Tag Archives: Netherlands

Stupidity and the EP’s 4-day election

So the European Commission is asking The Netherlands for ‘clarification’ of why results from Thursday’s EP poll there have been released already. Supposedly results are only allowed to be released once the polls have closed all over Europe – Sunday evening. I’ve been debating this on Twitter with @julienfrish, @kierancotty, @davidcochrane and @MickFealty. With Geert Wilders being the big recipient of anti-everything sentiment in the Dutch poll, the last thing anyone needs is the Commission grumbling that the Dutch didn’t respect the rules. What about the Irish too, as results are trickling out today at the Irish Election website? The UK is rather different – polls were on Thursday, but people care so little about the EP elections that little information has trickled out, and Brown has used the lull to try to re-assert a little authority over his cabinet.

So what should happen with all of this? First of all the EP elections over 4 days is silly. OK, national traditions, bla, bla, but could we not have the polls open on Saturday and Sunday in all European countries? The Commission grumbling at The Netherlands looks quite cantankerous when the institutions and the Member States have not managed to make some order out of this mess of election days.

Secondly, why does the Commission send out some anonymous spokesperson to say these sorts of things? Plays right into the hands of people sceptical about the institutions. Someone with a little political nous should do it… which would of course be helped if the Commissioners themselves had more political nous, and some more leadership from the top.

And everyone wonders why the population is frustrated by the EU…

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The Dutch obsession with national parliaments

EP - CC / Flickr

EP - CC / Flickr

Adriaan Schout and Jeroen van Dijken wrote a column last week in Dutch daily de Volkskrant entitled EU kan goed zonder Europees Parlement – essentially that the EU could do OK without the European Parliament. I picked up on the story via euro|topics.

The whole line of the column, as far as I can determine, is that the European Parliament is essentially useless if national parliaments took their job in scrutinising EU legislation seriously.

For a whole bunch of different reasons this is the wrong approach.

Firstly, national parliaments are rubbish at using the powers they currently have to hold ministers to account before they go off to meetings of the Council of the European Union. Only Denmark and Finland come close to having reasonable systems of parliamentary scrutiny; the EU, ironically, relies to a great extent on the unelected House of Lords to do the task the Commons cannot be bothered to do.

This leads to the second point: what incentive do national parliaments have to improve their scrutiny of EU legislation? Basically none as far as I can tell. National politicians don’t win their seats on the basis of checking whether the market for widgets functions at European level.

Thirdly, is it even right, in governmental terms, that national politicians should determine the conduct of EU affairs? I think all of Europe’s populations are grown up enough to understand – broadly – that different problems are solved at different levels, and each of those levels needs democratic accountability. I don’t think that the Tweede Kamer should be uniquely composed of local councillors from towns in the Netherlands, yet that’s the logical equivalent of what they propose at the European level.

Now don’t get me wrong: there are a whole bunch of problems with the way the European Parliament works: opaque party system, the EP cannot determine the President of the Commission, dull debates, dull election campaigns etc. but the Dutch obsession with national parliaments as a way to solve these problems is not the way forward.

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