BRUSSELSWATCH

A waste of Shame

There is something incongruous about an Oscar winning actor admonishing the rest of us about rampant consumerism, and the more so when he lives in a fifteenth century Irish castle. I raised a wry smile, therefore, when the European Commission produced Jeremy Irons at its press conference last week to launch its green paper on plastic waste.

Now I am a fan of Irons the actor. His recent Henry IV in the television production “The Hollow Crown” was masterful as was his accompanying exploration of Shakespeare’s history plays. Whether he has any special insight into plastic waste is, however, more questionable.

The EU has produced at least 12 Directives on waste generation since the 1970s covering everything from reducing waste in landfill sites to specific legislation on the disposal of electronic and electrical equipment and of used vehicles. The green paper is, however, the first specifically to address plastic waste.

Environment Commissioner Janez Potočnik explained, “Plastic is often perceived as a cheap and disposable material in our ‘throw-away’ society, and recycling rates are low,” “Half of all plastic waste generated in Europe goes to landfill which should be avoided as plastic can contain hazardous components and disposal can result in undesirable emissions and concentrated, polluting residues.”

That we are careless about use and disposal of plastics I don’t deny although I think there is room for debate on the best way of dealing with the problem. Where I take issue with the Commissioner (and Irons) is in seeing it as a European Union competence.

Some plastic waste ends up in the sea and can be considered a “cross border issue” in the sense that my coca cola bottle can end up on the beach at Calais or Knokke. But that could be dealt with by legislation specifically controlling sea-borne waste. In almost every other sense the disposal of waste is an issue that could sensibly be left to national (or even local) governments.  In 2002, Ireland introduced a 15 cent charge on single use plastic shopping bags and last year Italy banned non- biodegradable bags. Capannori in Italy has followed a zero-waste strategy. Other countries can look at the costs and benefits of these policies and choose or not to emulate them.

Too often the EU’s response to any problem is Europe-wide legislation. The Treaty on the European Union mandates that “decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen in accordance with the principle of Subsidiarity”. Waste disposal can reasonably be left to national or local governments.

Euro Quango

Last week, the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee recommended (by 16 votes to 12, with one abstention) that Parliament reject the accounts of the European Environment Agency. The Committee has long been critical of the EEA for its executive director’s close connections with the environmental NGO, Earthwatch, to which the Agency had paid €33,791. The Committee also criticised the Agency for spending €30,000 on “staff training sessions” in the Mediterranean and Caribbean and the €300,000 cost of putting plants on the façade of its Copenhagen headquarters.

Last December, the European Ombudsman, Nikiforos Diamandouros, criticised the European Food Safety Agency (2010 expenditure €73 million) for a similar conflict of interest over the case of Suzy Renckens, who had headed its Genetically Modified Organisms Unit until 2008 when she moved to Syngenta, one of the world’s leading producers of genetically engineered plants. A report by the Budgetary Control Committee had also criticised  the head of EFSA's board, Diana Banati for her links with International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), a lobby group which acts on behalf of numerous food and biotech multinationals, including Danone, Kraft Foods, Monsanto, Nestlé and Procter & Gamble. It said she had "failed, in 2010, to declare her membership of the Board of Directors of the ILSI". She subsequently resigned.

These cases draw attention to the profusion of technical agencies funded by the EU but otherwise independent of democratic control: the European Institute for Gender Equality, the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking, the Clean Sky Joint Undertaking. Then there are the European Aviation Safety Agency, the European Railway Agency and the Trans-European Transport Network Executive Agency. These and many others consume an annual budget of 1.5 billion Euros and, apart from Parliament’s annual oversight of their budgets, they are accountable to no one.

They also duplicate task undertaken by member states, by the Commission itself and by other international organisations. For example, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and the Institute for Gender Equality (with a combined budget of €28.1million) duplicate the work of national agencies such as the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, of the Commission itself which has a Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship (Viviane Reding ) and of the European Council and European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

The number of these quangos has doubled since 2004. Some, like Frontex (the borders agency), Eurojust (the European prosecutor), the European Police Office and CEPOL (the European Police College) are the product of the rejected Constitution. Hayek warned that “the delegation of particular technical tasks to separate bodies, while a regular feature, is yet only the first step in the process whereby a democracy which embarks on planning progressively relinquishes its powers.” There needs to be a cull of these Euro Quangos and those that remain must be made truly accountable and transparent. 

Who will lend to the lenders?

It is like a game of pass the parcel in the Eurozone. Countries lend to members in crisis and then themselves borrow crisis funds to shore up their own finances.

So Spain participated in the first Greek bail-out and provided just over 11% of the guarantees for the European Financial Stability Facility which bailed out Ireland, Portugal and (for the second time) Greece.

Now Spain needs to borrow 110 billion Euros to support its own banks. Of this Italy will contribute 18 billion Euros at an interest rate of just 3%. Italy will borrow this itself from the markets at anything up to 7%. Who will Italy borrow from when it can no longer borrow from the markts? Who will finance an Italian bail-out?

Who will be holding the parcel when the music stops?

 

A Greek exit or a Trojan horse

They denied that it was possible; now they plan for it: a Greek exit from the Euro. Germany and the European Central Bank are thought to have made contingency plans. At the IMF they have made technical preparations, but its President, Christine Lagarde, warns "It would be extremely expensive and not just in Greece, extremely expensive and hard."

A Greek exit will not solve the Euro’s problems. Indeed, on its own it may make things worse. Within days of Greece leaving the Euro the markets will turn their attention to Portugal, Spain or Italy. We will see unprecedented flights of capital from those countries beyond the scope of European Stability Mechanism to cope. Of course, the ESM could be topped up and the European Central Bank could intervene to provide liquidity, but it is unlikely that the Bundesbank would agree to further exposure. Interest rates in those countries would rise pushing them further into recession and exacerbating their fiscal deficits. Within a very short time their position too as members of the Eurozone would become untenable.

The German magazine  Spiegel recently obtained hundreds of pages of documents from 1994 to 1998 on the introduction of theEuro. They include reports from the German embassy in Rome, internal government memos and letters, and hand-written minutes of Chancellor Kohl’s meetings. They show that the decision to include Italy as a Euro member  was based on political considerations at the expense of economic criteria. Countries were included in the Euro to fulfill a dream of “ever closer union” rather than for economic reasons. Political vanity trumped economic good sense.

Europe’s leaders need to stop planning for a Greek exit and start planning for the breakup of the Euro, with those countries who should never have joined reverting to their national currencies. The irony is that those who promoted the Euro as a political project have done most damage to the European Union.

 

 

A million here, a million there. Soon it adds up to real money.

The European Commission has proposed a 6.8% increase in the Eu’s budget at a time when it is urging member states to control spending. Not surprisingly, this has generated some incredulity in national capitals. Paris described the increase as "impossible, unjustifiable and unacceptable” and Germany called it "inappropriate" against the backdrop of the debt crisis”.

The Commission argues that the increase is needed to fund long-term commitments. In other words, there is nothing to be done.

So in the spirit of helping the Commission trim the fat from its budget let me offer the following suggestion. There are two quangos that between them cost 215 million a year and which contribute absolutely nothing. Few have heard of them and fewer would miss them if they were not there.

The Economic and Social Committee, 344 unelected worthies meeting monthly in their own headquarters on rue Belliard in Brussels is described as “the bridge between Europe and organised civil society”. Excuse my democratic naivety, but that is what the European Parliament is for.

The Committee of the Regions is a more recent invention, giving Europe’s regions and cities an input into EU decision making.

Both are consulted on proposed legislation, but neither has the power to alter it. The special interests euphemistically described as “civil society” are more than capable of making representations to the Parliament or the Commission itself (and they do). Many local authorities maintain representative offices in Brussels likewise to represent their interests. So what exactly is the added value of these two committees?

215 million Euros is not going to solve the EU’s budget problems but add it to the 180 million that could be saved by the European Parliament not travelling to Strasbourg once a month and soon, as they say, you are talking real money. And rather than buy and renovate additional buildings for the European Parliament to accommodate additional MEPs and their staff (at a total cost of 125 million Euros) they can move into the Committees’ Delors Building just next door to the Parliament.

FU Rajoy!

No sooner was the ink dry on the Fiscal Union Treaty than countries began backtracking on their commitments. Spain’s Prime Minister exited the Council meeting at which the new Treaty was signed to announce that Spain would not meet its 4.4% GDP target for borrowing this year.

Rajoy, who won power last November, inherited an 8.5% deficit in 2011 and now forecasts a deficit for 2012 of 5.8%.

This is all reminiscent of the EU’s original Stability and Growth Pact agreed by members of the Euro in 1991 at the insistence of German Finance Minister, Theo Waigel, to enforce budgetary discipline in the euro zone. When, in 2002, Germany together with France broke through the 3% deficit limit, Brussels was paralysed to act. In the Council Meeting at which sanctions should have been agreed, France voted with Germany and Germany with France. They were backed by Italy and Portugal who were both about to join them in breaking the Pact’s limits, blocking the Commission’s power to punish them.

Rajoy made it clear that he considers the Spanish budget a matter for the Spanish government: “This is a sovereign decision that Spain has taken, while EU Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Olli Rehn, insisted that the EU would stick to the rules of the treaty. Jean-Claude Junker, President of the Eurogroup, declared, “Spain must respect the targets it has been given”. A Commission spokesman said, “We are not talking about giving any flexibility to the current rule”. Nonetheless, that is exactly what the EU has done, giving in to Spain’s fait accompli.

Rajoy’s argument is not without merit: after posting 2.3% growth last year, Spain’s economy is forecast to contract by 1.7% in 2012, pushing unemployment towards 25% of the workforce. It’s importance lies in the damage it does to the credibility of the new treaty.

Already the Dutch opposition Labour Party has threatened to block ratification of the Treaty unless the Netherlands is given more time to reduce its deficit and Ireland  has requested the restructuring of 30.9 billion Euros of debt used to recapitalise its banks.

On the other hand, Hungary (not a member of the euro-zone) is smarting from the EU’s decision to withhold 495 million Euros because it will run a 3% deficit this year rising to 3.6% in 2013. Speaking at a rally to celebrate Hungary’s 1848 revolution against the Habsburgs, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán hit out at the EU: “We are more than familiar with the character of unsolicited comradely assistance, even if it comes wearing a finely tailored suit rather than a uniform with shoulder patches”. Again the EU has backed down (for now) agreeing to review the situation in June.

In addition, in France, Socialist candidate and front-runner for the presidency, François Hollande, insists that, if elected, he will renegotiate the Fiscal Union Treaty. One way or another, this treaty, which was supposed to give credibility to the economic management of the Euro-zone, will be watered down. The reality is that fiscal union is not now, and has no prospect of becoming, a reality. Euro crises will recur until the Euro-zone is broken up. 

 

Deficient Democracy

When Jerzy Buzek became President of the European Parliament in 2009 he did so as part of a deal between the centre right European Peoples’ Party and the Socialists which foresaw the leader of the Socialists, Martin Schultz, succeeding him in 2012.

Turn-and-turn-about between the two largest groups in the Parliament has been the pattern of its presidency for some time with the Spanish Socialist, Josep Borrell previously preceding the German Christian Democrat, Hans-Gert Pöttering. Now, two British MEPs, the Conservative Nirj Deva and Liberal Democrat Dianne Wallis are seeking to put a stick in the spokes of two-party machine by challenging Schultz for the Presidency. An election will now take place next Tuesday.

With the support of the two largest parliamentary groups, Shultz looks like a shoe-in, but a small sign of the frustration felt by the EPP and Socialists at the impertinence of Deva and Wallis’s challenge to their hegemony is their refusal to allow the three candidates to address the plenary session before Tuesday’s vote.

When the EU lectures states on democracy and the rule of law and send MEPs to monitor their elections, it would be better if it were not quite so reluctant to embrace democracy at home.

 

Unity in Diversity

Since last week’s Commons motion on a referendum on our membership of the EU, there has been debate in newspapers, on the blogs and among Conservative and Liberal politicians as to whether and how we might repatriate powers from Brussels. Any treaty revision to improve the governance of the Eurozone would, the argument runs, be an opportunity for the UK to seek the return of competences yielded to the EU in previous treaties.

In the past two European elections it has been Conservative policy to repatriate powers: over fisheries in 2004 and employment laws in 2009. Neither has happened. One might argue that in that period there has not been a majority Conservative government capable of delivering on those promises, but I strongly suspect that had the party won an outright majority in 2010 we would still be no nearer to realising these aspirations and had we done so the price we would have paid would have been disproportionate.

For those Conservatives who believe Britain’s future is outside the EU, no repatriation of powers would be sufficient; for those who want us to remain members, there are always other priorities.

Perhaps we should frame the question differently: Would another treaty negotiation afford us the opportunity to reform the EU?

During the negotiations for the Maastricht Treaty John Major had the following words added to the preamble: “ RESOLVED to continue the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity”.

Now, the idea that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the citizen is a very Conservative one. We believe that decisions are best taken by individuals and families and where that is not possible, by local rather than national or supranational government. Since its first appearance in the Maastricht Treaty subsidiarity has been a principle more honour'd in the breach than the observance.  Of all the directives and regulations promulgated since 1992 the Court of Justice has incredibly found only one to flout this principle.

The peoples of Europe, on whose behalf EU leaders and the Commission claim to speak, are frustrated with the centralising tendency of never-ending institutional reform. It is time to make the case, not merely for the UK to take back powers, but for the EU to return powers that it has accumulated over the past 50 years to individuals, families, local communities, and national governments across the continent.  From agriculture to regional policy, from environmental legislation to employment law, there are things that would better be done “as closely as possible to the citizen”. The single market does not require uniformity: fearing a race to the bottom in social, employment or environmental policy is a council of despair. “Unity in Diversity” is the motto of the European Union. It is time to swing the balance back in the direction of a little more diversity and a little less uniformity.

 

Roger Helmer MEP

With Roger Helmer's announcement that he will step down as a Member of the European Parliament at the end of the year it seemed like a good time to post my review of his book, Sceptic at Large, which was first published in the European Journal in July of this year.

 

Sceptic at Large: Roger Helmer MEP

Roger Helmer is not a sceptic in the normal meaning of the word: “a person inclined to question or doubt accepted opinions”. He does not doubt. He is as certain that he is right as the targets of his attack: the Brussels bureaucrats, Europhiles and “climate change alarmists”. Neither is he a contrarian, merely seeking controversy. His positions are based on his well-reasoned response to the evidence that he sees. Sceptic at Large is, then, more a personal manifesto.

Helmer threads a narrative through extracts from his speeches and blogs which gives the book the immediacy of responding to events as they unfold.  It also gives the book a sense of frustration, almost exasperation, that others cannot see his obvious truth. Roger Helmer in person is charming and witty. The charm is here: even under severe provocation he remains courteous; his infectious humour is, however, largely absent.

Time and again he is surprised at how far the Brussels machine will go to rig the debate. He reminds me of Charlie Brown in the Schultz cartoon: repeatedly Lucy holds the football for Charlie to kick and each time pulls it away at the last minute, leaving Charlie Brown on his butt in the dust. The European Council recognised “that there were problems with democracy, transparency and efficiency within the EU” and Helmer agrees with them adding “corruption” to the list of indictments. The European Convention, tasked with solving these problems, instead produced the “all-embracing” Constitution which threatened to “end British independence”. When French and Dutch voters reject the Constitution, Helmer is “astonished at the bare-face effrontery” that revives it as the Lisbon Treaty. When Ireland struck “a historic blow for freedom and democracy” by rejecting the renamed Constitution, Helmer is shocked by the cynicism that requires them to vote again.

He is no less disappointed in the leadership of his own Party. Having supported David Cameron for the Party leadership in 2005, he was “appalled, shocked and disappointed” when Cameron “repudiated” the policy of holding a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. According to Helmer, David Cameron has drifted away from the core beliefs of the Conservative Party and the LibDems are having undue influence in the coalition. On the Irish bail-out, Turkish accession to the EU, the European Arrest Warrant and Investigation Order, Ken Clarke’s justice policies and the decision to “decimate the armed forces” he is at odds with his party. Or, at least, he is at odd with its leadership. As he says, “the Party rank-and-file is a great deal closer to my position than to that of the Conservative High Command”.

He is at odds with them too on what he calls “climate change hysteria”. He neither accepts the “alarmist science” nor does he believe the measures proposed will do much to improve matters. Green climate policies are “probably unnecessary, certainly ineffectual and ruinously expensive”.

Helmer takes the opportunity to settle some old scores: with his long-standing rival in the East Midlands, “Bill Turncoat Dunn” who, having been elected a Conservative MEP, defected to the LibDems and with Hans-Gert Pöttering, the former leader of the EPP who moved to expel him from the Group in the European Parliament. The BBC’s Environment correspondent James Harrabin and the Guardian’s Leo Hickman are taken to task on climate change and he repeatedly mocks “Rumpy Pumpy” Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council and “Barosso No-Mates” the President of the Commission who proposes paying journalists to travel with him. 

If the general tone is of gloom and disappointment, there are moments when the real Roger Helmer emerges, like the sun from behind a cloud. He is sceptical about the merits of art, literature, poetry or architecture after the early 20th century and gives us paeans to Edward Burne-Jones (“move over Michelangelo’s David … move over Moan Lisa”), to Lutyens, to Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia and to H.E. Marshall’s Our Island Story. Are there clues here to his wider world view? He appears in country attire to support the Fernie Hunt Team Chase and at the East Midlands Food Festival praising the producers of Lincolnshire Poacher Cheese. Is there nostalgia for more certain times? He quotes Cecil Rhodes, “the greatest prize in the lottery of life was to be born an Englishman” and goes on, “I was born a free Englishman … All I ask is to be a free man in a free country again.”

Sceptic at Large will be probably be read by those who already agree with Helmer, on the EU and on climate change. It deserves a wider audience. He may be certain where he stands on these issues but his positions are well argued and he deserves to be read by those of us who really are sceptics.

 

 

Like the Bourbons, Sir Malcolm Rifkind has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

In this evening’s Evening Standard Sir Malcolm Rifkind writes beneath the headline “Tories must stand up for a diverse Europe”. So far, so good.

He reminds us that in 1993 “a significant minority of Conservative MPs were so obsessed with Europe that they undermined the Prime Minister’s authority at every opportunity”.

He might at this point have reflected that they were right: the Maastricht Treaty which ushered in economic and Monetary Union was contrary to Britain’s national interest. A single currency across an economically diverse continent would require further political union, would be unstable and would lead to economic chaos. So it has proved.

He concludes from this experience and recent economic events that the answer is “to construct an EU where those member states who wish to have fiscal union and greater social harmonisation are not prevented from doing so by those who are opposed".

This was exactly the fallacy of John Major’s Maastricht Euro opt-out. With 60% of Britain’s exports going to Europe and 40% to the Eurozone we cannot be disinterested observers. What happens on the other side of the channel is always of fundamental importance to Britain and the British government should be in there fighting for the British national interest. As George Osborne recently observed, “Resolving euro crisis would be single biggest boost to British growth”.

Malcolm Rifkind was, of course, Defence Secretary during the Maastricht crisis and later John Major’s foreign Secretary so his loyalty to the 20-year-old party line is understandable, even touching. But it will not do.

It is as true today as in 1993 that a European single currency will always be unstable. If Greece and Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland are bailed out, if the cracks are papered over and if the Eurozone remains intact, we will face another crisis, loss of trade, recession and unemployment the next time the world economy delivers a shock to the Euro.