Krisen-Manifest von der Spinelli-Gruppe: Die letzten Europäer – taz.de.
Tag Archives: Guy Verhofstadt
The European Parliament is being pro-EU, but not pro-EU democracy
There are two main issues at stake with the so-called ‘Six Pack’ of EU legislation designed to prevent eurozone countries overspending in future. The first is the amount of wriggle room to be given to states that break the rules, and the second is the extent to which states themselves (represented in the Council of the EU) are in control of policing the rules, as opposed to the role of the European Commission.
How is the European Parliament behaving?
Contrary to the wishes of the centre left and the greens, the European Parliament wants states to have little wriggle room on the first issue (as reported by EUObserver). This would – according to critics of the agreement – entrench austerity. On the second issue, to a great extent at the behest for former Belgian PM and leader of the liberals in the EP Guy Verhofstadt, the EP favours a solution where the Commission is largely in control.
Why is this?
The FT’s imprecise EU vocabulary
In an otherwise good quality article about former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt’s role in determining the EU institutions response to bailouts by Joshua Chaffin there is nevertheless an issue – the terms the FT uses to explain the EU:
Mr Verhofstadt, the energetic and outspoken leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats in the European parliament [my emphasis]
Strictly Verhofstadt is leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group in the European Parliament (ALDE). As fellow FT correspondent Stanley Pignal states on Twitter, the FT is not intended to be for a Brussels bubble audience. Very true. But I would also hope that FT readers would hope to have correct reporting, and I have much higher hopes for the FT’s reporting than I do for any other UK broadsheet – hence this blog entry.
Reading the line above for someone not versed in the basics of European Parliament politics connects him to the Liberal Democrats, the UK party, who are indeed a member of the ALDE group. But Liberal Democrats and ALDE are not the same thing.
OK, maybe this is a minor case, but there are words to the same effect – simpler than ‘ALDE Group’ – that nevertheless would have been more correct: ‘Liberals and Democrats’ or ‘Liberals and Democrats Group’ for example.
However this is not the first time the FT has used such terms – they routinely referred to Blair’s rumoured candidacy for President of the European Council as ‘President of the EU’ – see this piece and all these titles. The Economist notably takes another line – to use the correct terms, and to assume that readers will inform themselves if they don’t understand.
An end to pro-European stodginess
European Citizen has an interesting and thoughful post about why Guy Verhofstadt’s statement that “The three largest groups in the European Parliament announced today their commitment to pro-European values” is essentially the wrong approach. European Citizen’s critique is not too far away from my own analysis of the travails of the left, that essentially some proper ideological debate in the EP would be of benefit to them and everyone else, but sadly that’s not the route that Martin Schulz and his merry band have not decided to follow.
Essentially Verhofstadt, Schulz, Pöttering and everyone else in the EPP, ALDE and Socialists in the EP are arguing in the wrong frame. Debate about the EU is all too often played out in the pro-European versus anti-European frame, it’s a way of looking at the European Union that everyone understands. But the problem – as European Citizen argues – is that it’s not an especially useful way of coming up with answers to pressing problems or motivating citizens to engage in EU politics.
It’s a hard task, but we instead need to argue about the EU in 2 different frames – an ideological and values based approach for policy programmes, based on Europe-wide liberalism, social democracy, free market or whatever. Then when it comes to institutional and constitutional questions, and relations among the institutions, we need a debate about multi-level governance, sovereignty, democracy and federalism. If this article by veteran Italian federalist Guido Montani is anything to go by then Verhofstadt’s ‘pro-Europeanism’ is more nuanced than his words would imply.
Plenty of those of us who write online about the EU have been genuinely disgusted by the games being played out in the European Parliament since the elections. The consultation with the population every 5 years is done, so it’s time to look inward, keep the ‘eurosceptics’ out, divide up all the jobs among the boys, and then wonder in 2014 why nothing changed. How does one of the most energetic and knowledgeable Europeans I know, Julien Frisch, feel he has to label himself EU-sceptic as a result? And I find myself sympathising with him.
No, no, no. It need not be like that. In the nascent EU-blogosphere we manage to have all kinds of nuanced debates about values and policies, and it doesn’t end up in a pro versus anti-EU argument. We’re tired of that. I don’t agree with Frank Schnittger on CAP, but we can have a civil debate. Are our elected representatives completely incapable of framing things differently?
Photo: Jelle Goossens “Guy Verhofstadt” August 10, 2006 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution
Left loses, so left might get a liberal Commission President against the wishes of the right – even more confused?
Guy Verhofstadt - CC / Flickr
Before the EP elections I wrote a post expressing my exasperation at the PES when they stated they had a nominee for Commission President but would not state the name of that individual. Now Euractiv is reporting that there could be an alliance of the PES, Greens and ALDE to push the nomination of former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt as an alternative to Barroso (Stephen Spillane has more).
Don’t get me wrong – I think Barroso is rubbish, and I would be very happy to see Verhofstadt as President of the Commission instead. But how would you possibly explain that to European voters? Press coverage was correct that the left was defeated in the EP elections, and then the right might not manage to get its candidate elected? It would look mighty odd, especially as it might well be Angela Merkel or Nicolas Sarkozy that could signal the end of Barroso, rather that it being someone like Brown or Zapatero.
We’ve also been down this road before – in 1995 when John Major refused to back Verhofstadt Jean Luc Dehaene and the Commission ended up with Jacques Santer instead, and Verhofstadt himself was also rumoured to be a candidate in 2004. Would there be any prospect of the UK backing him now?
All this is on the basis of rumours for the moment, but the coming weeks could be quite intriguing.