At one level it has been a privilege to attend the Danish Presidency Press Trip for the past four days. I’m the first blogger ever to have been allowed to attend, and hopefully not the last. But the whole experience leaves me feeling a little empty, although not quite for the reasons that may be immediately obvious.
It has just been announced that Diana Wallis is putting her name forward as a candidate for President of the European Parliament. She’s a long-standing Vice President of the Parliament, and is a British Liberal Democrat (who form part of the centrist ALDE Group). News about her candidacy here from European Voice, and her own statement here.
There are two candidates in the race already – Martin Schulz (thought to be odds-on, as the deal was that Jerzy Buzek would do the first half of the 2009-14 term and Schulz the second half) and British Tory Nirj Deva (who doesn’t have a hope, well, because he’s a British Tory).
The real issue here is how much threat is Diana Wallis to Schulz? While the latter was unanimously backed by the S&D Group as their candidate, I know he is not universally liked within the group (and I’ve expressed my discontent about him before). And if Schulz is not universally liked within the S&D, what about within the EPP who are supposed to back him now? Earlier this year there was an effort by the groups of the centre and right to tie up important fisheries reports to the exclusion of the centre left (although this was subsequently overturned) – will this determination be replicated when it comes to the decision for the Parliament’s top job?
I can’t read how all of this is going to play out – I just don’t know enough about the internal dynamics of the EPP. But Martin Schulz must be today just a little bit more nervous about his future prospects than he was last week.
Godfrey Bloom is a prat. That much was clear, even before this week’s incident (BBC, Wikipedia) where he referred to Martin Schulz, leader of the socialists in the European Parliament with the words “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”. This after all is the MEP best known until this week for his comments about women cleaning behind the fridge. This is the video of the Schulz-Bloom incident (plays from the correct point):
Conversely, Martin Schulz is a nasty, tub-thumping, selfish, hectoring politician, motivated more by his desire to be President of the European Parliament than anything else as far as I can tell. I’ve expressed my dislike of the man in the past. Yet Schulz, the wronged party in the incident with Bloom, also once heckled a Dutch far right MEP Daniël van der Stoep, calling him a fascist, and was not asked to apologise and subsequently reprimanded in the same way by the President of the European Parliament. Video of that incident (plays from the correct point):
So what’s going on here?
Firstly, both of them are idiots, and behaved inappropriately. Calling others fascists, der Führer etc. in the chamber is offensive and unnecessary. However offensive Bloom, Schulz or van der Stoep are, nothing should prompt any politician to use those words.
Secondly, Schulz gets away with it because he represents the political mainstream and Bloom and van der Stoep do not. Essentially Schulz has more friends and gets treated differently. Just listen to Guy Verhofstadt’s comments backing Schulz. This plays right into the hands of the loopy folks on the political fringes – they seek to present the political mainstream as conspiring against them, and this incident looks like precisely that is happening. Jerzy Buzek, the essentially decent President of the EP, needs to make sure everyone is dealt with fairly and reasonably. Buzek, let’s not forget, was the EU politician who gave the most positive support for the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo for example.
Thirdly, it’s much better to take apart Schulz with some humour and cunning, rather that resorting to Bloom’s xenophobia. He should take a leaf out of Danny Cohn Bendit’s book.
[UPDATE]
Laura Shields has written a post about the protagonists’ use of language – interesting thoughts, but I think she overestimates Bloom’s ability to think before he speaks!
How are you supposed to measure the state of US-EU relations? No easy task seen from Brussels.
Earlier this week Barack Obama prompted a bout of soul-searching by stating that he would not attend a EU-US summit pencilled in for May this year. At least it resolves who will first shake his hand or sit next to him – no-one.
Then today comes the news that Hillary Clinton called Jerzy Buzek, President of the European Parliament, regarding SWIFT. Buzek even tweeted that he had spoken to Clinton, but the tweet has subsequently been deleted – screenshot of my retweet of it here. The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs nevertheless voted against an agreement today.
Statue at the EP - CC / Flickr
My discontent about the lack of choice about the future President of the European Commission is well known. But it seems – bizarrely – that the choice of the President of the European Parliament might actually become a bit more interesting. President of the EP is a largely symbolic role, chairing the sessions and with some external representation tasks. Perhaps the election intrigue is a manifestation of the old Henry Kissinger quote that “university European Parliament politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small”?
Anyway, so what’s going on? Essentially the President of the EP is usually a tie-up between the 2 main political groups in the Parliament, the EPP-ED and PSE. Each gets the Parliament President for about two and a half years of the five year parliamentary term. Josep Borrell, a socialist, preceeded Hans-Gert Pöttering, a christian democrat, in the current term.
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