05 November 2013

EIM Political October 2013

With France immobilised by internal problems and the UK debating whether to leave the EU entirely, Italy may seize the opportunity of its upcoming Council Presidency to take a bolder role. However, next May's EP elections could bring a disorganised but influential anti-EU block into the Parliament.

The end of the Berlusconi era seems to be allowing Italy to come back onto the European stage – perhaps at a critical juncture, as Italy will take up the Council Presidency in 2H 2014 when the new Parliament and Commission will be thinking about goals for their five-year term of office. With France immobilised by internal problems and the UK also immobilised by debating whether to leave the EU entirely, Italy may seize the opportunity to take a bolder role. However, the European political class is now fully alert to the risk of a public backlash in next May’s EP elections that could bring a disorganised but influential anti-EU block into the Parliament.

Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta now seems to be freed from the shadow of Berlusconi and is putting Italy back on the European stage. He wrote that next year's change of top EU personnel represents an ideal opportunity to debate what Europe stands for, and how to create a more stable, integrated and prosperous union – one based on solidarity, interdependence and enlightened self-interest. But it requires Member States’ willingness to pool a greater share of their sovereignty. A genuine EMU will also require some degree of risk-sharing. “The crisis has shown that we cannot rely only on national budgets to absorb shocks and support the necessary adjustment. National tools can be inadequate and, without a form of support from the central level, the economic and social price to pay for a Member State can be dramatically high.” … “Yet solidarity can also be just enlightened self-interest, a form of reciprocity, from which everyone benefits in turn and that does not lead to permanent transfers. That notion is in my view compatible with the logic of the EMU.” … “From this perspective, I think there is room to reflect on a fiscal capacity for the euro area. Such a fiscal capacity could provide the financial incentives, at least initially, for the implementation of major reforms at the national level and expand later on into other stabilisation functions.”

President van Rompuy: We have been seeing a Europeanisation of national policy: Speaking to the French Assemblée Nationale, he called upon the French to cooperate with Germany to further the European project, stressing in particular the importance of a strengthened economic and monetary union. "The key word is interdependence. Leaders and the public have come to know the intimate entanglement of our economies, our societies and our policies. They now know what it really means to share a common space and to share a currency… Where do we go together, and how far? What is the nature of this Europe that we want to create? Your country has been asking for a "more political" Europe for decades. Well, Europe has indeed become more political. Your partners across Europe need France to play a specific role in this European project, to meet not only the expectations of the French but also of other Europeans."

Many EU leaders are now focusing on the potential impact of a sizeable number of anti-EU MEPs after the May 2014 election: Italian PM Letta said the EU's political mainstream must go into battle against a rise in populism that next year threatens to usher in the "most eurosceptic, most anti-European parliament in history" and scupper hopes of long-term economic recovery. If they were to win more than 25 per cent of the vote next May, he warned, it would be the start of a "very negative" trend that could have a potentially devastating impact on the continent's potential for growth. "I believe the risk of having the most anti-European European parliament in history is being greatly underestimated", Letta told the Guardian and five other European newspapers, characterising the challenge as a "great battle" between "the Europe of the people and the Europe of populism". He said mainstream, pro-Europe parties must win at least 70 per cent of the seats to avoid a “nightmarish legislature”.

Commission President Barroso warns of racism and xenophobia ahead of European elections: "We have to be honest that the crisis and the rise in unemployment is an occasion for populist forces to become more aggressive and gain some votes... We should not forget that in Europe, not so many decades ago, we had very, very worrying developments of xenophobia and racism and intolerance.” "That is why we are asking the so-called mainstream parties to have the courage to get out of their comfort zone, to think that today, at a time of crisis, we cannot take the European Union for granted."

Policy Network/Priestley: Stopping the populist advance on the European Parliament: Priestley (former EP Secretary–General) argues that the cardinal error would be for left, centre and right to defend 'our Europe right or wrong', and everything done in Europe's name, against the europhobe hordes. This toxic mixture - apathy and anger - topped up with general ignorance about what is at stake in the elections - could lead to some startlingly alarming results. This populist advance has two dangers. 2014 won’t be the first EP elections which have seen populists get elected; but the damage they do has thus far been limited because they have been so diverse, so disorganised and so uninterested in the day-to-day work of Parliament that they have not been in a position to sabotage core business. But if their numbers (currently around 100 MEPs) were to double and if they were to use their extra resources to organise effectively, their ability to wreck the work programme of the EU - not just the Parliament - should not be underestimated.

Jan-Werner Mueller: How Europe could face its own shutdown: An alliance of anti-EU parties led by the Front National's Marine Le Pen could take Europe into its own shutdown, writes Mueller in the Guardian. European citizens will not get different policies, but paralysis. Blueprints for making the EU more democratic have often focused on giving even more powers to MEPs – on the naïve assumption that the parliament would always automatically be pro-European. But what if it is captured by a European version of the Tea Party, a group that campaigns in the name of the principle that government itself is the problem? However, a significant number of truly anti-EU parties are simply destructive and suffer from fundamental contradictions. As an illuminating study by Marley Morris has shown, anti-Europeans do little real work in the legislature, preferring to grandstand in plenary sessions – UKIP is a champion of this approach.

IIEA/Barry: Selecting the next President of the European Commission: The rules of the game have changed since President Barroso began his second term in 2010. The relevant article of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) is:  TEU Article 17 (7): Taking into account the elections to the European Parliament and after having held the appropriate consultations, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall propose to the European Parliament a candidate for President of the Commission. This candidate shall be elected by the European Parliament by a majority of its component members. If he does not obtain the required majority, the European Council, acting by a qualified majority, shall within one month propose a new candidate who shall be elected by the European Parliament following the same procedure. It appears that conflicting interpretations exist on the procedure to be followed for the selection of the next President of the European Commission. The political groups in the European Parliament are each selecting their candidates on the basis that the group that polls best in the elections next May will have their candidate appointed with near-automaticity, and they are banking on this to ignite voter interest in the elections.

EUobserver: EU vote not decisive on Commission President, says Merkel: Merkel, however, has poured cold water on hopes that the European Commission President candidate of the most popular political party after next year's EU election will automatically get the post. "I don't see any automaticity between top candidates and the filling of posts…The treaty says that it should be taken into account. Otherwise the Commission president will be voted by the parliament based on a proposal by the [EU leaders]."

President Barroso: Repatriation of powers "impossible": David Cameron's plan to scrap an "ever closer" EU and to renationalise powers back to Britain is "doomed to failure", Barroso said. Meanwhile, the Commission unveiled ambitious plans towards making EU law 'lighter'. Barroso warned Cameron that his strategy to claw back competences from the EU would fail. "We have won allies to get powers back from Europe", the Prime Minister had stated on the last day of the Conservative Party conference. The Commission president said that "there will be others, many, who oppose" Mr Cameron's call for treaty change to reduce EU powers, and that other European leaders would simply veto British proposals that must be agreed unanimously.

President van Rompuy: "The State of Europe - Tough choices for a troubled Europe": Van Rompuy drew important lessons from the experience of the past four years. “One strikes me above all: the awareness of our interdependence, which is much deeper than it has ever been in the past, especially in the eurozone”. “Economic policies are a matter of common interest”, says the Treaty: today, this has become a daily, tangible reality. In the longer run, turning the EMU into a genuine economic and monetary union will mean even further financial, economic and budgetary integration – significant steps also politically, as leaders are well aware. This was at the heart of my reflection in the Reports I presented last year to the European Council. And for a stronger eurozone, I will make sure this work moves forward, we need an "ever closer" eurozone. The political will of leaders to preserve Europe's unity, to preserve Europe's future cannot be underestimated. The rest of the world has discovered our determination, a determination that was too often underestimated. We have shown it these past five years, and we will continue to do so in the years ahead.”

© Graham Bishop