s advertising is mindlessly repeating the opposite.

The above-quoted definition of the “precautionary principle”, namely, leaves open the question of whether preventive measures are also subject to cost-benefit criteria or not. Widespread is the view that cost considerations are not justified when it comes to human life. If this argument was valid, there would be neither life nor accident insurance. Underlining this I do not deny that the monetary evaluation of life issues must remain very restricted. But even non-monetary evaluations of the costs and benefits of measures to prevent hypothetical threats appear all too often more than doubtful, especially when they show that screening is only available at the cost of freedom. There are exceptions like private retirement plans or provisions for maintenance and repair costs, as well as precaution measures against harmful events, whose probability can be realistically estimated. But even in these cases it is often not enough to weigh between the advantages and disadvantages of economically justifiable protection measures. In real life instead, people often have to decide between two evils. Which one is the lesser?

Such decisions, if they are not spontaneously taken from the gut, can in general not be justified without any reference to religious belief. As long as Christianity was prevailing in Europe this was no problem. Later, Christian Humanism was successively replaced by Ecologism, a synthetic mix of knowledge and unfounded beliefs with a clear misanthropic, if not nihilist tendency. No wonder that allegedly preventive actions and investments, justified by the “precautionary principle” more and more  turn out to be economically disastrous.