Tag Archives: EU

The Euro and the credit crisis

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Interesting analysis from European Voice today:

Some members of the European Monetary Union (EMU) – Ireland and Greece obviously, and Italy, too – are discovering that what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) adjudges a global recession is cruelly exposing their failure in the past ten years to adjust to the rigours of membership of a currency union…

But the idea that any country will quit the EMU unilaterally, while it remains a hard-currency club, is mindless.

Long before the printing presses could be greased up to produce reams of new lira, drachma or punt notes, or ‘secretly’ asked businesses and financial institutions to re-programme their computers for a new era of monetary independence, the stampede of deposits from the banks to safer havens offshore would have triggered an economic meltdown. Forget it. The mechanics of leaving the single-currency area unilaterally and out of weakness, notably the pain of the transition to a new currency regime, make it all but inconceivable.

We are, however, already witnessing the beginnings of a process through which the bright hopes for the single currency of a decade ago could begin to dim. One expert calls it the “re-nationalisation” of EU financial market regulation…

Gordon ‘beggar thy EU neighbour’ Brown, the UK prime minister, has led the way in implementing a 1930s-style competitive devaluation to back up his “British jobs for British workers” jingoism…

Protectionism is rife and Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for competition, is finding she does not have enough fingers to plug the holes in the dyke that the EU constructed long ago to prevent illicit state aids swamping free competition.

Naturally enough, worth reading in full.

How will the downturn affect the EU?

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Interesting post from new EU/US politics blog Entangled Alliances, taking a look at the fate of European integration during times of recession, worth a look in full:

Economic slowdowns have historically – almost without exception – led to greater protectionism as each country faces demands from its electorate to shield them from the rising storm of global financial turbulence. This can certainly be applied to the history of European integration; the 1970s and 80s saw a halt to further integration, as well as protectionism…

For European integration itself, the 1970s and early 1980s were termed the ‘doldrum years’, as they saw virtually no new advances in integration during this time. Nevertheless, it still saw the accession of the UK, Denmark and Ireland in 1973, followed by Greece in 1981 and Spain and Portugal in 1986. This suggests that, while deeper integration is off the cards, a widening of the Union is a still a possibility.

This therefore raises two questions: firstly, does a nasty economic downturn really preclude deeper integration? And secondly, should we look forward to another enlargement in the next couple of years?

Nice, handy overview for anyone wanting to catch up.

Looking back on the French EU presidency

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My full answers to some questions from a French newspaper for an article due to appear tomorrow, as France’s time at the EU helm draws to a close.

(And no, I never heard another word about the “bloggers panel” that the French Ambassador’s press office approached me about back in the summer, in case you were wondering. Such a panel would, however, be a very good idea for the EU – its web presence and PR strategy remains truly dire… They could learn a thing or two from the likes of us. My consultancy rate is a very reasonable £50 an hour.)

What is your general feeling towards the French presidency of the EU?

To be honest, bar Sarkozy making a big deal about trying (and pretty much failing) to sort out the Georgia crisis back in the summer, I’ve hardly noticed it. Whatever plans France may have had before taking over the presidency (and those were never exactly clear), Georgia and the credit crisis seem to have fairly effectively knocked them off the agenda. As we come to its close, the EU seems no nearer to finding any solutions to the problems we had before the French presidency, and with the ongoing fall-out from the Georgia crisis and the credit crunch now has even more things to worry about than it did before. Not France’s fault, necessarily, but this has been another six months of stagnation.

Still, that’s better than the UK managed during its presidency back in 2005, when Tony Blair seemed to vanish into thin air for six months. At least Sarkozy seemed keen to adopt the EU mantle and has been fairly visible in the European media. But that may just be thanks to his wife…

Do you think Nicolas Sarkozy coped with the crises that struck Europe (Irish refusal to the Lisbon treaty, economical crisis, Georgian crisis)?

He did as well as could be expected – which is not very.

I put a fair bit of blame on Bernard Kouchner for the Irish No in the first place – his comments about how the Irish owed the EU a Yes after all the EU help Ireland has received were widely reported, widely ridiculed (even if he may have had a point), and caused a lot of anger. Now that it looks like Ireland is going to be made to vote again – with a few meaningless concessions and guarantees that are unlikely to do anything to change anyone’s mind – it could well be this French Presidency that ends up getting the blame for Lisbon’s failure, having not really done much to convince anyone that the treaty is a genuinely good thing for Ireland or for Europe as a whole. But then again, the Irish referendum result is something that should be left to Ireland to work out – for Sarkozy or other EU bigwigs to meddle too much is likely to do more harm to the Yes camp’s cause than good.

On Georgia, Sarkozy tried his best, and was fairly high-profile in his various attempts to get an agreement over a ceasefire. But in the end Russia pulled out in her own time having utterly ignored EU concerns, and Sarkozy also failed to get the US behind EU efforts at peacemaking. Hell, not even the whole of the EU was behind Sarkozy on this one, with various national politicians using the crisis as an excuse to prove their international status (such as the UK’s still fairly inexperienced Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Leader of the Opposition David Cameron, both of whom flew out (independently) to be photographed playing at international statesman), while others were undermining Sarkozy thanks to either their dependence on Russian energy (Germany backing Moscow and talking down Georgia’s NATO chances) or old Cold War animosities (Poland in particular making a bid thing of standing up to Russia by signing up to the controversial US missile defence shield a few days after the invasion). As an example of a united EU foreign policy, the Georgia crisis was yet another failure.

On the credit crisis, as far as I can tell the EU seems to have been following Gordon Brown’s lead more than Sarkozy’s. And it’s still far too early to tell if the measures taken are going to have the desired effect in any case.

Which decision satisfied you the most ? Which disappointed you the most?

The attempt to play mediator over Georgia was good, even if the end result was a failure. Nice to see someone try to use the EU presidency in an external context for a change – too often EU presidencies are inward-looking.

As for disappointment, it’s a definite shame that no attempts at genuine reform were even hinted at. No efforts to increase the transparency of the Council, no moves towards the long-overdue reform of the CAP or CFP. And then there’s the unsurprising disappointment that the efforts to ratify the Lisbon Treaty are ongoing despite the Irish No, and that no real effort has been made to understand just why the electorates of three very different EU member states have all seen fit to reject the contitution/Lisbon. Where are the attempts to find out what the people of Europe think about the direction in which the EU seems to be heading? Until we get some sign that the views of the people are valued, the stalemate that the EU’s been stuck in since the failed Treaty of Nice way back in 2000 is only going to continue.

Barroso: Shut the hell up

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European Commission President Jose Manuel BarrosoIf there’s one thing absolutely guaranteed to put back the European Union cause in the UK, it’s having some unelected Brussels bureaucrat mouth off about how the country is “closer than ever before” to joining the single currency. Especially when you use ill-considered phrases like:

“I know that the majority in Britain are still opposed, but there is a period of consideration under way and the people who matter in Britain are currently thinking about it”

You couldn’t get a more prefect example of the kind of language that the eurosceptics can leap on to show the EU as being anti-democratic. The majority are opposed? Never mind! The mysterious “people who matter” will force it through anyway! It’s a conspiracy!

Christ… When is the Commission finally going to learn to conduct itself in a manner more likely to produce some positive reactions? It’s like French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner’s idiotic comments ahead of the Irish Lisbon Treaty referendum all over again.

Do they even have any PR people? Do they have any concept how to communicate a positive message? Hell, even the recent launch of a new communications campaign (see the current Parliament Magazine, p.6 – PDF) failed to attract any attention, Communications Commissioner Margot Wallstrom herself reporting that the event went “almost unnoticed”.*

And even ignoring all that, it’s still far, far too early to say whether Britain would be better able to weather the current economic storm if it were part of the Eurozone. Hell, it’s not as if the Eurozone’s managed to stay clear of recession, is it? It’s not as if there are rising fears of deflation in the Eurozone, coupled with a 7.7% unemployment rate in the region (official UK rate? 5.5%).

Until we see how the Euro and Eurozone copes with this, its first big economic crisis – and especially until we see how it does compared to the pound and other old European currencies – any claims about its stability (or otherwise) are just so much hogwash. Because, let’s face it, if the case for the Euro was already proven then it wouldn’t remain quite so controversial, would it?

So here’s an idea – instead of spouting speculative, cryptic nonsense that’s only going to hurt the cause of European integration by raising yet more suspicions in an already suspicious British public, why doesn’t Barroso just shut the hell up?

Yet another reason to support the Anyone But Barroso campaign.

* I actually think Wallstrom’s done a relatively good job as Communications Commissioner, considering. She’s certainly been making all the right noises on getting the people of Europe involved, was the first Commissioner to launch a blog (and convincing others to do the same), spearheaded the launch of the Debate Europe forum, experimented with EU Tube and has toyed around with all kinds of attempts to raise interest and awareness as part of her post-Constitution Plan D (“for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate”) initiative. That she hasn’t had a huge amount of impact outside the Brussels beltway is, I reckon, more due to entrenched opposition from within the Commission than lack of will on her part. And I’m not just saying that because she says nice things about me, honest.

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The EU after the credit crisis

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Journalists seem to be contacting me almost daily at the moment. Below the fold are my full answers to the following questions from the UK Correspondent of Brazil’s biggest newspaper O Global about the EU’s response to the current financial woes. All largely off the top of my head…

1) Has the financial crisis exposed the EU’s institucional limitations in your opinion?
2) How tempting it will be for eurosceptics to pounce on the keep the pound motto in terms of the so-called sovereignity?
3) In a year where the Lisbon treaty collapsed, is there a need for a lot of soul searching within the EU?
4) What can be done in regards of more integration within states?

If any of my fellow Eurobloggers and/or readers fancy having a bash at answering some or all of these, I’d be intrigued to see the results. The short version of my approach?

This recession is going to be the major test of the idea of the Euro – if it fails that test, it won’t just be the UK that gets cold feet.

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“Under the illusion that the borders are disappearing, they are actually rapidly growing”

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Interesting report over at Kosmopolito on a recent lecture by frequently controversial Slovenian lefty intellectual Slavoj Zizek. For followers of the post-Marxian philosopher, there’s probably not much new – but some of his ideas are well worth pondering at greater length, not least for those of us interested in the future of Europe. As Kosmopolito’s Tanchi notes Zizek as commenting,

“Under the illusion that the borders are disappearing, they are actually rapidly growing.”

These borders need not be the traditional lines on maps – they can be cultural as much as any kind of arbitrary physical boundary. Indeed, Zizek has much pondered the concept of multiculturalism, now gradually falling out of favour, as in this interview from back in August. Anti-multicultural right-wingers may be surprised at just how much they find themselves agreeing with this self-professed communist:

I think here we had enough of this multicultural ideology, which for me at least is often an inverted racism – namely for example when people come here – typically multiculturalists would say: “Oh I want to understand how you are different.” No… We need today codes of discretion, not more understanding. I think we should totally object to this liberal blackmail; we should understand each other – no the world is too complex we can not – I hate people, I don’t want to understand people. I want to have a certain code where I don’t understand your way of life and you don’t understand mine but we still can coexist.

Yet it’s not just a racial or national lack of understanding or rivalry that can be the problem – it can also be political. When the people become alienated from the political class, resentment can arise just as much (if not more so) than when fear or mistrust of “the other” leads to rising ethnic/cultural tensions. And it all stems from a lack of understanding on both sides – often coupled with a patronising tone from one or the other. The same tone that tells us that British National Party supporters join through resentment at lack of opportunity and personal failure is used to explain away the “No” votes to the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands (and subsequently the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland). As Zizek noted three years ago, after the French referendum,

The elite proposed to the people a choice that was effectively no choice at all. People were called to ratify the inevitable. Both the media and the political elite presented the choice as one between knowledge and ignorance, between expertise and ideology…

Patronise the people – even if they deserve it – and they will turn on you. Witness the recent kerfuffle in the UK on reality TV show Strictly Come Dancing, where the most useless contestant was repeatedly kept on by the public vote seemingly just to spite the expert judges.

Perhaps thanks to the weapons of mass destruction that never were, though the trend started long before that (Watergate, perhaps?) the world has become a more cynical, distrustful place – and politicians are among the least trusted of the lot. If a politician tells us that something is the case, we the people tend to believe the precise opposite. If a politician – sitting comfortably in their plush houses on their vast, taxpayer-funded salaries – tells us that they understand our concerns, our first reaction is to snort in derision.

And so the borders go up between the political elites and the people. Turnouts at elections drop year after year. More votes are cast for the winner of Big Brother than in general elections. Party membership tails off as even the most politically engaged lose faith and interest. Resentment grows along with populism, as politicians desperately try to re-engage with the public to the extent that Cabinet ministers feel the need to comment on The X Factor in parliament, or simply follow whatever mindless witch-hunt the tabloid press are up to this week.

If we’re alienated from our national politicians, what hope for those EU level politicians, about whom we know nothing?

And then, of course, there’s the psychological borders rising between the people themselves as opinions and resentments become entrenched and no amount of debate can change minds. Non-geographical borders along the purple America model, where resentment grows, and two ideologically wildly different nations live – literally – side by side in the same geographical territory.

Ignore the obvious race and religion based forms of multiculturalism – what happens when mutually-exclusive political cultures begin to arise within a democratic society?

But this post is already overlong and rambling, so perhaps that’s one for another day…

EU initiative in “overwhelmingly popular” shocker!

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Europeana holding pageThat’d be Europeana, the EU’s digital cultural history portal, whose purpose is “bringing you digitised books, films, paintings, newspapers, sounds and archives from Europe’s greatest collections” (with more info on the development site).

The project went live yesterday – and, as you’ll already know if you’ve clicked the first of those links, attracted so much interest that it immediately broke under the strain of visitors (the holding page on the site currently claiming “10 million visitors an hour”, which by my reckoning would either make it the most popular website launch in history, or be somewhat of an exaggeration…)

I’ve long been of the opinion that the EU’s best bet for getting people on board is to give them things they can actually appreciate – be it movies and film festivals via the little-known MEDIA Plus programme, music festivals or sporting events. To put it cynically, follow the old Roman tradition of giving the people circuses and spectacle to get their support. This should, in theory, be a relatively cost-effective alternative – and as such should be applauded (probably – it’s hard to tell as the site’s down…). The fact that it has apparently been so popular on its first day is a heartening sign – not least because projects with a focus on the arts rarely appear to attract that much attention these days. (But perhaps it’s because of all the porn?)

(The anti-EU alternate version of this post, by the way, is headed “EU so rubbish it can’t even launch a website” and goes on to rant about Brussels bureaucrats wasting our taxes on projects that are a) designed to culturally brainwash us all, and b) wouldn’t be able to survive commercially. There’s a surprisingly large cross-over between anti-EU types and those who argue that there should be no public funding for the arts, you’ll find. Which in my books means that there’s a surprisingly large cross-over between anti-EU types and philistines…)

The state of EU debate

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A subject worth another look every year or so – especially with EU elections looming in 2009 – is what sort of discussion (if any) the European Union is inspiring among its citizens. After all, I remain top Google result for “EU debate” (and second only to the EU’s own Debate Europe forum without the inverted commas), and the nature of political discourse surrounding the EU was one of the reasons I first started blogging about the whole thing. (Largely to slag off some of the nuttier anti-EU types, at first, but I’ve expanded a bit since then…)

I last had a look at EU debate nine months ago, which provides a fairly handy overview of how nothing much has changed during the time I’ve been blogging (Don’t believe me? Here’s a post on the subject from four years ago) – and that followed an intensive series of posts on the possibilities for building a genuine European demos that I did for openDemocracy (that’s the thing that I got shortlisted for that Reuters award for).

As such, for me to do another post on the subject is largely redundant. Thankfully, however, the newly revamped Kosmopolito (at an all new address and with an extra vowel) has had a stab, and brings a different, yet complimentary, take to the whole thing. One point in particular that stands out, however:

It is still cumbersome for non-experts to monitor the EU decision making process. Especially the internet and new online tools have the potential to make it easier to monitor and control EU decision making processes. Even though the europa.eu portal contains most of the information, it needs a serious relaunch. A new EU portal needs to be transparent, with a focus on policy processes that makes it easy to follow documents, combined with some interactive elements.

This cannot be stressed enough. I’m actively interested in the EU. I’ve been blogging about it for five years. I know my way around most of the sources of EU information available online, and I know (roughly) where to start looking to delve deeper into particular subjects. Yet even I still find it difficult to find what I’m looking for sometimes. (Where is an EU equivalent of TheyWorkForYou or The Public Whip? The only thing similar is Brussel Stemt, a Dutch-language site tracking the votes of Dutch MEPs – as far as I’m aware there’s nothing else out there.) The Europa portal has a near impossible task in trying to provide so much information in so many different languages, certainly, but it remains one of the most confusing, unintuitive sites on the web.

One of the major reasons why Euromyths spread so quickly – and also why the Lisbon Treaty has sparked so much opposition – is that the people find it impossible to find out information about the EU for themselves. (As noted the other day, to argue against the classic straight bananas Euromyth necessitates hunting down an obscure EU regulation and then trawling through and attempting to understand seven pages of legal jargon. Far easier just to believe what your newspaper tells you.)

If information is hard to come by or hard to understand, the power of the press and other self-professed experts to influence public opinion is massively increased. When the experts and the press are themselves ill-informed (as most journalists writing about the EU and many national politicians commenting on it sadly are) or biased (as is certainly often the case in the UK), the public is – intentionally or otherwise – going to be misled and misinformed. A misled and misinformed public in turn leads to misinformed debate, and that to an ineffective democracy. (Indeed, it’s arguable that part of the reason the public are so uninterested in the EU is that they’ve been consistently misinformed about just how important it is to their daily lives – if only they knew, claim some eurosceptics, they’d be up in arms.)

I’m afraid I can’t see this situation changing any time soon. EU debates outside the Brussels beltway remain largely non-existent, dominated by lack of solid factual knowledge and understanding (by both sides) and a lack of interest from anyone bar obsessives (as Jon Worth noted is still the case as recently as June, and as I’ve been saying for years). Hell, sometimes even the obsessives aren’t that interested.

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Bananas, euromyths and ridiculous regulations

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BananasAnd so yet more silly EU regulations bite the dust, as a bunch of rules on the physical appearance of fruit and vegetables are set to go the way of the Dodo. The most famous of these, of course, being the infamous “straight banana” euromyth that has been doing the rounds of the UK tabloids for years – “Brussels bureaucrats ban bananas!” and suchlike.

With today’s announcement of the scrapping of lots of similar regulations, of course, some anti-EU types are feeling entirely justified in claiming that anyone who said the straight bananas story was a myth was a liar.

But the bananas one WAS a myth (at least, the original one about straight bananas being banned). Regulation (EC) 2257/94 – a great read, by the way – stated that they must be “free from malformation or abnormal curvature of the fingers”, but failed to specify what this meant, and said nothing about straightness. It also didn’t actually ban anything. There was a fun bit about “the grade, i.e. the measurement, in millimetres, of the thickness of a transverse section of the fruit between the lateral faces and the middle, perpendicularly to the longitudinal axis” though…

Bendy cucumbers, however? They were a bit less keen on those – under regulation (EEC) No 1677/88 they are only allowed a bend of 10mm for every 10cm of length. So had the tabloids gone mental with BRUSSELS BANS CURVY CUCUMBERS! headlines, it would have been rather harder for EU apologists to make a comeback.

Yes, the level of detail in these regulations is silly and unnecessary – of that there can be no doubt. That’s precisely why they’re scrapping them.

Yet still we get the outrage over regulations that will soon no longer exist. How dare the EU see the error of its ways and listen to reason!

It’s just like it was a couple of years ago when another bit of deregulation was announced – despite the EU doing what the anti-EU types want, and scrapping some of its interfering rules, it gets attacked all over again. The EU just can’t win with some people…

Nonetheless – and though I entirely support scrapping silly regulations (who doesn’t?) – standardisation of product qualities is arguably as necessary to a well-functioning market as standardised weights and measures. Otherwise how can consumers in country X be sure that they are getting the same quality and value as those in country Y?

With most EU agricultural produce consumed within the EU itself, it also makes sense to try to harmonise standards EU-wide so that farmers don’t have to mess about trying to ensure that their produce meets 27 different quality standards.

Because, lest we forget, all EU member states had their own food regulations before the “Eurocrats” got involved. The EU’s ones may be too detailed and rather silly, but it’s surely better than trying to cope with umpteen different standards for umpteen different countries?

Or has the UK suddenly become self-sufficient in bananas and oranges, rendering external trade unnecessary?

Ahhh… Robert Kilroy-Silk…

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Robert Kilroy-SilkRemember him? Silver-haired former daytime TV presenter (forced to quit over racist comments) turned ranting political fanatic who was so loopy even UKIP didn’t want him – so bonkers, in fact, that even the anti-EU party he founded himself, Veritas, soon decided that it didn’t want him either.

Believe it or not, he’s still an MEP. And despite being an elected official with a duty to serve his constituents, he’s also being shipped off to Australia to take part in mindless (and stupidly-punctuated) TV programme I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!.

His constituents shouldn’t worry too much about losing his selfless public service in Brussels and Strasbourg, however. He’s hardly known for being a hard-working politician – and still appears to have made no speeches in the parliament since October 2005… (Surely even he’s not that bad?) Though, to be fair, he has been asking an interminable series of written questions, mostly on subjects that have nothing whatsoever to do with the East Midlands, and many of them repetitive rewordings of themselves.

And hell, it’s not like he’s going to be out in the jungle getting tortured for our pleasure for long – the bookies already have him pegged as the most unpopular contestant before it’s even started, so he’s likely to be the very first “celebrity” to be voted off the show.

If only it were that easy to get rid of our politicians, eh?

Pre-US election links and the like worth a look

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- As that all-important US election looms ever closer, EU foreign ministers are meeting today to discuss how to rebuild those battered ties between Europe and America that conventional wisdom sees as having been so badly damaged during the Bush years. Across Europe – hell, across the world – everyone is waiting for Wednesday’s result. But pretty much every prediction is just speculation.

- Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, is Barack Obama (a half-Kenyan, half-American born in Hawaii and raised in Indonesia) just too European? Well, according to (some) Americans, perhaps.

- For Europeans there are a number of signs that Obama may not be quite as sympathetic to this continent as his famous trip here a few months ago might suggest. These are also hardly new concerns – and despite some promising signs that Obama realises the EU’s potential importance, there remains much we don’t know. So why is Barack Obama so popular in Europe?

- Shifting off to random bits and bobs, via Pubic Affairs 2.0, a long-overdue and most welcome addition to the European Parliament website: a handy range of RSS feeds. (Ignore the podcasts for now, though – they don’t seem to be overly regular…)

- The old straight bananas row seems to be back:

A leading supermarket has been forced to ditch a healthy eating campaign at the eleventh hour after discovering its staff could be individually prosecuted under EU regulations.

This, methinks, is worth looking into in more detail, especially as the Commission is set to rethink various fruit and veg regulations later this month.

- Will the credit crisis see the Eurozone expand, rather than contract? It may look attractive at the moment – but is the single currency a sensible option?

Mandelson and EU openness

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Yes, I’ve gone quiet again of late. Sorry. Illness and work have conspired to make me feel like poo.

Still, an interesting tidbit from the whole “did Peter Mandelson get up to anything dodgy with Russian oligarchs?” thing that’s been knocking around for the last week or so, from the invaluable Unspeak:

So as to head off any suggestion of impropriety, the Telegraph has been asking the EU for the records of all Mandelson’s meetings with Deripaska while the former was trade commissioner. The EU’s response is not exactly helpful…

It all comes down to the definition of what is a “document” according to EU regulation 1049/2001. Exciting, eh? Nonetheless, it’s well worth reading the whole thing. This kind of obfuscation and obstructionism isn’t unique to the EU, of course – but by god, Brussels doesn’t do these things by half…

(This sort of thing, you’ll be unsurprised to learn, is the reason that the EU receives so little press coverage – working out precisely what its rules and regulations are is one of the most tedious things imaginable, and even if you do happen to have a journalist or blogger determined enough to manage to track it down before the news cycle has moved on, you’re then stuck with all kinds of petty squabbles over terminology. It’s fairly surprising that any EU news ever gets out, in fact…)

In any case, this all follows rather neatly from recent responses from GrahnLaw, Julien Frisch and Re: Europa to a Statewatch paper suggesting methods to achieve “greater openness, transparency and democracy in the EU” (WARNING – PDF). Worth a look – because I doubt there’s an EU-watcher out there who wouldn’t wish for more of all three.

My plea to the European Union thoughout my five and a half years of trying to blog about it remains the same as it ever was: Please, please stop being so boring and incomprehensible. Pretty please?

The constitutional position of European Commissioners

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Today sees Britain’s new European Commissioner, Baroness Ashton, appear before the European Parliament. You never know – something interesting might crop up. Her answers to the usual written questions can be found here. Not much to get excited about, though the anti-EU crowd will no doubt leap on her first justification for her appointment:

“As Leader of the House of Lords, I steered the Lisbon Treaty through that House.”

Perhaps more interesting is a different constitutional issue – that of whether life peer Ashton can be fully independent in her new role – as raised by Jon Worth. Be warned, this one may go on a bit, and I doubt there’ll be many definite answers…

Two swordsIt is, in short, the age-old problem of whether it’s possible to serve two masters – a dispute that’s been ongoing ever since medieval times when increasingly powerful monarchs began to object to the authority of the Papacy, first properly expressed by Pope Gelasius back in 494 in what has come to be known as two swords theory. How can one swear an oath of allegiance to both Pope and monarch? What happens when they come into dispute? This was the very problem – well, part of a larger, more complex problem – that caused England’s break from Rome back in the reign of Henry VIII, the bitter Investiture Controversy during the time of Pope Gregory VII, and countless other spats down the years.

Currently, European Commissioners have to take an oath (PDF) that includes the following:

“I do solemnly undertake: to be completely independent in the performance of my duties, in the general interest of the Communities; in the performance of these duties, neither to seek nor to take instructions from any government or from any other body”

Is this compatible with Ashton’s oath of allegiance to the Queen, sworn on taking up her seat in the House of Lords? Ashton seems to think it’s not a problem:

“For the term of my mandate as Commissioner I have taken leave of absence from the Lords. This means in practice that, although I retain my title, I would not attend the House of Lords, nor take part in votes, give speeches there, or draw any allowances during the period of my mandate.”

All well and good – as according to the Code of Conduct for European Commissioners (PDF), “Commissioners may hold honorary, unpaid posts in political, cultural, artistic or charitable foundations”. But it doesn’t quite answer the question. Can you hold allegiance to the Queen while being “completely independent”?

As life peers who become MEPs have to give up their peerages (something Ashton claims she is unable to do), surely the same should apply to Commissioners – not least because they are explicitly supposed to be acting for the good of the whole of the EU, not just their respective countries. It’s an ongoing problem for British politicians, almost all of whom – if they end up sent to the Commission – will have taken not just the oath of allegiance, but the far more explicit oath sworn by members of the Privy Council (PDF):

“You will to your uttermost bear Faith and Allegiance to the Queen’s Majesty; and will assist and defend all civil and temporal Jurisdictions, Pre-eminences, and Authorities, granted to Her Majesty and annexed to the Crown by Acts of Parliament, or otherwise, against all Foreign Princes, Persons, Prelates, States, or Potentates.”

It’s hard not to see this as incompatible with the Commissioners’ oath to be independent and act “in the interest of the communities” – so little wonder UKIP’s Nigel Farrage raised the point on Peter Mandelson’s appointment to the Commission four years ago.

The question of where a European Commissioner’s loyalties lie is a vital one – especially with the ongoing moves to reduce their number, so that not all member states will have a Commissioner of their own nationality. Is Ashton’s first allegiance to the Queen, or to the European Union? It’s not hard to see how anti-EU types could start to ask how can she defend Her Majesty’s “temporal Jurisdictions, Pre-eminences, and Authorities” while working for an organisation that pushes for a pooling of national powers. But turn that around – how can pro-EU types not ask how someone who’s taken an oath to defend national powers can work for the good of the Union? It’s not like it would be hard to pass a quick statutory instrument to absolve British Commissioners from their previous oaths for the duration of their terms. So why haven’t we?

Is the Privy Council oath meaningless? And if so, why does that organisation remain part of the governance of Britain? Or is the oath the Commissioners take meaningless? And if so what does this say about the role of the Commission? Where do Commissioners’ loyalties lie – with the EU, or with their home nations? Because if it’s the latter, the Commission is incapable of fulfilling its allotted task.

EU democracy from an unlikely source

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And from the most unlikely of sources – Britain’s leading terrestrial commercial television channel ITV. The self-same ITV that’s been kicking up a fuss over it’s obligation to provide “public service” programmes for the last year or more.

So, following Euronews, EUX.TV and the European Parliament’s own EuroparlTV, we now get a version aimed exclusively at the UK, aiming to promote knowledge and understanding of the EU and MEPs in the run-up to next year’s European Parliament elections: ITV Local’s MyEurope.

It may suffer from the perennial problem of these sorts of attempts to make the EU accessible (namely misguided efforts to target younger audiences via “trendy” music and over-excitable presenters), the promised Video profiles of MEPs are currently missing (at least for London), and their links section fails to mention this place or Fistful under EU blogs while finding time for the long-defunct Voice of Europe and a blog I’ve never heard of with barely any EU coverage, but still – who’d have thought it? A UK-focussed initiative to increase knowledge of EU affairs and encourage participation in EU democracy launched by a commercial organisation that’s previously shown barely a smidgeon of interest in Brussels. Whatever next?

Note to ITV – if you want a hand sorting out some of the niggles and expanding some of the written content, get in touch. I offer competitive rates and I’m fairly certain that a certain Mr Worth may be able to help you and all…

Still, MyEurope – a good initiative. MEPs have long been some of the least well-known of all public servants in the UK, an it’s long overdue that they were made a bit more accessible. Hopefully this should help.