Barrosso speaks for no-one. He gave up any right to make ‘state of the union’ type speeches when he resigned from democratic politics to move to Brussels.

The Commision should be stripped of the power of legislative initiative in all areas except the Common Market. It is simply obscene that an undenicratic body like the Commision has the monopoly on all proposals for new or changed EU laws that are superior to any other for 500 million people whose votes are powerless to change or repeal these unwanted laws from Brussels. By stripping the Commision of this power and putting it under the direct control of the EU Council one would go part way to replacing the undemocratic evil of euro-federalism with the successful inter-governmentalism that works in the rest of the world. 

The EU leaders shall not compare EU or themselves with the US of 2010 and its one-term president. EU is no where close where US is now.

US itself it took more than a hundred years, a civil war, and a world war to be formally recognized as a coherent world power.

The years after the Independence were confusing, a tiny confederation made of 13 small colonies with not much economical power, squeezed between the huge colonies of 3 empires (of British, French and Spanish) that occupied most of the North America land. The 1812 war could have ruin the US if British would not had to allocate many resources to counter Napoleon. So US only got a stall as big as a victory inn 1812. Then the civil war almost ruined the whole thing.

It was only after the Americans money supported and the American soldiers descended on the Old continent to save the British and the French soldiers swamped in the trenches of Verdun that made US be acknowledged as a new world power.

US did not had many federal institutions it has today until very recent (Fed, SEC, CDC, FDA, FAA, NASA, etc.).

Except for the wars, thanks God, EU is much like US in it’s first 50 years: it enlarged the scope to “fill the geopolitical space”. With the latest enlargements, that’s pretty much done. EU must wind down now from the enlargement mode.

It will take at least 50 more years to achieve more deeper internal integration and develop the “federal” structures that are so familiar in the US today.

State of the Union? Makes sense, everything big starts small, and I don’t expect that 50 million EU citizens will watch it from the 1st run. But I expect a realistic assessment and a clear plan for the future. No more platitudes and no-subjects for the ordinary EU citizens. Talk about stopping illegal immigration, and solid economic growth, not about global warming and Palestine negotiations (let UN deal with that). Talk about signing EU’s accounts off, about increased transparency and accountability, about how the EU citizens shall utilize the full benefits of their EU citizenship. Talk about reducing bureaucracy across member-states lines.

Talk about providing real value to the EU citizen. Talk about helping EU citizens realize their true potential in this larger economical space, which is much more than “studying abroad” and “free visa travel”. Show you are serving them, this is what true leadership should be about.

Felix: The EU Commission’s monopoly of legislative initiative also applies to the open-ended list of so-called ‘shared competences’. There is plenty of EU law not on your list of exclusive competences, ranging from the Common Agriculture Policy to environmental law to financial regulation (as per today’s main story in the EU Observer) to even areas like taxation that are not even on the open-ended list of shared-competences.

The undemocratic system works just the same in the areas of ‘shared-competence’ as it does in the areas of ‘exclusive competence’. Once the undemocratic Commission’s proposals have been agreed in the EU Council and the EU Parliament (dominated by 2nd-rate foreign politicians who our votes cannot touch, chosen from party lists that insulate them from even their own voters) then national parliaments are obliged to permanently withdraw any conflicting legislation and never legislate in that area again no matter how we vote in any future elections. Therefore so-called ‘shared competence’ is in fact only shared in time; once the EU has acted law, national parliaments may not and the voters are disenfrancished. The result is a steady growth in EU law in these so-called areas of shared competence which then sits forever on the statute books ossifying, having been placed permanently beyond the reach of our votes. 30 years ago this happened to agricultural policy. Today it is happening to financial regulation. Politicians like it because it allows them to legislate now in a way that boxes in the successors and future voters; for them to live beyond the political graveyard. But no voter should like it, because our votes area steadily becoming as ineffective in all areas of so-called shared competence as they have been for 30-years already over agricultural policy.

The US ‘State of the Union’ speech is directly modelled on the Queen’s Speech in Westminster. However the Queen knows she has no democratic mandate, and that the institution of monarchy would topple if she interfered in politics by proposing her own legislation in the Queen’s Speech. Therefore she reads a speech on an auto-cue, whose every word has been written for her by the elected government. Barosso has no more democratic legitimacy than the Queen and no more right to make such speeches on his own initiative than she does. The only difference is that Barosso is not so smart to see that his institution is already toppling because it interferes too much already.

Freeborn John, I think I can give you some credit for saying: “EU Parliament (dominated by 2nd-rate foreign politicians…)”. I think some MEPs have the charisma of a damp rag, like Nigel Farage: I’ve watched some of this speeches and I almost vomited

No wonder he is a “2nd rate politician”, he constantly failed to convince somebody in the UK to elect him as MP ever since 1994! Instead, the English voters decided 3 times to send him to the place he hates the most: Brussels and Strasbourg. Now that is some quality English humor, don’t you think? )

@Miss Alice. You can watch everything that happens in the European Parliament plenary live here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/wps-europarl-internet/frd/live/live-video?language=en or recorded (VoD – selecting by date) here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/wps-europarl-internet/frd/vod/research-by-date?language=en

I hope Barosso’s speech isn’t the usual flowery rubbish of his previous speeches and that he addresses some real issuses that affect the people of Europe. He must rise above placing the blame of increasing levels of eurosceptism at the door of the member states and admit instead that the EU institutions have failed to date, and what he is doing to do about it. He must upset the French and the Germans( unless he wants to run for EC president again….isn’t that why he was a lame duck last term) and tell them the state of affairs as they stand, that they have fought and fought among themselves over dealing with this financial crisis. He must tell them(esp the French) that they are most unbecoming in their constant undermining of the Cathy Ashton and trying to shape her into having french values of ‘visibility’ at crises. The French ‘we hope for a natural disaster so we can show off our t-shirts and branded food parcels like the Americans’ humanitarian policy is something that stinks. The previous Commissioner for Aid(was he Belgian??) was infected with that French virus.

Secondly, Barosso must deal with failings within the EU institutions. Why did they allow Greece, Ireland and Spain to run their economies into such a mess?. Was it because the EPP dominated the EU institutions and the governments of member states? The Germans now regret rewriting the Growth and Stability rules so that they themselves(along with France) wouldn’t be penalised, but this had the effect of giving card blanche to the rogue states. It’s a pity they don’t regret the crisis they helped create by their inaction, incompete information and populist anti anglo-saxon rehetoric. He could also tell France and Germany(whom campaigned in Ireland for the Lisbon Treaty on the grounds it gave the EU a common voice on the international stage) to give up their seats at the UN, the IMF and everywhere else and combine them into a single ‘EU seat’ with this so-called single voice they wanted.

Barosso must also move to deal with an impending and dangerous trend of former EU commissioners joining lobby groups. Now they claim that when a conflict of interest arises, the former EU commissioners will remove themselves from the situtaion. TELL THAT TO MICHAEL O’LEARY of Ryanair, because he has hired our former Finance Minister(spend it while you have it, election bonanzas) to be on the board of ryanair. MOL doesn’t do anything if he doesn’t think he will make money, so it is pretty clear he expects something from Charlie McCreevey. Other former Commissioners have also entered into dubious positions and seem to legitmacy because ‘an ethics board’ approved them. Is these the same committes that approve over-the-top expenses, or is it just an ethics committee that has a narrow defination of conflicts of interest?? Either way, I don’t think these activities of former Commissioners serves the EU citizen.

Barosso could address some of these things, but my bet is he will have a ton of buzz words that some working group says the citizens want to know?

@beata

One thing that any sane person, and anyone not emotionally attached to Russian supremecism can tell you, is that RT’s objectivity is limited to that delivered to them by what amounts to “a modern day political officer”.

They’re so implausible on editorial issues, that it gives me laughs and flashbacks from the days of the Warsaw Pact. You would think they would at least TRY to be less wooden!

This is disgusting. Hear the xenophobe racist claiming he’s fighting reich IV. This is ridiculous, you sound as undemocratic and full of knowledge as the first who will vote for Reich IV parties.

I’m actually only writing to express my joy at Felix’ depiction of Nigel Farage’s irnoic election to Brussels. Way to go, Felix!

Plus, inter-governmentalism did get us there, the fact that most people disagree thus tells us it is these governments that are not democratic enough. Reading most of the comments though, I cannot really get myself to hope that changes.. Rather, I would advocate more spending on education. 30 % of GDP sounds like a lot, but big problems need big answers

Wait, don’t get me wrong on this one, I’d prefer people to be critics of the EU than to become indoctrinated through propaganda. As is the case in the USA, to carry on the comparisons. I mean, if you have to sing the national anthem every day for at least 10 years, starting at age 5/6, it does get into your brains. Plus pictures of Presidents and flags every which way, a country so big 50 % of population has never left it, and egocentric press not focussing on the imperialist, or, with less of a tough language, at least interventionist foreign policy, and you get the kind of cohesion you need. Pretty ugly picture, and yet another bit of irony: quite as exposed to a risk of xenophobia as our blatantly anti-EU British commentators.

PS. final note on propaganda: Of course Sean Murtagh doesn’t know who Barroso is (on stage for 6 years now) but only who Herman van rompuy is: that’s the kind of stuff that happens to you if you listen to UKIP exclusively! Please do take advantage of the gift of undependent press, please!