Tag Archives: Open Europe

Lazy Daniel Hannan MEP

I suppose drafting polemics takes time, or perhaps there is another reason for his deficiency. For Daniel Hannan MEP, European poster boy for the Tory right, seems increasingly to be neglecting the very work he is supposed to be doing – representing his constituents from South East England in the European Parliament, and playing his role as a legislator in the EU’s parliament.

First there are the records of meetings between lobbyists and Conservative members of the European Parliament, published for the period 1 January until 30 June 2010 [PDF here]. Hannan is one of only 2 MEPs (together with Robert Atkins) who states zero meetings with lobbyists. Continue reading →

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Sick of “EU doesn’t sign off books, therefore corrupt / evil / useless / nasty” (delete as applicable)

Ho, ho, here we go again. A question posed in the House of Commons by Philip Davies (Con) as cited by the Open Europe blog:

Given that the accounts of the EU have not been signed off by the auditors for 15 years running, why do the Government keep giving more and more money to the EU? Surely if the Government are serious about reform of the EU budget, they should say that the EU will not get a penny more from the British Government until it gets its accounts properly audited.

Euros - CC / Flickr

Euros - CC / Flickr

This has become a familiar meme for the Tories on Europe – the EU doesn’t sign off its books, therefore this is a good reason for not cooperating with the EU, not giving it more cash, bla, bla. Cameron even mentioned it in one of his speeches at Tory Party Conference.

So here you are Mr Davies, you who claims at the top of your website to not represent ‘self-interests’, here’s why your question, and the Tory line, is a load of rubbish, and here’s also what the Tories (and indeed anyone else) should do about it.

Firstly, the European Union budget is complicated. Most of the money gets transferred from the European Commission to bodies in the Member States at national or regional level, and these bodies spend the cash. Tracing every last Euro down to every last farmer or training project is a very hard task. And don’t assume this is just something those evil ones across the Channel do – the UK experience is not good on this either.

Secondly, no equivalent budgetary sign off exists in the UK, so it’s not as if the UK is perfect and Brussels is bad. Quoting the Select Committee on European Union Fiftieth Report on the matter:

149. Sir John Bourn, Comptroller and Auditor General at the UK’s National Audit Office told us that, were he required to issue a single Statement of Assurance on the UK Government’s accounts in the same way as the Court of Auditors does for Europe’s accounts, he, like the Court, would be unable to do so (Q 192). This is because last year he issued a qualified opinion on 13 of the 500 accounts of the British Government which he audits.

In short, is the EU budget perfect? No. Is any national government any better? No, probably not, and at least the UK’s is not.

So stop using that as a stick to bash the EU.

So then Mr Davies, Open Europe, hell, even Alistair Darling – you want to do something about this? What you should do is to argue that the European Commission needs at least 1000 additional, new auditors who will spend all of their time digging around in the books of each of the Member States and their regional and local governments, digging up fraud and wrongdoing wherever they find it.

But of course if you’re a Tory you’re never going to go for this either, because then you would have a whinge that EU auditors having a look into the UK’s books would be some infringement on the UK’s national sovereignty, that they would be public sector workers and Tories want a small state etc., and ooh, of course a UK government run by that nice Mr Cameron would never do anything remotely questionable, would it now…?

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EU Comms David vs. Goliath (only the stones are misdirected)

EU David and Goliath

EU David and Goliath

OK, here we go again. Open Europe having a further whine at something going on in Brussels, this time the amount of money the European Union spends on ‘propaganda’. Also not a surprise is the choice of EUObserver to carry a column from Open Europe’s Lorraine Mullally, and in Sweden Timbro is apparently trying to get the Swedish Presidency to address the ‘issue’. The gist of the message is summed up with these lines from Mullally:

With so much public money at their disposal, the EU institutions are able to propel their own vision of the future of Europe, and also begin to create a monopoly over what should be regarded as the “facts.” The institutions claim to want a wider debate on Europe, but by trying to suppress those who do not support their vision, they are stifling debate.

But is there actually any issue to deal with here? The money to which Mullally refers is a supposed sum of €2.4 billion (or about 2% of the EU budget) that is allocated to communications projects. Fair amounts of money for sure, but dwarfed by the budgets of national public sector broadcasters, a point made in reply by Richard Walker, who is also keen to point out that many of the projects are editorially independent of the EU institutions.

There are of course some legitimate complaints – some of the EU publicity materials are really over the top, and some plans are ill conceived. But is all of this any worse than the comms work of a national government? I think not.

Last but not least the EU does not have at its disposal one of the best means of political communication – elections. European Parliament elections are still essentially second order national elections – if a politician gets selected high up on a national party’s list then selection is almost certain. Essentially politicians communicate what they do when it’s in their interests to do so, essentially to secure re-election. To make such a system at European level would require more power to the parliament and, one might dare say, a federal Europe. It’s much, much harder to get any agreement on that than it is to get some politicians to part with €2.4 billion for some communications projects.

Until then Open Europe’s David can take on Wallström’s Goliath but the stones are rather misdirected.

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Just a normal EU day really

radio5I like the European Parliament elections. It makes EU stuff interesting and now is one of the few times that the mainstream media is interested in EU matters. At short notice I was contacted by BBC Radio 5 Live this morning and asked to appear on the Victoria Derbyshire show commenting on MEPs’ expenses, essentially replying to this article in today’s Times. I was up against Mats Persson of Open Europe, and you can hear the debate here – 1 hour 5 minutes into the programme. Overall the debate was rather strange – the MEP pension and expenses rules are very complex and, as with the UK MP scandals, there’s no rule breaking here – it’s just that the rules are set up wrongly. Plus there is little debate about openness of expenses in out EU countries – more on that here. Anyway, a fun experience to be on UK national radio.

In EU news more generally – the stuff I would have liked to talk about – there are 2 new developments today regarding the nomination of the UK’s member of the European Commission, a matter I’ve previously posted about. Geoff Hoon has been further implicated in the UK expenses scandal today, and looks likely to be ousted in Brown’s reshuffle this week. Patricia Hewitt has also announced she is to stand down as a MP, presumably to spend more time with her consultancies family. Or is she just paving the way for a nomination as Commissioner? Overall though all the mess in Westminster means that a strong outsider is needed more than ever – come on Ken Livingstone, Brussels needs you!

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What is a think tank?

Thinking - CC / Flickr

Thinking - CC / Flickr

EUObserver has an article today entitled “Think-tank blasts EU commissioners’ pensions package“. The ‘think tank’ in question is, of course, Open Europe, and the article quotes their press release on the Commissioner pay issue:

Taxpayers around Europe, whose pensions have been swallowed up in the recession, will rightly question why they are footing such an enormous bill for a handful of remote officials who they never voted for in the first place

What degree of thinking was needed to come up with that? Open Europe has a clear line – they want a looser, more intergovernmental Europe, and hence they behave like a pressure group rather than a think tank. Whatever they brand themselves is not relevant; their prime reason for existence is not the production of ideas, it is to push for a set of ideas to become reality. Of course it’s also no surprise that EUObserver falls for it hook, line and sinker.

At the opposite end of the spectrum of you have Bruegel. With Jean Pisani-Ferry, Nicolas Véron and André Sapir heading it these folks can really think. Bruegel also, as a point of principle, refuses to put its name on the EU lobby register. As reported by the Brussels Sunshine blog Matt Dann of Bruegel states “We are not lobbyists, so we will not register in a lobby register”. Bruegel is also open about its funding sources, something that’s not the case for other think tanks.

Muddying the waters still further are other Brussels players such as The Centre (Brussels’ First Think-Do Tank – so is the do actually lobbying?), the EPC that has joined the lobby register despite claiming to be a think tank, and the Friends of Europe / Forum Europe arrangement at the Bibliothèque Solvay that’s part lobby, part think tank, with a rather grey area in between.

In short all of this is a real mess. The term ‘think tank’ is banded about too readily and for the uninitiated which ones are supposed to be believed? Is a report on the telecoms market by a Brussels think tank really a think piece, or is it a quasi-academic re-hashing of Deutsche Telekom’s position?

[UPDATE - 25.03.2009]
European Tribune has more on the Open Europe issue – they have done some calculations on the ‘research’ that Open Europe released this week.

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Open Europe want to have their olive oil and drink it

Oluve Oil - CC / FLickr

Olive Oil - CC / Flickr

6000 working groups during the Swedish Presidency!? What do all those meetings do? That’s the question posed by Open Europe. Undoubtedly there is a cost, and a financial burden, posed by this number of meetings but – frankly – what is the alternative? Let’s take the Working Party on Olive Oil stated by the Open Europe blog entry. I’ve never been to that particular committee but at a guess it would be advising on what the guaranteed price an olive oil farmer would be paid for a litre of olive oil in the Common Agricultural Policy, and also analysing evidence of any health or contamination issues in olive oil.

Now, Open Europe, if 27 Member States at a working group are not dealing with these things then who would take such decisions? Well, that would be the European Commission. So as Open Europe actually wants a EU better controlled by its Member States then they should actually favour the existence of bodies such as the Working Party on Olive Oil.

Now there’s the wider issue of whether the EU should be regulating olive oil or not, but if the EU is in the business of doing that then there have to be the systems to allow decisions to be taken.

But of course with Open Europe (which claims to be a ‘think tank’ – not that you would know) they first and foremost want to have a little while about bureaucracy. Forget any analysis of why there might be need for working groups, oh no, that wouldn’t fit the agenda now would it?

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