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Face lift-off
According to the website treatmentabroad.net, almost a quarter of a million Europeans will be seeking surgery abroad by 2010. The most popular procedures are for fertility, cosmetic surgery and weight loss operations. Stands at the recent Health Tourism Show in London included a centre in Barcelona that will carry out heart surgery from €5,600, a clinic in the Czech Republic offers nose reshaping for just under €3,750, including flights and hotel. Other procedures include MRI scans in Norway and IVF in Istanbul. Germany, apparently, is big for breasts: Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich all cheerfully augment for a bargain €3,750. One Portuguese clinic is offering “dental holidays”, priced at €1,000, including dental implants. One Czech company, Beauty in Prague, has just reported that it has had more than 250 overseas bookings for various cosmetic surgery packages in 2008. Indeed, a growing number of overseas clinics are offering incentives to prospective patients including a stay in a five- star hotel, treatment in scenic surroundings, and the chance to go sightseeing while recuperating. However, thanks to the economic downturn, plastic surgery is expected to sag as fewer people flex their plastic. Dr Richard A D’Amico, the president of the plastic surgery society, recently told The New York Times: “We won’t see the bottom until the first quarter of 2009. It’s not a pretty picture”.

NOT REALLY… A BAD THING

While most businesses are wondering whether they’ll survive the global economic downturn, many in Russia’s film industry feel a little belt-tightening would be a good thing. The Russian film business is booming, with a record 106.6 million cinemagoers buying tickets last year, according to Russian Film Business – and €115m of the €440m box-office revenues was generated by 85 local films. A decade ago, 42 local films generated a mere €4.5m. Yet Nikita Trynkin, chief financial officer at First Media, one of the country’s few private film funds, says up to half of the 200 or so projects in the pipeline are not commercially viable and are only being produced out of vanity or because film production is an easy way of laundering money. “These projects will be the first to go [in a recession], making the market more efficient and, hopefully, resulting in increased quality in Russian films,” says Trynkin. Ironically, the downturn looks set to mean more films, as Russia’s stock market has become too volatile for most investors. Meanwhile, the Culture Ministry plans to allocate up to €8.9m in subsidies to producers whose films attract audiences of more than a million and the government has proposed that up to €60m is given to 10 film projects celebrating Russia’s social and ideological goals. All in all, Russia’s state spending on films could increase by €75m in 2009 and 2010.

Why are we here?

FILLING OUR BASKETS
Copenhagen is as famous for its bicycle culture as its laid back attitude to commerce. Entire generations have overslept on a Saturday morning only to find all the shops are closed until Monday. But a new generation of pedal power and entrepreneurism has descended on the city. Thanks to the recent relaxation of licensing laws, designed to enhance the city’s street life, dozens of the city’s familiar ‘cargo’ bikes have been customised into mobile shops. Until recently, the only cargo bikes used for commerce were taxis or postal deliveries. Now they’ve been joined by florists, ice-cream parlours, newsagents, grocers, bakers and fishmongers. This being Denmark, there’s probably a candlemaker or two, but we haven’t spotted any.

Self-confessed coffee nerd Ole Skram has cut out a career as the Espressomanden, the smiling face behind a three-wheel bike-cum- coffee machine, currently in demand for Christmas events. And Fruitbike, launched by two graduates bored with their jobs, plans to have 10 bikes on the road next May. Copenhagen street life looks set to blossom as the city’s authorities place even more emphasis on cycling. In one trial running until the year-end, vehicles are being discouraged from using busy Nørrebrogade. The long-term plan is to create a more liveable, more paved, area.

GROWING GAINS…

Bags of confidence
The start of the first recession for a generation may not be the ideal time to open Europe’s biggest inner-city shopping mall, but the new €1.25bn Westfield London is playing the long game. Not only is it betting that Londoners want 265 more stores spread over 150,000m², a new ‘village’ featuring luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Prada and Dior, 40 more restaurants and cafés, a 14-screen cinema and a fitness centre – it is offering Londoners valet parking for €12,50 and purchase drop-off and collection service for €9,50. Analysts believe that Westfield’s novelty value should attract visitors, if not millions of shoppers, in the run-up to Christmas, but Westfield is already splitting the capital in two. One camp says it’s a good thing because it has created 6000 new jobs and €200m has been spent on the local transport network. Moreover, to secure planning permission, Westfield has had to build a new library and donate €3m towards London’s first 24/7 neighbourhood police service. It’s spending a further €4.5m on tarting up pavements, shop signs and frontages around traffic-clogged Sheperd’s Bush. The other camp says the shopping centre will drain spending from other shops and areas, including the West End, at a dangerous make-or-break time.

Westfield London certainly has deeper pockets than most to ride out the downturn. It’s owned jointly by Australian shopping centre giant Westfield and the property arm of Germany’s Commerzbank. Indeed, the company is readying a new project in east London to open in time for the 2012 Olympics. By then, it hopes, the economy will have improved.

RADAR

ROME’S LATEST STAGE
Pssst, wanna buy a 24% stake in a film studio from Silvio Berlusconi? The Italian government has confirmed it is selling its remaining stake in Rome’s famous Cinecitta complex and is open to offers from foreign companies. Cinecitta was founded by Mussolini in 1937 to promote Italian culture and has hosted epics from Ben Hur to Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. More recently, it has been used by several Berlusconi- produced TV shows including Big Brother. The latest big production to use Cinecitta’s backlot was the BBC and HBO’s TV series Rome, for which a massive ancient Rome set was created. Foreign films recently shot at the studios include Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna. Whoever buys the government’s stake will find themselves in business with film producer Aurelio De Laurentiis, Italian Entertainment Group and Diego Della Valle, the fashion mogul behind footwear brands Tod’s, Hogan and clothing line Fay. Increasingly satirised by filmmakers – memorably in Nanni Moretti’s Il Caimano (The Alligator) – Berlusconi has cooled on anything film-related since returning to power in May. The Rome Film Festival, only two years old, has already been threatened with budget cuts by Berlusconi’s pal Gianni Alemanno, the city’s new mayor.

THE BLUE CARD
The EU has settled on an ingenious scheme to attract skilled staff from the developing world who might have headed to the US, Canada or Australia instead. Welcome to the Blue Card, based on America’s famous Green Card. The fast- track scheme, valid for up to four years, will offer prized candidates speedier work permits and make it easier for their families to join them. According to the EU, highly skilled foreign workers make up 1.7% of migrant workers in the EU, compared with 9.9% in Australia, 7.3% in Canada and 3.2% in the US. However, critics such as Jakob von Weizsäcker, at Brussels-based Bruegel economic policy think tank, point out that the scheme can’t compete with the US because the Blue Card offers access to only one EU state at a time. Immigrants would have to work in one EU state for 18 months before being allowed to move to work in another. Moreover, workers would still have to apply for a new Blue Card there within a month of arrival. The people most in demand in Europe are those working in technology or hospital workers.

DRAWING BOARD

Retaliation time
The Swiss Customs Service estimates that each year up to 40 million counterfeit watches are sold globally, costing the Swiss watch industry more than €470m. Obviously this assumes that every person who pays €5 for a fake Rolex Sea Dweller would happily pay €7,500 for a genuine one if the nervy guy with a fold-up table outside the train station wasn’t there. Nevertheless, watch counterfeiting is so vigorously fought that a Swiss law even requires border authorities to destroy any counterfeit watch they discover. So let’s hope border guards are familiar with Vacheron Constantin’s new ‘fake-proof’ Quai de l’Ile. Developed with Roger Pfund, designer of the Swiss passport and banknotes, the timepiece’s sapphire crystal dials are coated with the same transparent film used on bank notes. The film is printed with micro characters, security inks and UV markings. Hundreds of miniscule crosses and concentric circles form patterns on the film on the movement side of the dial, while the top of the dial is marked with linear rays. What’s more, a sun on the dial changes colour under a UV lamp. For good measure, each watch comes with a Pfund-designed security ‘passport’. Quai de l’Ile watches cost €22,000 to €40,000 and delivery takes 10 weeks. The guy outside the station can get you one now and charges the price of a couple of lattes.

Traffic report

Credit rating
Business trips will be 5% more expensive next year, according to American Express’s 2009 Global Forecast. The credit card company says that the average trip cost for business travellers based in Europe would be €3,082. The increase for domestic trips will be smaller, rising by 2% to €1,020. American Express also says that hotel rates in key US business cities will still rise, despite the economic slowdown. In New York, it predicts rates will increase by up to 9% on 2008. It says that falling local demand for rooms has been replaced by growing international demand, keeping rates high. Amex also predicts that air fares will remain virtually the same in 2009 as in 2008, with business-class fares rising by a maximum of 2%. High demand on flights to Asia and the volatile fuel price are seen as providing upward pressure on fares. but this is countered by the slowing economy and increasing competition on long-haul routes.

NEW COLUMN

POLITICAL SPY
Brigid Grauman snoops around in Brussels’ corridors of power

When I was a little girl in the 1960s, Brussels was a sleepy backwater, a large provincial town. I would wander home from school through the streets without my mother worrying that I might get run over, and if I didn’t want to walk, the rattly tram cost a couple of francs and still bore signs asking people not to spit. Nowadays, Brussels’ trams are slick and silent, and no one spits any more. The capital of Belgium has grown up and become sophisticated. It’s now a city of commuters from its mostly Flemish outskirts, and of political visitors from around the world. Despite Europe’s financial meltdown and the Irish referendum’s torpedoeing of the Lisbon Treaty, which was meant to streamline the running of the EU – they still know that this is where some of the world’s weightiest decisions are taken.

If anything, all the recent political chaos could be said to have stimulated Brussels’ growth as Europe’s liveliest “debating forum”, according to Geert Cami, director of the Brussels think-tank Friends of Europe. “In the past couple of years, the quality of ambassadors sent here has demonstrated an increase in the relevance of Brussels,” he says. “The Russian, Chinese and American ambassadors here are all now high-level diplomats, which was not the case a couple of years ago. The perception of Brussels in other member states has improved, with more and more people wanting to join the debate here and exert influence.”

Boom time in the melting pot

Those who still claim that Brussels is boring are so passé. Over the past few years, the capital of Europe has ripened like an exotic fruit into a multicultural playground. A quarter of the city’s population is foreign, made up of Eurocrats, business people, NGO workers and migrants from North Africa, Turkey, Cambodia, the Congo and elsewhere. You’ll find everything from Polish bakeries and Italian pizzerias to Nordic walkers striding their way past swimmers in the local pools. The cultural options far exceed potential audiences, with at least seven top-level venues offering everything from indie music and avant-garde dance to concerts by the world’s leading orchestras, and the restaurants and cafés are bursting at the seams. For the outside world, it’s a well-kept secret – but now you know.

Meet the normal people

The current European Commission’s five-year term has another eight months to run, although three of its 27 commissioners have jumped ship prematurely. But before they all disappear into their national wildernesses, I wondered which among them best qualify as “normal human beings”, meaning neither too political nor overly patrician. The results of a straw poll of journalists and Commission staff came up with five names: Slovenia’s Janez Potocnik, who deals with science and research and plays volleyball in his spare time; Sweden’s Margot Wallstrom, a commissioner vice president in charge of communications who’s an avid fiction reader and has also been known to help with struggling infants on flights to Strasbourg; Charlie McCreevy, the Irishman in charge of the internal market, for being down to earth and missing meetings because he’s so keen on horse racing; Bulgaria’s Meglena Kuneva, who deals efficiently with consumer affairs while being both chatty and engaged; and Finland’s enlargement commissioner Olli Rhen, who skips dinner parties to stay at home with his family, play football and listen to rock music.

No place for tourists

Why does Brussels have so many restaurant guides but no maps of the EU labyrinth? If we’re talking books explaining the European process, there are plenty of those. But if we’re talking sight-seeing tours of the European quarter, that’s another matter. “The buildings are mostly ugly and functional,” says Reuters’ European policy columnist Paul Taylor, “full of civil servants and bureaucrats. There’s nothing to take visitors to see, apart from the Berlaymonster (the local name for the star-shaped Berlaymont building that’s the headquarters of the EU’s executive) which is at least distinctive.” The project for a Museum of Europe has been in the works for years but hasn’t yet found a permanent home – bureaucracy keeps getting in the way. Journalist Dick Leonard, who has written several books on the EU, tells me that the Council of Ministers distributes for free a pocket-sized map listing 80 or so sites.