Archive for May, 2009

Can there be a middle ground in public debate about the EU? At the moment, there isn’t. The EU is either all good or all bad, and nuance is a rarity.

Eurosceptics paint a broadstroke picture of general depravity in the European Union. “Brussels” (a word loaded with venom in the anti-EU camp’s lexicon) is dictating YOUR life and YOU don’t have a say.) All MEPs are riding the gravy train, faceless bureaucrats sit at their desks, paid for by taxpayers money, and dream up legislation to make the average EU citizen’s life hell. Comparisons with the Soviet Union are drawn.

The Pro-EU Camp on the other hand occupies the moral high ground. The EU is good because look at what Europe was before it existed. They provide true but worn stock answers to criticism – such as asking where Europe would be without the euro in the current economic crisis. They point to what it has done for travel (cheap flights), conversation (cheap calls), protecting consumer rights, education (exchange programmes). Persistent (even if reasonable) questioners are too quickly shoved into the ‘rightwing nutty eurosceptic’ category.

So both sides are not engaging properly. This means citizens’ concerns, when they do arise, are not being addressed. But it’s the eurosceptics who are profiting. They are filling the void, often with populist half-truths. Now a tinge of Euroscepticism is moving to mainstream European political parties, such as Germany’s centre-right CSU. New parties have sprung up (Libertas) while fringe parties at both ends of the spectrum may make a significant showing in June due to low turnout and a feeling by voters that they are not being listened to.

Being eurocritical
So what do pro-EUers have to do to re-own the European debate? A recent paper by the Bertelsmann foundation reckons EU politicians have to publicly “recognise that there are contradictions in European policies which need to be dealt with frankly on a political level.”  In the paper, It’s hip to be a euro-critic, the authors argue eurosceptics are being “aided and abetted” by centrist governments who “react in a fundamentally defensive manner to fundamental criticism.”

This means debate on European policy has not been raised to a “constructive and more differentiated level.” In addition, it is not just on the right wing that there is anti-EU sentiment, the left end of the spectrum is also producing its own crop of eurosceptics, riled by recent ECJ judgements which they see as giving precedence to the internal market over social values.

The paper calls on politicians to thrash out the contradictions in EU policy making publicly. “That [citizens] do not only benefit from the advantages of such policy making, but sometimes have to endure the disadvantages is usually never mentioned.” This vacuum is “seized upon by populists and critics of Europe.”

So European politicians, is it time to engage differently, and perhaps more thoughtfully, with EU citizens…?

Brussels in end-of-term mode. The European Parliament is in recess. The European Commission is on its way out, its commissioners looking for, or already, in pastures new. So the rumour-rich Belgian capital is even madder with gossip and speculation than usual.

At the moment, the topic de jour is which country will bag the plum jobs in the next commission, due to start in November. German daily Die Welt last week revealed that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is looking to get Christine Lagarde, currently the finance minister, in charge of the heavyweight competition portfolio.

Spain, one of the few left-wing governments that is offering its support to the centre-right Jose Manuel Barroso for a second term in office, is also looking for its pound of flesh. It is said Madrid wants to keep its man about the EU capital – economic and monetary affairs commissioner Joaquin Almunia – in an influential post come autumn as well.

Meanwhile, word is the Germans are panicking. The ruling – and bickering – CDU/SPD government has so far been too split on the issue to agree a possible candidate. But if they wait until after the elections in September to nominate a person, they fear all the top jobs will be gone. Promised away to those quicker off the mark.

Who will be Orban-ed?

There is already speculation about who will get the most laughably powerless portfolio in the next commission. That particular baton is currently being carried by Romanian commissioner Leonard Orban, through no particular fault of his own it must be said, and takes the form of ‘commissioner in charge of multilingualism.’

Irish pundits fear the country might be in line to be Orban-ed this time round, as a punishment for its  voters upsetting the political apple cart over the Lisbon Treaty. Some reckon the government should suggest John Bruton (currently head of the European Commission’s Washington delegation) to be commissioner because then Barroso (yes it’s an assumption but one many governments seem happy to leave unchallenged) will “have to” give him a weighty portfolio and not put him up for commissioner for merry-go-rounds or the like.

Well speculation upon speculation. At least there is an air of uncertainty about these names, which cannot be said of Barroso who remains  set for a second term in office, in a rather short-sighted maintaining of the Brussels status quo.

Upon hearing the news of the fire in the Berlaymont on Monday, one wag remarked that the smoke coming out of the building had turned from black to white – a sign that Jose Manuel Barroso has already now been definitively agreed upon for the job.

Thanks to Anda below who pointed out that it is Leonard Orban and not Viktor Orban.

It seems the big news of the jobs summit in Prague today was not great strategies to get the predicted 8.5  million people who are going to lose their jobs by the end of next year back into the workplace but rather a crass comment by outgoing Czech prime minister Mirek Topolanek – who still, even if only for a few more hours, represents the EU.

Asked by a journalist what advice he would give to people in Europe losing their job, as he will  (he will step down tomorrow after being ousted by a no confidence vote in March), Topolanek replied:

“I am going to lose my post as prime minister, but I won’t be out of a job. If you look for work, you’ll find it. And I think the same applies to everybody.”

Such a thoughtful response. And such a comfort to the unemployed. If they would only stop moping around and find some some new work…

Is it any wonder that more social unrest is predicted because of this financial crisis when politicians are so out of touch with reality?

Lech Walesa - the Nobel Prize laureate has admitted to being paid to attend the Libertas conference

It is a curious flavour that Libertas leader Declan Ganley is bringing to the European stage. A level of politics that leaves a bad taste in the mouth – no matter where one stands on the question of the EU.

For a while last week, my mailbox was filled with an extraordinary exchange of increasingly unpleasant emails between Ganley and Marian Harkin, an Irish MEP running against him in the North West constituency in Ireland.

It concerned where each candidate stands on abortion. A topic that, pre-Ganley, had not been harnessed to the EU elections in Ireland. But which is sensitive in this socially conservative constituency.

It started when Ganley suggested that while Harkin may personally be against abortion, she is sitting with a party that supports abortion policies and advocates the introduction of euthanasia. Harkin, an independent MEP, sits with the Liberal Group in the European Parliament. She says the group allows her to follow her conscience on this issue.

Harkin claims that Ganley’s cohorts on the ground have been saying outright that she is pro-abortion – a charge Ganley’s movement denies. She later challenged him on the abortion stance of Libertas candidates in the Netherlands and in Spain. They bounced back and forth on this for a while. The exchange has stopped now and neither side came out of it looking very well, this not being a topic, once politicised, that is open to nuance.

But, arguably, it is Harkin’s name that has been strongly linked with the abortion question in people’s minds.

Another example springs to mind. Declan Ganley recently labelled Jim Higgins, the Fine Gael MEP in the constituency, “Swimmer Jim,” claiming he voted for a €9.2 million swimming pool for the European Parliament.

Swimmer Jim. It’s a clever name and one that difficult to dislodge in people’s minds. The only problem with the claim is that Higgins never did vote for the pool, plans for which, incidentally, were never really on the table.

Cute moves, I suppose. If you think that sort of mud-slinging is good for politics.

But it does not sit well with someone who claims to be taking on Brussels on the grand themes of accountability, transparency and responsibility.

And as a slight aside. I see that Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza revealed that Lech Walesa was paid for his attendance at the Libertas Convention in Rome on Friday, although the former Solidarity leader did not say how much.

Ganley offered a fawning introduction to the Pole before his surprise appearance at the convention, “childhood hero” and all that sort of stuff. And yet Walesa was paid to come. Odd, I find.

This comes on top of allegations by Sweden’s eurosceptic Junilisten party that Libertas offered money to have it come under the Libertas umbrella and that Ganley himself is bankrolling its branch in Poland by cleverly bypassing local electoral laws.

In addition, Libertas dragged and dragged its feet before telling an Irish ethics committee how its anti-Lisbon treaty referendum campaign was funded. The anti-treaty movement says it is innocent of all allegations.

Be that as it may, I say once again, for a party that bangs on about transparency in Brussels…