Tag Archives: Martin Schulz

Is Diana Wallis a threat to Schulz?

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.

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You can’t compare me to the Führer but I can call you a fascist

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!

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I fear there will be no Buttiglione in 2009

Rocco Buttiglione - CC / Flickr

Rocco Buttiglione - CC / Flickr

Back in the autumn of 2004 I was working in London. It was a year or so before I even started this blog and I was working as a civil servant on EU energy policy. News reached us that a controversial Italian nominee to the European Commission, Rocco Buttiglione, had caused a fuss in the European Parliament due to his views about families and gay rights.

In a matter of a fortnight it was done, the EP had managed to remove Buttiglione. It was swift, decisive, values based, and – above all – unexpected. It was probably the only good thing that Martin Schulz, leader of the S&D Group in the European Parliament has ever done. There was Buttiglione, he said foolish and unpleasant things, members of the EP stood together ideologically and out he went.

Fast-forward 5 years and here we are again. Or probably not. A new Commission team ready to take office, a little delayed because of the Irish referendum, and with a little extra potential spice thrown in because of the new top positions created by the Treaty of Lisbon.

So what’s the European Parliament going to do over the next few weeks?

The answer to that is, I fear, absolutely nothing. Jean Quatremer has some quotes from a cross section of French MEPs, all who basically say that we should all be optimistic about the nominations. Even Schulz sounds conciliatory, stating that Europe’s populations are more concerned by jobs than they are by the nominations to the top positions.

Perhaps we should rephrase, that Schulz is concerned about his own prospects for a top job – President of the EP for the second half of the term – and does not want to rock the boat now?

Or is it maybe that the European Parliament feels it has already won?

That’s the line harshly underlined in this entry on The Economist’s Charlemagne blog. Over the last 3 months The Economist, and especially the Charlemagne blog, has been head and shoulders above any other publication (and I include the FT in that) in its interpretation of what has been going on with regard to the EU’s top jobs travails, and perhaps its line explains the compliant nature of the EP towards Ashton and van Rompuy now. The whole of The Economist’s post is here and this (from the 5th paragraph) caught my eye:

Regular readers will know I think the European Parliament is full of far too many B Team mediocrities who could not make it in national politics, and who like nothing better than scoring big wins against national governments. Some will say that is just my prejudice. I wish I could take you with me when I talk to officials, diplomats, businessmen and even members of the European Parliament, whose devotion to deep European integration often far exceeds mine, and listen in on our conversations about the parliament. As a body it is really, seriously looked down on by anyone unfortunate enough to have dealings with the place.

Having worked for a dire MEP a few years ago I have to sadly say I agree.

Yet all of this now will surely prove to be a pyrrhic victory. The line that the Parliament managed to ‘win’ and ended up with 2 rather uninspiring candidates for the top jobs is not going to hold much weight with any voters, just as Schulz’s cooperation with the EPP is not really going to help much either. And while we’re at it, even if the EP does do things that are useful to promote job growth the EU as Schulz claims to want, is anyone even going to credit the EP with that success anyway?

The European Parliament ought to have the guts to take on the Commission over the nominees. Candidates like Günter Oettinger and Laszlo Andor (still no Wikipedia page for him!) are hardly qualified to serve in the EU’s executive and only the European Parliament can show that. Julien Frisch wants the EP to take a stand and so do I. But I suspect it’s not going to happen.

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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
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It’s not a generational issue, it’s more important than that

Martin Schulz - CC / Flickr

Martin Schulz - CC / Flickr

There has been a bit of debate on Twitter this morning between @eurosocialiste and @boriswandoren about the ongoing behaviour of politicians in the European Parliament, specifically with regard to the behaviour of the socialists who have caved in and agreed with the EPP to carve up the positions in the EP between them (see Jean Quatremer in French), an agreement that has lead to a load of measly words from Graham Watson who is withdrawing from the running to become President of the EP. This decision of the socialists is especially annoying – I would have rather seen the development of a genuine opposition in the EP, rather than some messy compromise.

But is all of this, as the Twitter debate suggests, something to do with generations of politicians?

Frankly, I think not. Blogs, Twitter and e-Communications more generally have given people like Eurosocialiste, Boris Wandoren, Kosmopolit, Julien Frisch and I the kind of public voice we would never otherwise have had. We’re young(-ish) individuals, answerable almost uniquely to ourselves, people with strong views. In times past we would have been the annoying, nagging people at party political meetings, trying to hold everyone else to account. The internet means we have a wider audience to rant air our concerns. We’re fine to argue back and forth on Twitter, because we’re the sort of people who would be arguing about how to make the world a better place over a coffee or a beer anyway; doing it online is hence really natural.

If you’re a party politician your motivations are inevitably different. The nature of party politics across all the mainstream parties and in all EU Member States means you have to play the long game, keep your views to yourself, and manage to make sure you do not offend too many people on your route to the top. You want to one day become Martin Schulz, or one of his ilk, and even if – as a younger person – you did have a burning ideology, you’re going to have to mask it in order to manage to get anywhere. Frankly it is hard to run a political party if there are too many people in it who are too intelligent, determined or opinionated, so you can get somewhere precisely because you are not any good, not a threat.

So the pickle in which party politics finds itself, especially on the left, is not in my mind a question of generations. It’s much more important and central to that. How can political parties accept risk takers, leaders, people with drive, people with ideology, and bind them into a party structure rather than making them annoyed and demoralised? For me that’s the central question, not some vague notion of generational change.

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Socialist Group rebrands as ASDE, not to be confused with ASDA or ALDE

ASDE Martin Schulz - J. Worth montage

ASDE Martin Schulz - J. Worth montage

Britain has ASDA, a rather lousy supermarket chain owned by Wal-Mart. Now Brussels has ASDE, the new name for the Socialist Group in the European Parliament. The name stands for the Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. Which means the name is not too far away from ALDE, the acronym for the Liberals in the EP, and even the EPP has its ED (European Democrats) adjunct. So everyone’s a democrat. Isn’t that nice. Everyone has an alphabet soup of names. That’s perhaps less nice.

So what are the reasons? Julien Frisch has a breakdown, and also a video from Europarl TV explaining the rationale. Essentially the Italian Partito Democratico did not know which group to join, wanted the socialists to sound a bit more moderate, and hence the name change. So Martin Schulz can now preside over approximately 170 MEPs rather than 150. Woo hoo. Forget the coherency, forget the brand, forget the fact you sound like a supermarket chain, forget even how things will have to be explained at the 2014 elections. That’s a long way off…

(Photo credit: image adapted from this Flickr / CC image)

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Rebuilding the European left

Red Brick Wall - CC / Flickr

Red Brick Wall - CC / Flickr

The European Parliament Election results on Sunday were not good for social democratic and labour parties across Europe, polling 3% less than at the elections in 2004. PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, posting at Labourlist, states rather blandly that “We need more PES, not less PES” so as to do better next time. I’m afraid it’s not that simple Poul – so here are a few more ideas.

First of all, social democratic parties at national and EU level lack coherent and decent quality leadership. Brown is monumentally weak and cares little about the EU, Aubry has not been able to assert herself in France, the Italian Partito Democratico is tearing itself apart, the SPD seems determined to simply turn the clock back, the left has no coherent leadership in Poland… only Zapatero has been able to arrest the decline, and he has seldom been seen on the international stage. Things are not much better at EU level – I have respect for Rasmussen, but he has been unable to assert himself. Leader of the Socialist Group Martin Schulz, famous in large part thanks to his Berlusconi incident, does not have the optimism, nuance or communications skills to lead effectively. In short things at the top must change.

Continue reading →

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PES is not backing Barroso, but is not backing anyone. Confused?

BarrosoI’ve been hammering on and on at the PES and the issue of why socialists have not been able to nominate a candidate for President of the Commission to follow Barroso when the Portuguese’s term of office ends 31st October this year. The story behind all of this gets immensely complex – I’m going to try to set the record straight as far as I see it.

Essentially there is a disagreement between the Party of European Socialists, headed up by party president Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, and 3 of the PES member parties. Those 3 parties, and their party leaders, namely Socrates in Portugal, Zapatero in Spain and Brown in the UK, are quite happy with Barroso being re-nominated as President of the Commission as this re-nomination suits their own petty national interests, and also – especially for the UK – the fact that Barroso is weak also helps his cause.

In the opposite camp are MEPs in the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, and leaders of some of Europe’s social democrat parties that are out of power nationally. For them they need a strong message for the election campaigns on why a social europe is possible and desirable, and accomplishing that with Barroso in place is not going to be easy. So hence we have Rasmussen in an interview in Le Monde stating “Si une autre majorité se dégage, M. Barroso ne pourra pas être reconduit“, and he also stated in Financial Times Deutschland “Wir wollen nach der Europaparlamentswahl zusammen mit anderen Parteien einen anderen Kommissionspräsidenten wählen“.

So essentially if you vote for a PES member party at the EP elections in June you’ll get MEPs that will not back Barroso (good) but do not know who they will back (bad) and say they will have to cooperate with other parties on that (confusing).

So why not put up a candidate anyway? Well, Rasmussen might want to be that person, but with his namesake now NATO General Secretary, and also with Denmark outside Schengen and the Euro is he appropriate? His left wing rival in Brussels, Martin Schulz, is a tub-thumping bully, not someone with the nous or ability to bring people together. The best social democrat – Pascal Lamy – hence seldom even features in the debate about the nomination of a candidate.

Then Europe’s politicians wonder why the population does not understand what’s going on in Brussels, and how the process of European ‘democracy’ seems opaque and confusing. I rest my case.

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