The EU elections that we can only lose
Posted by Bruno Waterfield in categories EU on June 4th, 2009
I have a strong feeling that on Sunday night as election results, dominated by low turnout, come into Brussels there will be the old complaint that the European Union simply does not have the voters that it deserves.
EU types see public indifference and hostility to what goes on in elevated bodies such as the European Parliament as communication problem - we simply don’t get it.
“Why, oh why,” is the constant complaint I hear from MEPs and EU officials, “is it that the media and voters do not understand all the good things that we do for them.”
This is why the EU spends so much time trying to communicate (see here for dumb and dumber), to break through our ignorance and to transmit enlightened information about the good works delivered to us by our rulers.
There is an interesting piece, here in the Australian, by Prof. Frank Furedi that unpicks some the underlying politics behind the euro elections and elite unease when people are wheeled onto the EU stage – even as extras.
I have written at some length on this blog about how the EU has become an important form, held in common by all European national administrations, for the conduct of politics in a public free zone.
The more politicians cut themselves off from the public – I chart the institutions and process in some detail here – the less able they are to lead, motivate or inspire publics across Europe.
“The EU’s hostile response to recent referendums in France, the Netherlands and more recently in Ireland, reveals that it is a Union of rulers united in mistrust of the people, not a Union of leaders prepared to make a case and to take their people with them,” I wrote in this essay for the Manifesto Club last year.
“Political structures, both at national and EU level, have increasingly become a machine for transmitting decisions taken by enlightened bodies down to voters. This development comes at a moment when the political classes and establishments across Europe are unable take voters with them.”
The EU, as with some many other governmental structures and practices in Whitehall, is not really made for us and shows our rulers (as we have seen with Westminster MPs) to have the mentality of bureaucrats not political leaders.
As Prof Furedi puts it institutions such as the EU and events such as the European elections tend to confirm “people’s cynicism towards conventional political life”.
“Worse still, the insulation of decision-making directly contributes to the hollowing out of public life, which far too many people see as pointless and irrelevant,” he writes.
“In such circumstances movements that are able to politicise people’s anger and dissatisfaction are able to make significant headway. So it is not surprising that right-wing nationalist parties have succeeded in gaining momentum.”
Apart from the eurosceptic Ukip (whose desire to return to a 1970s little England is not my cup of tea), the political mainstream has essentially campaigned negatively, raising the spectre of a triumph for BNP extremists unless people get out to vote.
Vote for us or else the fascists win – it ain’t much of a pro-European or any other kind of argument.
Many commentators have observed a “paradox” that as the European Parliament is about to be consulted on more legislation (it is not a body that makes laws) under the Lisbon Treaty, yet more voters are uninterested.
“The EU will in all likelihood face an enormous and embarrassing paradox. At the heart of its operations will be a multinational parliament with more powers to affect people’s lives than at any stage in the continent’s post-1945 story of integration. But if elected by only a shrunken minority of citizens, it would represent a sorry state of affairs for those who care about the EU and democracy,” the FT noted last week.
The real paradox, however, as Prof Furedi puts it, “is that the culture of insulated decision-making has created an environment that is hospitable to the growth of political frustration and bitterness”.
Low turnout and gains for nationalists or extremists will inevitably be seen as “our fault” based on the public’s perceived inability to know what is good for them.
It will be used to confirm the “we know best” outlook of our rulers, to reinforce the cynicism and the low expectations in which the public’s capacities are held.
EU has nothing European to offer Ukraine
Posted by Bruno Waterfield in categories EU, EU foreign policy, Migration on May 7th, 2009
European Union diplomats currently describe Ukraine as the biggest foreign policy “challenge” of the day.
Last week, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Radoslaw Sikorski, the German and Polish foreign ministers, wrote to their colleagues to warn of “destabilising effects” of potential developments in Ukraine’s “external relations”.
“Negative developments in Ukraine could have wide ranging consequences,” they wrote.
Ukraine is becoming the main location of a strategic battle between Russian and the EU over the country’s future as an Eastern or Western facing country.
Following the Georgian war last year, the Ukraine has complained that Russia is systematically issuing Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens living in Crimea.
A document recently circulated by German diplomats warns that the Crimea issue could lead to “a serious deterioration of relations” between Russia and Ukraine.
Berlin has suggested “raising the issue of Crimea with Ukraine in a more systematic way” with the goal of “strengthening ‘European’ identity in Crimea, fostering ties with Europe and the West”.
But there is a problem.
The EU is meddling without offering the Ukraine anything. The EU as a more-or-less cynical diplomatic bloc of officialdom is certainly not being a good European in the internationalist sense.
Ukraine is seen as health and safety, stability problem not as country whose peoples might see themselves as European.
Last night, just before the substance-light “Eastern Partnership” summit in Prague on Thurs, the EU retreated from cementing a firm alliance with countries such as Ukraine because of fears of a domestic popular backlash against migration from the east.
The term “European countries”, to refer to the six former Soviet countries, was dropped from draft texts to avoid any hint that it would imply future EU membership and migration rights.
The EU ambassadors also watered down commitments to “visa liberalisation”, allowing people from the region greater work and business access to European countries.
EU visa liberalisation, allowing more Ukrainians, including people from the Crimea, to work in Europe could play a vital role in taking tension out of the region by offering people something new.
Russia offers passports, the EU won’t even ease up on visas.
Germany and the Netherlands forced changes to the summit communiqué because they are running scared of popular opposition to immigration.
It is a political, public argument Europe’s elites are not prepared to have.
Why should Ukraine or its peoples look to the West and Europe when they are regarded as a threat, not as fellow Europeans?
Without giving Ukrainians a real prospect of being European, particularly via the freedoms of travel and work, the EU will end up destabilising the region further.
EU fishing failure, the human cost
Posted by Bruno Waterfield in categories Democracy, EU on April 23rd, 2009
The European Commission has finally admitted that the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy has failed.
After over three decades of mismanagement a completely new fisheries policy is needed – but don’t hold your breath.
Despite, or more accurately because of, the CFP, 88 per cent of European fish stocks are over-fished, compared to 25 per cent elsewhere in the world.
Almost a third – 30 per cent – of Europe’s managed fisheries are “outside safe biological limits, they cannot reproduce at normal because the parenting population is too depleted”, said a Brussels policy paper out on Wednesday.
“Yet in many fisheries we are fishing two or three more times more than what fish stocks can sustain.”
There is a human cost for this policy failure for hundreds of thousands of European fishermen (280,000 of them), the British whitefish fishing fleet (for example) has been cut 60 per cent.
It seems for nothing.
Fishermen and women are faced with a system that treats them as hostiles and has the added downside of not working.
Last July, I spoke to some of the Irish fishermen at the sharp edge of this failure. Fine people, whose tragic story is a truly European one echoed along the coastlines of Scotland, Spain, France and elsewhere.
People like Cliona Conneely (above) have been criminalised for sticking up for themselves and their interests – read more.
As I argued, her expertise and commitment, like that of people in many other walks of life, was overridden by the technocrats and “experts” who impose the “we know best” rules and procedures of officialdom.
But the problem with the CFP is that it is a product of a complex, hidden world of bureaucratic deal-making between EU and national officials. It is not enlightened administration.
Quotas are not set around industry needs, or scientific advice on fish stock conservation, but on trade offs between officials – sometimes on utterly unrelated issues.
Fishing quotas are not allocated on equitable or conservation criteria but on the grounds of contingency for the technocrats, who tell us “they know best” on such complex tans-territorial issues.
Countries like Ireland and the UK, with large coastlines and a fishing industry, lost out as part of their respective late EU membership deals, when civil servants in London and Dublin decided that the industry was worth sacrificing as part of the price to join.
Ireland used to point to its economic growth rates to sustain this argument – which is a brutal, but a valid one, a pity it was not had more openly and publicly at the time (in Britain too).
The CFP is run for the administrative convenience of national and EU officials who use fishing industries as chips in negotiations.
As the Commission has now admitted, this has been a disaster.
Like so much of the EU, the CFP has been more about convenience for officials, inspectors and administrative experts (bean counters) than anything or anyone else.
It is not surprising that European fishermen have become territorial about their waters and sometimes blinded to their industry’s wider interest when the CFP has so often been pitted against them.
I personally have no disagreement with the idea of planning across Europe’s waters, seems like a rational idea to me, but such an economic policy has to be rooted in open, honest, public political debate and democratic consent.
It also has to be about the industry – including, of course, the need to preserve fish stocks – not bureaucratic trade offs, often bringing entirely unrelated side deals on CAP and structural funds into the picture. Read more>>
How dangerous is an anorak?
Posted by Bruno Waterfield in categories Precautionary principle on April 20th, 2009
“It is a miracle that our generation managed to survive into adulthood without legislation like this,” said a European Commission official, rather dryly.
We were chatting next to a display (see above) of rather harmless and normal looking children’s anoraks displayed as just some of the “dangerous products” seized by EU and national consumer safety officials.
“These items of children’s clothing pose a risk of STRANGULATION due to the presence of drawstrings in the hood area,” said the notice.
Yes. The EU last year acted to tackle the menace posed by laces, cords and belts in clothes placed on the market for children under seven years old. Length restrictions also apply for children up to 14 years old.
Apparently, the banned anorak toggles could get tangled or caught leading to accidental strangulation of children.
In risk-averse Europe, where the EU’s precautionary principle holds sway, this means a ban.
As a small child, my mittens or gloves used to be fixed to long bits of elastic running up the sleeves of my toggled anorak to stop them getting lost. Deadly. A miracle I survived that without the regulators to save me.
“You might think that we are going too far, but that’s not right,” said Meglena Kuneva, Bulgaria’s engaging consumer protection commissioner.
Oh yeah?
In Finland, another EU official told me, fixed hoods on any child’s clothing is banned because of the snag and strangulation risk.
Hoods must now be attached to coats or jackets with Velcro or poppers, something else to get lost.
“Yes, you might well say that children have had drawstrings on their hoods for generations but not any more and they will be safer for it,” said the commission SANCO staffer.
In fact – of course – it is the culture of officialdom that has changed and expanded, “better safe than sorry” is now the maxim for regulators and the minimum requirement now expected of parents.
It is no surprise that, in a world where anorak toggles are banned on “elf and safety” grounds, 51 per cent of children aged 7 to 12 years are not allowed to climb a tree without adult supervision.
An ICM poll for Play England last year found that 49 per cent had been stopped from climbing trees altogether because it was considered too dangerous. Perhaps they could fall and their hoods could get caught? After all, you can’t be too safe. Read more>>
MEP second pension list published
Posted by Bruno Waterfield in categories European elections, Secrecy on April 17th, 2009
At least 50 per cent of MEPs will get a publicly funded second pension when they retire.
In the British case, where it is 80 per cent of MEPs, the leaders of all the political parties, Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Ukip are represented.
Fair enough, they are entitled to it and they must be worth it.
Hat tip to Open Europe for publishing the list (which is not exhaustive) – click here.
The European Ombudsman has repeatedly ruled that the names of the MEPs who benefit from the scheme should be published.
In April 2007, MEPs voted to keep secret the list of names of those who are benefitting from the fund.
Just to remind you how this scheme works.
Two thirds of this extra pension is paid for in supplementary payments by the taxpayer.
MEPs pay £1052(1,194 euros) a month into the scheme. That cash is added to with a publicly funded payment of £2104 (2388 euros).
But and it is a big BUT, at present the MEP’s contribution is automatically deducted from his or her office expenses – although, at last, this is about to change.
There are no checks to ensure that it is paid back.
But I am sure that all MEPs play by the rules.
No one would want wish to imply that any of our representatives to the European Parliament play fast and loose with any allowances or benefits.
MEPs, on reaching retirement age and leaving the parliament, can expect an extra pension benefit, on top the same national scheme for Westminster MPs, worth an annual £14,736 for every five year term of office.
An MEP, like the former Conservative Den Dover, who benefits from the perk can net a combined pension of around £35,000 after just 10 years in office.
Crisis? What crisis for MEPs?
Posted by Bruno Waterfield in categories Economic crisis, European elections on April 16th, 2009
It appears that MEPs are going to brave political unpopularity to bailout their second pensions.
The European Parliament’s powerful and secretive “bureau” has been struggling to plug a £106 million black hole in the fund that pays out a second pension perk to MEPs.
This generous pension perk is already two thirds funded by the taxpayer and predictably the public purse will “almost certainly” be raided to make up fund losses caused by the financial crash and dodgy investments.
The identities of the 478 MEPs who get the publicly funded second pension contributions worth over £12 million a year is a closely guarded secret – read more here.
That benefit bill – on top of national pensions, which are for British MEPs the same as Westminster MPs – could now rise by up to GBP10.6 million a year to meet the shortfall.
Up to half the losses are said to stem form investments, via a Luxembourg fund, in schemes linked to the disgraced American financier Bernard Madoff.
This story has been rumbling around for some weeks now. Several officials I have spoken to in this period have denied both the losses and the likelihood of a pension bailout.
A leaked note from the bureau (the body that runs the EU’s assembly’s administration), dated April 3, makes it clear that “parliament will assume its legal responsibility to guarantee the right of members of the Voluntary Pension Scheme to the additional pension”.
Politics for cretins, it is the EU way
Posted by Bruno Waterfield in categories Democracy, European elections on April 9th, 2009
Jesus wept. You just can not make these things up.
In three weeks time various desperate, creepy, touchy feely Brussels communications types (you know who I mean) are hoping to gather “young people” together in European cities to deliver an Isley Brothers-style shout to Europe.
Let us forget for now (suspending disbelief is part of everyday life here in Brussels), that the message already came through loud and clear from France, the Netherlands and Ireland.
Those “shouts”, popular votes, went unheard. But, hey, never mind. That was real politics this is just advertising puff for the European elections.
The “shout” is part of an MTV campaign (three spots, cost of EUR2.3 million) to “encourage young people throughout the European Union to share their feelings, ideas and concerns”.
The ads “feature young people hanging loudspeakers in London, Paris and Rome and aim to encourage young people throughout the EU to express themselves, to make their voices heard”.
“Young people will then be encouraged to make themselves heard politically, by taking part in the European Parliament elections in June.”
Appropriately enough, there is activity planned on Twitter too.
All this excitement comes to a shattering, juddering climax on April 30 with an “EU-wide ‘Can you hear me’ sound wave“.
“Join us for the biggest shout in Europe. Ever. A roaring soundwave that can be heard from the North of Finland to the South of Spain.”
“Yes, that big. Yes, that loud.”
“Do it yourself or with friends – on the street, in town, at home, from a window or on the internet through a webcam.”
“We will film the event for a TV special that will be shown across Europe on MTV.”
Better keep your ears peeled or you might miss it.
Needless to say, behind all the breathless, gushing PR prose is the cynical appreciation that “young people” must be bribed to secure their involvement in such a dreadful and moronic exercise.
“Make your voice heard now and you could be shouting at a top MTV gig somewhere in Europe,” says the website.
“You and a friend could be off to a top MTV event. Capture or record a shout telling us how you feel about being part of Europe; your experiences, travels, culture – whatever you want to shout about! Get your mates involved or make it more personal.”
This is all typically patronising and commitment-lite, an indication of the low expectations and true contempt in which “young people” and the rest of us are held.
It is European politics for cretins. “Whatever you want to shout about”, it doesn’t really matter what, it can be a swivel-eyed Eurosceptic rant, it can even be your holiday snaps, just as long as you do and as long as you do it with the EU for MTV.
It is a circle jerk. This is the kind of mindless activity that really can make you blind.
People, young or old, should not vote in the European elections unless they think they are being offered a manifesto that directly addresses politics – for the EU, to reform it or against it.
It is better not to vote than to perpetuate a ghastly sham. If low turnout reflects a lack of political engagement with the EU project then so be it.
It is certainly better to do nothing than to indulge the creepy, vampire-like proclivities of the political living dead in their restless search for youthful affirmation via stunts like this.
In terms of how the EU functions and its practices, you can shout all you like. Changing things requires politics.
How much politics, outside the empty, exhausted posturing of mainstream national parties or little England-type nationalists, will there be on offer in the European elections?
Mindless stunts and exhortations to vote (it’s your choice) are no susbstitute for politics and illustrate how little real choice there is.
The EU, and most public authority at the national level for that matter, leans heavily on structures that lift policy to a technocratic realm above politics and maintain a public free zone for officialdom and diplomats.
Time for politics for a change. To quote the great Gil Scott-Heron:
“The revolution will not go better with Coke. The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath. The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat. The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised. The revolution will be no re-run brothers. The revolution will be live.”
You won’t find the revolution on MTV, especially when it comes from the EU communications people.
The cowardly EU
Posted by Bruno Waterfield in categories EU, Economic crisis on March 23rd, 2009
I am back from my holidays and a blogging hiatus to find that EU finds it easier to rally behind a mindless G20 Obama love-in on fiscal and bank bailouts than it is to hold a summit on preserving jobs.
EU heads of state and government have decided to run away from cancel a Prague meeting, originally scheduled for May 7, which aimed to bring together national leaders with businesses and trade unions.
Only last week, the European Commission President José Manuel Barroso was insisting that it would be a “fundamental error” not to hold the summit.
“Our public opinion would not understand, it would be unacceptable that EU leaders meet at the highest level and that they discuss the problems of the banks and not social problems. That they discuss the problems of the financial sector and not that of employment. That would be really unacceptable,” he said on Mar 18.
Oh well.
Nicolas Sarkozy was the first to beat the retreat at an EU summit last Thurs night as back home over a million French citizens took to the streets in demonstrations against his administration, the most unpopular in over 50 years of the French Fifth Republic.
The French President was insistent that he would rather not face the music at a summit that was bound to become a Mayday focus for international protests and growing social discontent.
“Mr Sarkozy was most emphatic that he did not wish to provide French people or trade unions with another opportunity to protest,” said one official close to talks.
Update: Over on main EUobserver news, Honor Mahony quotes a Czech official, who says: “A number of countries felt it would raise too optimistic expectations before the European elections.”
Is it unreasonable to expect EU leaders to do something about unemployment?
More hypocrisy in the European Parliament
Posted by Bruno Waterfield in categories European elections, Secrecy on March 11th, 2009
Euro-MPs have commendably voted for new rules making it easier to get legislation related European Union documents into public view.
But, inevitably, sadly, predictably and hypocritically the same MEPs have decided that the same openness should not apply to how they spend their expenses.
This is a great pity as the proposals, drafted by Michael Cashman, are a major improvement on the current secrecy status quo.
The hypocrisy – to make sure Euro-MP expense accounting is exempt – is already being used by opponents of greater access to documents, especially the European Commission to discredit openness.
It was the EPP – that’s the European Parliament’s largest centre right grouping, including the Tories – that tabled the amendments to ensure that MEPs’ financial accounting could remain top secret.
The PES – the second largest, Socialist, grouping, including Labour – agreed, partly as a trade off to preserve the proposals. The Liberals in Alde voted against, to their credit.
Tory and Labour Euro-MPs decided that their expenses would remain exempt from public interest requests under existing rights and privileges contained in the “Members’ Statute”.
Article Six of this EU legislation states “(1) Members shall be entitled to inspect any files held by Parliament. (2) Paragraph 1 shall not apply to personal files and accounts.”
This is the catch all privilege that is currently used to hush up wrong doing by MEPs by preventing any scrutiny of how they spend their allowances.
Here is the amendment, number 115, from Hartmut Nassauer on behalf of the EPP:
“The definition of an overriding public interest in disclosure shall take due account of the protection of the political activity and independence of Members of the European Parliament, in particular with regard to Article 6(2) of the Members’ Statute.”
“Justification. With a view to protect the political activity and the independence of members, the Members’ Statute provides that personal files and accounts of a Member of the European Parliament are not accessible by other Members of the European Parliament. As the Members’ Statute is directly applicable Community law, other legal acts must respect its provisions and cannot allow circumventions. Therefore it seems appropriate to include the specific nature of these documents in the definition of an overriding interest.”
This amendment means that accounts or financial disciplinary measures, such as demands for MEPs to pay back money back, will not be counted as documents even though such information would be on the basis of the parliament’s rules and procedures.
Singalonga with the eurocrats
Posted by Bruno Waterfield in categories Brussels life, Economic crisis on February 20th, 2009
As the rest of us feel the cold winds of the worst economic crisis in living memory, the cosy, bubble-wrapped existence of the eurocrat continues blissfully unaltered.
The EU is not , as far I know, planning any redundancies or wage freezes, so life trundles on here for the salaried European civil servants.
Staff in the European Parliament might get a new “aquagym and chill out rooms” worth over £8 million – see here.
But I have been really charmed by this little item in En Direct, the European Commission’s weekly internal newsletter.
The announcements section has a treat in store for officials working, on the financial crisis amongst other things, in the European Commission’s Beaulieu buildings.
“In the context of the Well Being policy, DG ADMIN has placed in the Beaulieu area a digital piano. To inaugurate the piano, from 16th to 20th February, live music in BU29 Cafeteria between 13h and 1430h performed by colleagues who are amateur musicians.”
Just the mere idea of all those DG ECFIN, and other, officials being gathered around the old Joanna for a good sing song and knees up makes the heart glow.
