European Movement UK

Who is Nigel Farage?

2010-02-25T17:13:02Z

A UKIP MEP disgraces himself and embarrasses a nation in his attack on the president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, yesterday. His apologists try to claim that the European Parliament would benefit from being a bit less consensual and a bit more controversial, but there is a world of difference between intelligent criticism and vulgar abuse.

(You can find the outburst here http://bit.ly/9aGvPm, if you really must.)

What was particularly absurd about the occasion was that President Van Rompuy had just finished giving an explanation of precisely who he is and what he does. You can read it here: http://bit.ly/c7MrZf

Mr Van Rompuy explains how the roles of the presidents of the different institutions will fit together, and what steps need to be taken to make it work.

The EU paved my way to Douala

2010-02-16T15:17:18Z

By Davide Marchesi

Towards the end of 2009 I happened to be in Cameroon for a few months. One of the first things I learnt during my stay is that transport is a real issue in Cameroon. There’s a local joke about drivers which says: “When you see a Cameroonian driving straight, you’ll know that he’s drunk”. In fact, the roads are usually so bad that people have to drive zigzag in order to avoid the worst holes and damage car engine. During the rainy season there are puddles so huge that people call them “lakes”. In the smaller cities most roads are not paved and, as a consequence, they become very muddy during the rainy season and incredibly dusty during the dry season.

I was based in Kumba, a small city in the Southwest region. I arrived in Cameroon in early September, with apparently perfect timing, since the works on the Muea-Kumba road had just been completed. The 63km-long road connects Kumba, the most important economic centre in the Southwest region, with the major route to Douala, the economic capital of the country, and Yaoundè, the administrative capital. Kumba is the chief town of the highly agrarian Meme division: it is surrounded by cocoa farms and villages populated mostly by farmers and is the heart of cocoa production in the Southwest region. The new road is thus fundamental for the efficient and fast transport of goods which are sold in the big cities and exported in the neighbouring countries, like Nigeria. I could experience in person the benefits brought in by the Muea – Kumba road which makes it possible to cover in a few hours distances which used to take an half a day’s journey. This road has also made the work of the NGO I was working for (Global Conscience Initiative, a reference point for human rights advocacy in Southwest Cameroon) much easier, since its two offices are both located on this route, in Kumba and in Buea, two of the main towns in the area.

By now you are probably wondering why an article about a road in the middle of nowhere Cameroon appears on the European Movement’s blog. Well, at the sides of the road you could see signs with updates on the status of the work and both the Cameroonian and the EU flags on them. When, on September 29^th 2009, the Cameroonian Prime Minister, Philomen Yang, inaugurated the 7-metre-wide Muea-Kumba Highway, he expressed his gratitude to the European Union and its decisive support for this project. The EU, in fact, contributed with 50% of the necessary funds to complete the works, according to the Delegation of the European Union to Cameroon website. The road’s total cost of 32 billion FCFA (about 50 million euro) was partially financed by the Cameroonian government and partially by the European Union within the projects of co-operation on infrastructural development. The EU ambassador to Cameroon, Javier Puyol, manifested his satisfaction with the works, started in March 2007 and finished more than two years later. In his words, reported by AllAfrica.com, he announced that studies on continuing the road through Kumba up to Mamfe will start in the next few months. Entering Kumba, in fact, the mounting dust announces the proximity of the end of paved road and drivers need to start caring about hollows and gaps again. Hopefully, in the next months, the Cameroonian government and the European Union will put their joint efforts into further improving the transport situation in Southwest Cameroon.

Not nanny state, just nanny

2010-02-15T14:52:22Z

The Daily Mail runs a story http://bit.ly/bWzznV and an editorial http://bit.ly/bg3gWb today complaining about the excessive power of the EU in regulating the sale of baby milk. Boots, one of the major retailers of infant formula in the UK, does not offer loyalty points to its customers for the purchase of baby milk, whereas it does for almost everything else that it sells. The Daily Mail editorialises that this is a “craven decision” by the retailer and an “insensitive example of dystopian EU meddling”.

The background is a general concern in medicine and public health that babies should be breastfed if possible and formula-fed only if necessary. The commercial promotion of infant formula is often held to militate against the best interests of babies, and it is therefore strictly controlled.

The World Health Organisation http://bit.ly/dBBBIe adopted the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes http://bit.ly/I1H1e in 1981, and its terms are reflected in the European Commission Directive 2006/141/EC http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexU… of 22 December 2006 and, in England, The Infant Formula and Follow-on Formula (England) Regulations 2007 http://bit.ly/cLbXQ3. (There was an earlier regulation on the same subject in the UK in 1995.)

The relevant extract from the European directive reads “There shall be no point-of-sale advertising, giving of samples or any other promotional device to induce sales of infant formula directly to the consumer at the retail level, such as special displays, discount coupons, premiums, special sales, loss-leaders and tie-in sales.” Loyalty points fall within this definition and so are not allowed.

So, the “craven decision” by the retailer is in fact a decision to obey the law. Is it really correct for a national newspaper to expect major, respected companies to act illegally? What kind of respect does this show for the rule of law?

Secondly, why demand that anybody breaks this law in particular? Here we have an example of the European Union acting to ensure a level playing field for competition within the single market and protecting the interests of the consumer. The WHO code is not binding; the actions of the EU are required in order to turn it into law.

Let’s consider what would happen if the tables were reversed, if the EU had adopted a law in conflict with the WHO proposals. What if European companies were permitted to promote and market infant formula for their own commercial benefit without regard to the wider public health consequences? The outrage from the Daily Mail criticising the insensitive EU is not hard to imagine.

Pro-Europeans should be proud that the EU is standing up for public health in the face of commercial interests, and any criticism in the Daily Mail should be seen for the shallow opportunism it is.

A small victory over the eurosceptics

2010-02-08T12:27:06Z

A small victory for the forces of light against the Dark Empire today, with a retraction by the Daily Express of its ludicrous allegation that the European Commission wanted to ban milk jugs.

The London representation of the Commission explains its original objection here: http://euonym.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/milk-and-honey/

And the Daily Express website today carries what it calls an apology here - http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/156894/-Milk-jugs-ban-an-apology - although to whom it is apologising is not entirely clear.

As a story, it was a pretty silly one, and I don’t suppose anyone who was positively disposed towards the European Union will have had their opinion changed by it, but it is part of an overall background noise that confirms eurosceptics in their anti-EU position. We have grown familiar with this over the years, but we should never get used to it.

What is this shows conclusively is the way the British eurosceptic media works. This story has no connection with the European Union at all, but a British tabloid newspaper is so desperate to publish material critical of the EU that it will try and twist anything it can in the direction it wants to go. And these are the people who complain that the EU cannot be trusted by the public …

Developing countries’ interests lie with the EU in achieving a solution to the threat of climate change

2010-01-28T11:42:38Z

By Roland Rudd, Chairman, Business for New Europe

As world leaders gathered in Copenhagen last December for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, President Sarkozy of France delivered a rallying call urging those gathered – including over 120 leaders - to put aside their differences and agree upon the instruments necessary to tackle climate change. He said, “Time is against us, let’s stop posturing… A failure in Copenhagen would be a catastrophe for each and every one of us”.

Looking back at what many consider to be the failed Copenhagen negotiations, there is a widespread belief that a golden opportunity has been lost. The negotiations failed to reach a substantive agreement because a small number of countries, primarily from South America and Africa, scuppered a global agreement. It is widely acknowledged that they did so at the behest of China, reflecting the enormous changes that have occurred in geopolitics over recent years, and their implications for the green economy.

How can we ensure that the same doesn’t happen again in Cancun? If we are serious about resolving the issue of climate change, European governments and businesses must persuade developing countries that their interests lie with the EU and the United States in achieving a solution, rather than in following China down the road of not doing enough.

To give one example; Africa could benefit enormously from a global carbon trading system. At present, the carbon trading system disproportionately benefits China, almost to the exclusion of everyone else. The majority of funds generated by it go to China, with Africa receiving about 3%. We need to change this system, and by changing the system, persuade developing countries in Africa, South America and other parts of the globe that their future lies with Europe. It is the first step in countering the threat of climate change.

The truth about road transport

2010-01-21T10:42:27Z

If you want an illustration of how bad the news reporting of Europe is in some parts of the British press, look at page 5 of the Daily Express today. (Or read it online here: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/153073/Europe-plots-green-blitz-on-British-roads.) The claims made about European transport policy are simply false.

Let’s start with the opening sentence: “Brussels bureaucrats want to slap draconian European Union driving laws on Britain’s roads in a new “green” campaign on motorists, it emerged last night.”

First off, the “Action Plan on urban mobility”, which is the ostensible basis of this story, was adopted by the European Commission on 30 September 2009, with a press release issued the same day, so the statement that plans “emerged last night” is untrue. Am I going to be charitable and allow for the possibility that, even if the information was in theory available last autumn, in practice it was hard to find? No, I am not: a journalist writing for a national newspaper ought to be capable of checking with publicly available sources before writing such statements.

Next, there is the thrust of the story, that the Commission wants to “slap draconian European Union driving laws on Britain’s roads”. The right to make laws regarding driving rests not with the Commission but with the member states, a fact of which the Commission is well aware. The Action Plan outlines that “The Commission offers a partnership to local, regional and national authorities based on their voluntary commitment to co-operate in selected areas of mutual concern.” So, there is no slapping of anything going on (except perhaps metaphorically the faces of the people who wrote this rubbish in the newspaper).

In fact, the approach adopted by the Commission is entirely the opposite:

“In general local authorities are themselves best placed to define and implement urban mobility policies adapted to local circumstances. But they face common problems. The EU can support them and enable and encourage the development of a new culture for urban mobility in Europe, without prescribing one-size-fits-all or top-down solutions.”

And what are the issues that the Commission is looking at in this Action Plan? There are twenty issues, including:

• providing information to passengers who use public transport systems; and to local authorities on funding opportunities, procurement rules and state aid restrictions

• increasing access to mobility impaired passengers, for example; and ensuring the rights of all passengers, including mechanisms for making complaints

• improving energy efficiency in public transport systems and in driving

• reducing the environmental impact of transport by promoting the use of zero and low emission vehicles, and by minimising the impact of freight transport in urban areas.

I repeat, the take-up of any of this is entirely voluntary on the part of national, regional or local governments. The European Commission is making good ideas available: who can complain about that?

The Daily Express goes on to say that “the blueprint provoked widespread fury among MPs, motoring organisations and campaigners against EU bureaucracy last night.” Here is what they said:

Keith Peat, of the Association of British Drivers, said: “Giving un-elected bureaucrats in Brussels control over British roads would be disastrous, not just for safety but also for the country’s economy.”

Mr Peat can be reassured that the Action Plan does not propose giving up control of British roads. (Note those weasel words “would be”. Any news story can be complemented by the statement that an outrageous proposal “would be” bad: as in this case, the proposal does not have to be contained in the initial story but if it is close enough in subject matter, a confused or inattentive reader (or journalist) might not notice the difference, and be left with a false and negative impression of the original story.)

Mats Persson, of the Euro-sceptic think tank Open Europe, commented: “This illustrates that the EU simply can’t stop interfering in every aspect of people’s lives.” In what way is providing information about energy efficiency, which local authorities may or may not use as they see fit, interfering? Normally, Open Europe criticises the EU for not being flexible enough: they want an à la carte Europe where member states can pick and choose which policies they take part in. On this occasion, what is on offer is exactly that – an à la carte approach to urban transport policy – and Open Europe is still complaining. One might start to doubt the sincerity of Open Europe’s claims not to be against the EU as such …

Lastly, Tory frontbencher Theresa Villiers, Shadow Transport Secretary, has been conned into being presented as a critic of the Action Plan. She said “To improve our roads and tackle driver hassle, we need more local decision making, not one-size-fits-all diktats from Brussels,” which is of course exactly what the Action Plan offers.

¤ ¤ ¤

You can read about the Action Plan on urban mobility here: http://ec.europa.eu/transport/urban/urban_mobility/action_plan_en.htm

The Commission is there to propose, not impose, policy

2009-12-04T17:12:46Z

The British press is, unfortunately, infamous for its tendency to overreact, so the articles and comments in the electronic and print media over the appointment of a Frenchman as Commissioner-designate for Internal Market should not come as a surprise. But this is not the time for over-dramatisations, many around Fleet Street and beyond might enjoy crying wolf but we should put last week’s appointment in context.

A Commissioner does not make EU policy alone. A Commissioner does not even make Commission policy alone. It is the 27 Member States in the Council of Ministers who ask the Commission to draw up draft rules, a task undertaken by the Commissioner in charge and the responsible for that policy Commission department. After consultation with stakeholders and all interested parties, legislative proposals are drafted which the Commissioner then presents to the College of 27 Commissioners. It is up to the College to give its approval collectively before the draft legislation becomes a Commission proposal to the Council and the European Parliament. Subsequently, the Member States in the Council and the directly elected MEPs approve, amend or dismiss the Commission’s proposals in a detailed process that ensures all different views are taken under account and the outcome reflects the common will of all actors involved in the EU decision-making process.

It is thus impossible for a single individual, or even a single Member State, to impose their will on others. The system has been designed like that for this very reason. Proclaiming that Mr Barnier will singlehandedly assault the City constitutes a gross over-estimation of his powers. Asserting that the French will be able to seriously damage the UK’s commercial interests under-estimates the role of the other 26 members of the European Union.

The kind of scaremongering that has been going on in the past few days serves no one. The European Commission and the European Council, with Britain’s active participation, have been working hard to ensure that the mistakes that caused the recent credit crunch and inflicted serious damage upon European economies will never be repeated. The Government and the City will continue engaging constructively in the decision-making process. Demonising our partners and victimising ourselves is truly pointless. There’s work to be done to put in place the necessary rules that will safeguard economic activity and financial innovation from risky and unsupervised behaviour. In London, Paris, Frankfurt or anywhere else. We should get on with that work, for the collective good of the EU’s economy.

Petros Fassoulas

Last night’s appointments make sense

2009-11-20T11:59:47Z

The hypocritical reaction of all those that are instinctively critical of anything that has to do with the EU baffles me beyond belief. Nigel Farage and those that share his views on European integration have, in the last 12 hours, been attacking with venom the appointment of Mr van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton as President of the European Council and High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy respectively. They accuse them of all kind of things, but once again their arguments are marred with hypocrisy and insincerity.

Last night’s appointments aim to do exactly what the Treaty of Lisbon intends to achieve. Make decision making in the EU more efficient and effective. The two posts created, and those appointed to fill these posts, are not there to make policy and take away power from the Member States as the eurosceptics professed since the Lisbon Treaty was signed. The posts, and their holders, are meant to articulate and communicate the common position of the 27 Member States, as agreed in the Council by the elected Heads of State and Government of those very 27 Member States. The President and the High Representative (and the EU by extension) will not rob the UK and other Member States of their sovereign rights. Instead they will enhance the ability of the common will of the Union to be expressed on the international stage. Decisions are still up to the elected representatives of the people.

This is the spirit of the treaty and last night’s decisions confirm that fact with all the clarity possible. What eurosceptics are really upset about is that yesterday’s events took the sting away from their false allegations. The Lisbon Treaty does not create a superstate. It creates the structures that will allow Member States to achieve their common interests more effectively. The Lisbon Treaty does not create an EU President. It creates a President of the European Council, he is the chairman of the 27 elected representatives of national governments and that is why he was elected by them. Would Nigel Farage rather have him elected directly from the people? Does he really advocate that kind of federalism?

The process of European integration is a slow, careful journey down a route that has been set collectively by all those that believe that European nations working together can achieve their individual objectives more effectively. EU treaties aim to put in place the institutional and decision-making structures necessary to allow Member States to achieve those objectives.

We finally have the two individuals that will deliver what the Lisbon Treaty intended, a more coherent and efficiently communicated message that reflects effectively the EU’s position on all those issues that affect its Member States. We should let them do their job.

Petros Fassoulas

Four pledges on Europe by David Cameron

2009-11-06T11:03:03Z

Following David Cameron’s speech on 4th November, here are some reactions…

1. Opting out of the Charter of Rights

Why opt out of a Charter of Rights that simply ensures that the EU has to repect fundamental rights and that any EU legislation that fails to do so, can be struck down by the courts? It is a safeguard, not a threat!

2. Giving UK law primacy over EU law

What is the point of agreeing common rules at EU level if each country is then free to break its agreements and overide them by new national laws? Britain won its court case against France when they continued to ban British beef after it was declared safe, precisely because countries must live up to what they have agreed to. If French law had primacy over EU law, they would still be banning our beef!

3. Opting out of the Social Chapter of the Treaty

Having common rules for the common market on some aspects of social legislation ensures a level playing field, a single set of rules for companies to follow instead of the costly confusion of 27 sets of rules in a single market, and gives all workers, including British workers, basic rights and protections. Why should British workers be denied the rights enjoyed by their counterparts across Europe? What is so wrong with this legislation, that is accepted by every other government, including conservative governments, in Europe? The only example Cameron gives is the Working Time Directive - legislation that was NOT adopted under the Social Chapter (it is health & safety legislation) and was approved by the Council of Ministers under the last Conservative government with Britain abstaining. Cameron apprears not to know this!

4. Opting out of co-operation on Criminal Justice

Is Cameron unaware that Britain already has, under Lisbon, the right to opt-in or opt-out of legislation in this field? Not that we should - crminal gangs operate across borders and we need to co-operate with our neighbouring countries in fighting them - but we can already choose which measures to sign up to.

What a pity Cameron places a higher priority on pandering to the eurosceptic extremists in his own party than to facing facts!

Open Europe can’t have it both ways on civil liberties

2009-11-02T15:17:14Z

A new report from eurosceptic campaign group Open Europe, entitled “How the EU is watching you: The rise of Europe’s surveillance state” claims that the EU is a threat to civil liberties in the UK. They are obviously aiming at the wrong target.

The starting point for criticism of this report is the fact that the policies and trends that they claim are a threat to civil liberties are much more far-reaching or entrenched here in the UK than they are elsewhere in Europe. There are more CCTV cameras here than anywhere else in the EU; the UK rate of DNA collection is five times higher than the next highest EU member state; and so on. Open Europe disingenuously claims that this makes Europe more of a threat because the British people are “numb” to developments.

If there were fewer CCTV cameras here in the UK, Open Europe could of course claim that this showed that we were about to experience an increase imposed by the EU. An intelligent reader will realise that Open Europe can’t have it both ways.

And it gets worse. There is a long list of issues where, Open Europe says, objectionable legislation originating in the EU has been transposed into UK law without proper scrutiny by the British parliament. These laws are, until the Lisbon treaty comes into force, agreed by unanimity among the member states without the proper involvement of the European Parliament. Let me remind you: unanimity is Open Europe’s preferred method of decision-making within the EU, and here they are complaining about it.

Lisbon will introduce QMV in the Council for justice and home affairs issues (JHA) and co-decision with the European Parliament. The complaint that there is no parliamentary scrutiny of this policy area falls away when the new treaty comes into force, or rather it should, except in the have-it-both-ways world of Open Europe. Apparently, “the lack of public engagement with this institution, as evidenced by the increasingly poor voter turnout in elections to the Parliament”, hampers the ability of the European Parliament to act on behalf of the citizen. Except that evidence of how much the citizen needs to be protected comes from the number of occasions the European Parliament has intervened, by using its powers over single market legislation, for example, or referring cases to the European Court of Justice. And in the UK, election turnouts have fallen just as fast as they have at European level. And the Open Europe report is full of occasions when the British parliament has failed to intervene or control what government was trying to do. Open Europe can’t have it both ways about parliaments.

And we desperately need parliaments to be involved. The alternative is simply continued liaison between governments, leading to policies being imposed on their own electorates. The biometric passport originates in a Council regulation that did not require the approval of any parliament, neither national nor European, but has the force of law.

There is a whole string of measures of this kind that have been agreed intergovernmentally through the Prüm treaty without British involvement – the Prüm group was only Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Austria – and Britain was forced into a take it or leave it position regarding the Prüm initiatives when it chose to join later. Britain was “alarmingly absent” from negotiations, we are told. But this is what a flexible, variable geometry Europe will look like, where countries can take part in the issues they want to cooperate on and opt out of the ones they don’t. And Open Europe, let me remind you, advocates this kind of Europe. Open Europe cannot have it both ways.

Rather than trying to conscript civil liberties as a eurosceptic argument and producing a report shot through with contradictions at every turn, here is a better way of thinking about the problem.

The British government, along with other European governments, wants to increase its powers of surveillance, in order to help it fight crime and maintain order. There is a balance to be struck between increasing these surveillance powers, on the one hand, and protecting civil liberties on the other. Left to its own devices, the British government, along with other European governments, is likely to get the balance wrong. This is not necessarily because it is malicious and Orwellian, although it might be: it is certainly because that is how governments are. They will err on the side of the bureaucrat.

To redress the balance, we need active citizens, active parliaments and active courts. The Lisbon treaty strengthens the role of the European Parliament in this area of EU legislation (mentioned only briefly by Open Europe in its report), strengthens the role of national parliaments in scrutinising EU legislation (not mentioned by Open Europe at all), and strengthens the rights of citizens, enshrining the Charter of Fundamental Rights into EU law (again, not mentioned at all).

The EU without the Lisbon treaty will be manifestly less well-equipped to strike the right -balance than the EU with the Lisbon treaty. Open Europe, in arguing the opposite, is simply perverse.

Of course, the suspicion remains that Open Europe wants to do away with the European Union altogether, but lacks the courage and intellectual honesty to say so.