Yesterday’s Daily Mail piece about the“excesses and waste” of the European Parliament is the usual example of EU Hate Mail….

For once, the factual details are justaccurate enough to prevent a meaningful case, but everything about the piece – its context, the comparisons that would make sense of the figures, the spin, the deliberate omissions – contribute to leave the readers with a grossly one-sided impression of what is actually going on. Not that this matters to the Daily Mail – notorious in journalistic circles for its inaccurate reporting – as it has long convinced its readers of this version of events.

James Slack’s reporting and fact-checking (the name isn’t a pun is it James?) is at best shoddy, at very worst deliberately misleading.

In no particular order, a few counter-points…

The European Parliament (EP) cannot decide where it meets – most MEPs would of course love to have just one seat – the deal on Strasbourg was sealed at a Summit in Edinburgh and it’s a matter for unanimity now, as the MEPs quoted in the piece should very well know.

It’s grotesque to claim that the EU in general, and the EP in particular, are ignoring the crisis. The Parliament has passed the first piece of legislation regulating bank bonuses in the immediate aftermath of the banking crisis (it got a mention in the Oscar winning documentary about the crisis, Inside Job for being the only elected assembly in the world to have bothered to do so at the time). The Parliament went on to pass a ‘six-pack’ of legislation on Economic Governance – hundreds of debates have taken place about the crisis with Commission and council constantly called to answer questions about it – only apparently not in the week the Mail’s journalist visited Brussels…

Some of the projects mentioned went ahead because the majority of MEPs voted for them, as a result of a democratic process. They might not be something those UK MEPs wanted to see, but they did take part in the process nonetheless. Indeed, the UK is outvoted extremely rarely in Brussels, and not once on an economic or fiscal matter.

Could the Parliament cost less, and be more efficient? Undoubtedly yes. But let’s flip the question back around: Why aren’t disgruntled British MEPs doing MORE to forge alliances with enough other MEPs to promote what they consider right, and stop what they consider wrong? How much power and influence did Conservative MEPs in particular lose by leaving the EPP, one could ask?

The criticism levelled at the EP’s Eurpal TV channel has some justification, but the figures used by the Mail are – surprise surprise – only part of the picture. The number of direct subscribers is small, probably disappointingly so in the eyes of the Parliament. However, the channel’s indirect traffic is far higher, for example through having programmes embedded in to third party websites. Regardless, a channel of this nature is never going to compete with X-Factor, and nor should it. Like our own BBC, Eurpal TV has a duty to cater to all, not just the switched-off majority.

Lastly, the article notes that “since the enlargement of the EU in 2004 (which increased the number of member states from 15 to 25), staff levels have grown from 3,946 to 6,245 — even though there are only four more MEPs than in 2004.”

The figures mentioned from the New direction study are correct, but the Mail (like the study) took figures of MEPs in July 2004 (732) and not from January 2004 (626). The staff mentioned serve the needs not of the MEPs, but of the EU’s citizens. The 2004 ‘Big Bang’ enlargement increased the population of the EU by over 100 million people, and brought in ten new members states, speaking different languages, with seven of them being former Communist states. It is obvious that a much greater number of officials are needed to service the millions new citizens: translation and interpretation and so on, let alone anything else.

There are many areas where the European Union is weak and could – should – perform far better. Organisations such as Nucleus exist to illustrate these shortcomings and suggest positive and pragmatic alternatives. The likes of this Daily Mail piece serve only to warp the debate, turning people away from discussion, and preventing the UK taking a lead in changing the EU for the better. James Slack and the Daily Mail may profess to despise the EU as it is, but they are doing an awful lot to prevent any positive progress.

Theresa May headed to the Commons yesterday with good news: the radical cleric, Abu Qatada, had been arrested, a deal had been struck with Jordan and his deportation was “imminent” – the only problem was they may have to wait months for it and it was still not entirely certain. She said:

“Deportation might still take time – the proper processes must be followed and the rule of law must take precedence – but today Qatada has been arrested and the deportation process is underway.”

In a burst of pettifogging which didn’t trouble President Sarkozy a fortnight ago, “proper processes” means more waiting and negotiating with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR): simply putting Qatada on a plane was out of the question.

The debate then is polarised between the morality of ‘deport this terrorist now’ and the morality of ‘justice must be done to the letter’. It is a sign of the schizophrenia at the heart of the British character: at once utterly defiant and utterly liberal.

In the Telegraph leader column, Mrs May received “praise for her tenacity”, but held out little hope that Qatada will be gone anytime soon. On the other hand, the Guardian says that “justice rushed can be justice discredited” and that she is doing the “right thing” in attempting to secure more detailed assurances to satisfy the ECHR. Also, Tory modernisers will be happily smug that David Davis’s nemesis, Shami Chakrabati of Liberty, has backed May. However, the man himself has a column in the Times arguing that the ECHR urgently needs reform, suggesting we need new rules to stop Strasbourg hearing cases that should stay in Britain, that the court needs to take on less case work and it must work to restore its reputation in Britain.

So, can reform of the ECHR please the moralists on both sides? All will be revealed soon as this weekend nearly 50 states are descending on Brighton tasked with sorting out this court of a thousand sorrows. Ken Clarke, the justice secretary, will chair the meeting, at which government advisers say they expect most of the 47 members of the Council of Europe to sign up to UK proposals to make sure the court deals with only the most egregious violations of human rights.

Mr Cameron made reform of the reach of the ECHR a priority in January when he gave a speech attacking the way in which it had come to serve as a “small claims court” for cases from across Europe. The prime minister said: “The court should be free to deal with the most serious violations of human rights; it should not be swamped with an endless backlog of cases.” So far 150,000 cases are gathering dust in Strasbourg.

Both Libération and Jyllands-Posten are supportive in the continental media. They back the government’s belief that the court ought to intervene in more serious cases and not intervene in national decisions that don’t require external control. However, Britain needs allies to push through its key proposals. La Stampa, for one, recalls that the defence of human rights is “hindered” by the slowness of the judicial process.

Mr Cameron believes he has the support of a majority of Council members for change. A government official said: “We are confident that we will be able to reach a deal that addresses the issues that the prime minister made in his speech to the Council of Europe in January.”

If he is successful, he can parade an alliance in favour of pragmatic Europeanism. If he fails and his government is forced to wring its hands over Abu Qatada and the other dozen suspects he wants to get rid of, expect more euro-trouble on the backbenches – and renewed calls to pull out.

“The present crisis is irredeemable without major political changes,” Sir Peter Sutherland, ex-chairman of Goldman Sachs International and of BP, told a Federal Trust/Konrad Adenauer Stiftung discussion group last night (Monday). His solution: a new growth strategy, led by Germany, and a fresh drive to elect commissioners, above all the president, by 2014.

Two things struck one about the two-hour discussion: a remarkable degree of consensus, including Andreas Krautscheid of the German Banking Federation (BdB), that austerity alone is a dead-end economically and politically; and that Europe’s citizenry must be given political stakes in the process of recovery to overcome its growing hostility to “an alien superstructure” (Vernon Bogdanor).

We have reported before on how the EU centre-left – the German SPD, French PS, Spanish PSOE and parts of Labour – is talking, here in London, of a common programme to “Europeanise” economic policy and promote growth, jobs and “solidarity” in the form of redistributed wealth. Similar moves are taking place within the EPP (so officially by-passing the Tories). Monday’s meeting heard several calls for both groups – EPP and PES/S&D – to reach out to frightened, anxious, even disgusted citizens with plans to show how Europe can be “their saviour” as Stephen Haseler put it.

But it was Sutherland’s intervention that stole the show.

The ex-commissioner admitted that his ideas might never take flight and he was candid about their vagueness in some respects: notably on how slates of centre-right, centre-left and other pan-European politicians would be chosen as commissioners (perhaps via national primaries). It was taken as read that the next EC president should be elected – whether at the same time as MEPs in 2014 or immediately before or after.

Choosing “someone who speaks for Europe” is fraught in other ways. First, the current candidates talked about – Polish premier Donald Tusk for the EPP, Martin Schulz, German president of the European Parliament, for the PES – are hardly household names (in Schulz’s case not even within his own country). Second, would the successful candidate – merely by being elected – become de facto president of Europe ahead of Herman Van Rompuy who doubles up as head of the European Council and of the eurozone summits? Would s/he speak for the EU-27 (or -30) as well as for the EZ?

There are plenty of other questions, including the obvious one of how to provide more democratic legitimacy for the European Parliament when turnout in elections to it declines in almost direct proportion to its rising co-decision-making powers. And, of course, this discussion needs to get out of the salons of the EU political class and its satraps.

But both elements of it – a pan-European growth strategy and a democratic counterweight to the growing re-nationalisation of politics – are being sustained. Even here in corners of the UK where self-imposed semi-isolation is a recipe for irrelevance and powerlessness.

Open Europe’s Christopher Howarthrevives an old idea whose time might now have come. Given the complexity of diplomatic relations with the capitals and institutions of Europe, would it now be wise to appoint a cabinet minister specifically responsible not only for articulating a serious European policy but to win friends and influence allies in order to support that policy?

Nucleus laments the fact that there are too many cooks in the euro-broth. It destroys the chance to create a clear policy and impedes our efforts to promote the successes and analyse the failures of UK policy. Christopher cites two issues in his Conservative Home piece:

“Firstly it is unclear who is in charge. We have a Europe Minister, David Lidington, who is likeable and capable but not in the Cabinet, and not a part of the Number 10 decision-making circle. In Number 10, there is no one person in control of ‘Europe’; William Hague, George Osborne, Oliver Letwin, Nick Clegg and Ed Llewellyn contend with numerous other issues. Europe can fall through the gaps relegated to a news, diary or party management issue (too often the latter). From outside, the UK’s policy looks unpredictable and momentary. Smaller states can end up feeling that the UK only calls when it wants something, such as a signature on a letter before a summit or a vote on legislation affecting the UK financial services – and the call often comes at the very last minute.

“Secondly, as ever, there’s a lack of vision. We need a substantial, thought out and well-articulated vision of the UK’s place in the EU, based on the realisation that the UK (along with other states) needs a more flexible relationship, but that the UK cannot stop states such as France and Germany if they wish to integrate further.”

Christopher is supporting Andrea Leadsom’s All Party Parliamentary Group on European Reform whose first paper was released recently. This group wants Britain to remain in Europe but seeks to examine the options for reform and repatriation. These ideas need to be tested. However, we also have to deal with the Europe of here and now. The vision of repatriation is essentially an academic exercise in which ideal solutions need to elide with political reality in order to bear fruit. Apart from the likely 2014 revocation of the UK’s opt-in regime for justice and home affairs policy, we will probably see a referendum before any repatriation policy is aired, let alone accepted.

So, if no one with any vision is in charge, wouldn’t it be better to take the latest example of Cameron’s vision thing about Europe, namely the dynamic dozen of Premiers who endorsed the single market letter in February and promote this as a source of alliances in Europe to push for the deepening and widening of the single market? If not, why would our allies be bothered joining us in years of ‘flicking fluff from our navel’ (as the PM used to say) when a rather large crisis remains unsolved?

Christopher hits the nail on the head by writing:

“If you find it difficult to predict the twists and turns of the Coalition’s EU policy, spare a thought for Britain’s potential European allies. Yes, Britain has potential allies, and far more than it realises. We have never been “isolated” there are and have always been a number of states that share some or all of Britain’s basic focus on liberal economics and decentralisation, and in the other states the political elites’ centralising mantra conflicts with electorates who are universally more sceptical.”

Too true. But such allies are looking to Britain to lead the single market and champion structural reforms. To ally with Germany on economic rigour and France on economic growth. To lead in the game that is being played in front of our eyes not the one some might wish to play. Though reform of various egregious policies will always be part of the British case, these should be part of an overarching narrative in which Britain pulls her weight on the continent – today.

“We’re back in full crisis mode,” Rabobank rate strategist Lyn Graham-Taylor told Reuters on Monday as yields on Spanish 10-year bonds rise above 6% for the first time this year. Those on German Bunds hit a record low of 1.628%. For this correspondent, it’s welcome back to a daily diet of doom after a week in Tuscan hills drenched in the perfume of wisteria.

It’s more like the stench of hysteria on the markets. Or reality as @FGoria (the Italian who tweets in his sleep) asks? Wolfgang Münchau, a dedicated doomster, demolishes Spain’s “mission impossible” in the FT. He concludes that a huge bank rescue/downsizing programme, not austerity and structural reforms, is what is required. Without this: a “catastrophic” Spanish withdrawal from the euro or a variant of fiscal union including a “joint eurozone backstop to the financial sector.”

But fear not: Sarkoman is back. Pleading “aidez-moi, aidez la France” as if the two were synonymous, he told around 100,000 supporters on the Place de la Concorde on Sunday that the solution lies in getting the ECB to support growth. Uber meine Leiche (over my dead body), says his political Freundin Angela. The role of the ECB in German eyes, like that of the Bundesbank, is to fulfil its (sole) mission set out in its statutes: ensure price stability (inflation close to but below 2%) over the medium term. Growth will inevitably follow… It’s what Trichet said every day in his 8-year tenure as ECB president.

Sarkozy, who remains on course to lose the presidency on May 6, according to the polls, has disagreed with his fellow Frenchman for the whole of his own crumbling tenure. Desperate to retain it, he wants to change the ECB’s statutes so they resemble more those of the US Fed. These are set out in the Federal Reserve Act as: “to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.” It’s the agenda of any politician, right or left, including Francois Hollande, Sarko’s likely conqueror. It’s also what the UK wanted the Bundesbank to do two decades ago in the run-up to Black Wednesday…

But it’s not the eurozone agenda as Hollande will discover should he win. The politicians – and the markets – are stuck on another form of ECB intervention: either resumed sovereign bond-buying or a fresh injection of cheap funds into the banking system after the earlier €1trn has lost its impetus. Dr Doom himself (Nouriel Roubini) spells out the consequences of further inaction in the Guardian: “Without a much easier monetary policy and a less front-loaded mode of fiscal austerity, the euro will not weaken, external competitiveness will not be restored, and the recession will deepen,” is his take.

In other words: a growth strategy is the right medicine. The European Commission, looking at a record 17m out of work in the zone, is considering a range of options, including full-scale free movement of labour, cuts in employers’ wage costs and “modulated” minimum wages, to promote jobs and growth, says Le Figaro. But, as Jean-Jacques Mével writes, fat chance of that being adopted.

His paper is also skeptical about the prospects for Sarko’s ECB plan being taken on board. The house organ of Sarkozy’s UMP, however, is right to stress that the ECB remains the EU’s sole federal body. But it surely cannot be right that the central bank’s governing council, not the EU’s elected consuls, hold the key to growth.

www.nucleus.uk.net
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