Traditional power and energy companies are not investing in green technologies.

Linguistic Follies

A In recent years Brussels has been a fine place to observe the irresistible rise of English as Europe's lingua franca. For native speakers of English who are lazy about learning languages (yes, they exist), Brussels has become an embarrassingly easy place to work or visit. English is increasingly audible and visible in this scruffily charming Belgian city, and frankly rampant in the concrete-and-glass European quarter. Now, however, signs of a backlash are building. This is not based on sentiment, but on chewy points of economic efficiency and political fairness. And in a neat coincidence, Brussels is again a good place to watch the backlash develop. Start in the European district, where to the sound of much grinding of French and German teeth, the expansion of the European Union has left English not just edging ahead of the two other working languages, but in a position of utter dominance. The union now boasts 27 members and 23 official languages, but the result has been the opposite of a new tower of Babel. Only grand meetings boast interpreters. At lower levels, it turns out, when you put officials from Berlin, Bratislava, Bucharest and Budapest in the same room, English is by far the easiest option.

B Is this good for Europe? It feels efficient, but being a native English-speaker also seems to many to confer an unfair advantage. It is far easier to argue a point in your mother tongue. It is also hard work for even the best non-native speakers to understand other non-native versions of English, whereas it is no great strain for the British or Irish to decipher the various accents. Francois Grin, a Swiss economist, argues that Britain enjoys hidden transfers from its neighbours worth billions of euros a year, thanks to the English language. He offers several reasons, starting with spending in Britain on language teaching in schools, which is proportionately lower than in France or Switzerland, say. To add insult to injury, Britain profits from teaching English to foreigners. "Elevating one language to a position of dominance is tantamount to giving a huge handout to the country or countries that use it as a native language," he insists.

C What about the Europe outside the bubble of EU politics? Surely the rise of English as a universal second language is good for business? Perhaps, but even here a backlash is starting, led by linguists with close ties to European institutions and governments. They argue that the rush to learn English can sometimes hurt business by making it harder to find any staff who are willing to master less glamorous European languages. English is all very well for globe-spanning deals, suggests Hugo Baetens Beardsmore, a Belgian academic and adviser on language policy to the European Commission. But across much of the continent, firms do the bulk of their business with their neighbours. Dutch firms need delivery drivers who can speak German to customers, and vice versa. Belgium itself is a country divided between people who speak Dutch (Flemish) and French. A local plumber needs both to find the cheapest suppliers, or to land jobs in nearby France and the Netherlands.

D "English, in effect, blocks the learning of other languages," claims Mr Baetens Beardsmore. Just as the global rise of English makes life easy for idle Britons or Americans, it breeds complacency among those with English as their second language. "People say, 'well, I speak English and I have no need to learn another language.'" He cites research by the European Commission suggesting that this risk can be avoided if school pupils are taught English as a third tongue after something else. A huge government-financed survey of Brussels businesses reveals a dire shortage of candidates who can speak the right local languages (40% of firms have reported losing contracts because of a lack of languages). One result is a very odd labour market. By day, Brussels is more or less bilingual, hostin

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The Genuine Article

A Many business books assume that potential leaders are a blank canvas onto which must be hurled a particular set of habits and characteristics in order to form. the perfect chief executive of the future. Others assume that to become a better boss executives need do no more than ape other corporate high-flyers or draw inspiration from leaders in other walks of life. In this vein, for example, there is the Jack Welch model and the Richard Branson model.

B Military commanders are a favourite—military metaphors still abound in the corporate world—and Napoleon and:Alexander feature frequently. Alexander's record on globalisation, however, is the more appealing in the current business climate. Failure to make it in Moscow and being off shored on St Helena are not to be found on the CVs of potential business leaders of today.

C Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, two British academics, eschew the notion that effective bosses can be constructed piecemeal. Their implicit message is that bosses are born, or at least made before they delve into books on management. Rather than suggesting that high-quality leaders can be constructed from what they dismiss as an "amalgam of traits", they stress that there are "no universal leadership characteristics". The talent that the pair thinks most Vital is "authenticity".

D After 25 years spent observing well-regarded chief executives and good managers further down the ladder, the authors conclude that authors who are true to characteristics they already possess make the best bosses. Their message to the aspiring high-flyer is "be yourself", have a lot of self-knowledge and be comfortable with who you are. Identikit executives hiding behind the latest management fad, ambitious role players, time-servers and office politicians may manage to creep to the top. However, Messrs Jones and Goffee insist that those they seek to lead will soon find them out. Authenticity cannot be faked, they say, and a little eccentricity won't hurt either. The authors approvingly cite Mr Branson's casual style. and endearing difference from the norm that his followers appreciate.

E Displaying other differences, foibles or even shortcomings, they say, adds to the authenticity, and they give examples of the kinds of differences that bosses should exude. When CEO of Unilever, Niall FitzGerald gave free vent to his Irishness; Franz Humer's passion was on display for all to see at Roche; and the BBC revelled in Greg Dyke's "blokeishness". The authors do concede that there are techniques which can improve leadership. Some characteristics work better than others, so play these up. However, they warn against phoney sincerity, and (perhaps surprisingly) they advocate displays of weakness. Mr Dyke had a notoriously bad temper; Alain Levy of PolyGram could be blunt and emotional. Appear human and your leadership will seem more attractive.

F The authors go on to make some fairly obvious points that the truly authentic and self-aware could probably work out for themselves: be conscious of how well you read situations (and try to get better); conform. (but not too much); get close to your underlings (but not too close); and communicate authentically too. Are you better on e-mail or face-to-face? They cite Mr Welch's use of experiences from his boyhood in his communiqués as a way of conveying authenticity. They suggest trying a little humour—which is surely not a good idea if you are not authentically funny.

G It is a shame that the British authors offer many more examples from Europe than they do from America. The reader is left wondering whether revealing eccentricities in a land where conformity is more highly prized (and weaknesses where capitalism is reddest in tooth and claw) would meet with less success. Wal-Mart, Microsoft and other hugely successful American companies have been led by rather unexceptional people with little sense of humour.

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The Fertility Bust

A Fatting populations—the despair of state pension systems—are often regarded with calmness, even a secret satisfaction, by ordinary people. Europeans no Longer need Large families to gather the harvest or to took after parents. They have used their good fortune to have fewer children, thinking this wilt make their tires better. Much of Europe is too crowded as it is. !s this at that is going on? Germans have been agonising about recent European Union estimates suggesting that 30% of German women are, and will remain, childless. The number is a guess: Germany does not collect figures Like this. Even if the share is 25%, as other surveys suggest, it is by far the highest in Europe.

B Germany is something of an oddity in this. In most countries with tow fertility, young women have their first child late, and stop at one. In Germany, women with children often have two or three, but many have none at all. Germany is also odd in experiencing low fertility for such a tong time. Europe is demographically potarised. Countries in the north and west saw fertility fart early, in the 196Os. Recently, they have seen it stabilise or rise back towards replacement [ever (i.e. 2.1 births per woman). Countries in the south and east, on the other hand, saw fertility rates fart much faster, more recently (often to below 1.3, a rate at which the population falls by half every 45 years). Germany combines both. Its fertility rate felt below 2 in 1971. However, it has stayed tow and is stilt only just above 1.3. This challenges the notion that European fertility is likely to stabilise at tolerable Levels. It raises questions about whether the Low birth rates of Italy and Poland, say, realty are, as some have argued, merely temporary.

C The List of explanations for why German fertility has not rebounded is tong. Michael Teitelbaum, a demographer at the Stoan Foundation in New York ticks them off: poor child care; unusually extended higher education; inflexible labour taws; high youth unemployment; and non-economic or cultural factors. One German writer, Gunter Grass, wrote a novel, "Headbirths", in 1982, about Harm and Dōrte Peters, "a model couple" who disport themselves on the beaches of Asia rather than invest time and trouble in bringing up a baby. "They keep a cat", writes Mr Grass, "and stilt have no child." The novel is subtitled "The Germans are dying out". With the exception of this cultural factor, none of these features is peculiar to Germany. If social and economic explanations account for persistent low fertility there, then they may well produce the same persistence elsewhere.

D The reason for hoping otherwise is that the initiat dectine in southern and eastern Europe was drastic, and may be reversibte. In the Mediterranean, demographic decline was associated with freeing young women from the constraints of traditional Catholicism, which encouraged large families. In eastern Europe, it was associated with the collapse in living standards and the ending of pro-birth policies after the fait of communism. In both regions, as such temporary factors fade, fertility rates might, in principle, be expected to rise. Indeed, they may already be stabilising in Italy and Spain. Germany tells you that reversing these trends can be hard. There, and elsewhere, fertility rates did not merely fall; they went below what people said they wanted. In 1979, Eurobarometer asked Europeans how many children they would tike. Almost everywhere, the answer was two: the traditional two-child idea[ persisted even when people were not delivering it. This may have reflected old habits of mind. Or people may reat[y be having fewer children than they claim to want.

E A recent paper suggests how this might come about. If women postpone their first child past their mid-30s, it may be too [ate to have a second even if they want one (the average age of first births in most of Europe is now 30). If everyone does the s