The European Parliament building in Strasbourg, France: is it a necessity? (0095461)
WONDERFUL, isn’t it, when the body politic makes a two-fingered gesture and stops its government in its tracks?
‘What crisis?’ said Jim Callaghan in 1979 as mounting industrial unrest had brought chaos to Britain in the winter of discontent.
Not long afterwards, he was mercilessly booted out of Downing Street, allowing Labour to drift into the wilderness and Margaret Thatcher to begin her own long premiership.
Earlier, in 1974, Edward Heath had called a general election and asked the country to decide ‘Who governs Britain, the miners or the government?’.
The people decided that whoever did govern Britain, it certainly wasn’t going to be Heath any more. Out he went through the front door, grand piano and all.
It’s the sort of thing that happens when voters begin to feel they’re being taken advantage of. They sniff something in the air and sense something isn’t quite right.
It’s what’s going on now with Gordon Brown. Many of the banana skins of the past year haven’t been caused by the government itself and, in truth, they’d have been handled in much the same way by whatever party had been in power.
Brown walked into Downing Street by arrangement with a dozen or so Labour Party colleagues, a fait accompli after Tony Blair had stepped down. He likes to say he was ‘elected unopposed’ but he wasn’t elected to be prime minister by anyone at all. The British people don’t like being put upon and it’s almost certain he’ll be sent packing when the next election is called.
The Irish people told their government to get stuffed when they were asked to ratify the Lisbon Treaty.
The people of France and Holland had made a similar gesture when asked to agree the new EU Constitution in 2005.
Nicolas Sarkozy was pretty blunt, calling the Irish ‘bloody fools’ in a newspaper interview.
The Irish ‘no’ certainly stopped Sarkozy in his presidential steps. Taking over the six-month rotating European presidency next week, he’s desperately looking for ways of keeping the Lisbon Treaty on course.
He’s reportedly trying to identify a ‘mechanism’ which bypasses the requirement for all EU member countries to ratify the treaty before its provisions can be implemented. A fudge and a fix.
The rebuff from Ireland, though, isn’t going to spoil the party being planned by the French for their forthcoming EU presidency. For starters, the Eiffel Tower, from next Tuesday evening, will be a blaze of European blue and gold.
A fortnight later, there’ll be spectacular Bastille Day celebrations.
France is spending £150m. on dazzling displays of Europeanism throughout its six-month tenure.
Sarkozy’s first Paris summit of European leaders will be on 13 July when he’ll launch his pet project for a ‘Mediterranean Union’ – the giveaway souvenirs for the legions of politicians and diplomats there are set to be the classiest ever: ties, mugs, scarves and so on, all designed by Philippe Starck.
But it doesn’t matter how much glitz European politicians put on things, the reality is that voters are largely disaffected. Never mind the treaties, the constitution, tariffs, policy directives and all the other stuff that goes with our perception of the European Commission in Brussels, it’s the sheer waste of vast amounts of money that sticks in the gullets of voters.
As I’ve written before, the European Parliament shuttles between Brussels and the French city of Strasbourg every month simply to satisfy French pride. The travelling circus itself costs EU voters £160m. a year, in addition to the millions of pounds it costs to maintain the second set of state-of-the-art buildings in Strasbourg anyway.
Green lobbyists have now calculated that the inter-city move causes the same environmental damage as 13,000 round-trip transatlantic flights, pumping 20,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
So, the EU has come up with what’s a PR disaster in the making.
On Monday week, a new luxury, high-speed train, with the correct environmentally-friendly credentials, will whisk MEPs and their attendant eurocrats from one European Parliament to the other. What we’ve all called the European ‘gravy train’ will pass from fiction into reality.
Each return journey will cost taxpayers £158,000 – MEPs will pay a fare of £170, but will be able to claim it back in expenses.
Normally, the Brussels-Strasbourg train is not much better than a cattle truck. But this new express will include all the best refreshments available on the most acclaimed European rail routes. The public, of course, will not be able to use the train, they simply pay for it.
The MEPs, apparently, have one complaint about the train – it’s slightly slower than a flight between the two cities and, most importantly, arrives too late for lunch in one of Strasbourg’s Michelin-starred restaurants.
Just watch out for reporting of the new, exclusive service in UK newspapers on Tuesday of next week. It should be fun.
But that’s not all. Over the past few weeks, there’ve been accounts of how Members of the European Parliament have been taking advantage of extremely lax rules on expenses.
Even those who stay within them are involved in practices which are clearly unacceptable to ordinary people.
Journalists investigating what MEPs claim from the European Parliament have come up with figures of between £300,000 and £600,000 a year. In the past two months, senior Conservative MEPs have been relieved of their positions within the party in the wake of expenses irregularities.
Other UK MEPs are being investigated for similar transgressions.
If Sarkozy wanted to make a real impression on European politics during his presidency, he’d agree to closing down Strasbourg as the second European Parliament and he’d clean up the expenses system. Will he do it? No, he won’t.
Power to the people
WONDERFUL, isn’t it, when the body politic makes a two-fingered gesture and stops its government in its tracks?
‘What crisis?’ said Jim Callaghan in 1979 as mounting industrial unrest had brought chaos to Britain in the winter of discontent.
Not long afterwards, he was mercilessly booted out of Downing Street, allowing Labour to drift into the wilderness and Margaret Thatcher to begin her own long premiership.
Earlier, in 1974, Edward Heath had called a general election and asked the country to decide ‘Who governs Britain, the miners or the government?’.
The people decided that whoever did govern Britain, it certainly wasn’t going to be Heath any more. Out he went through the front door, grand piano and all.
It’s the sort of thing that happens when voters begin to feel they’re being taken advantage of. They sniff something in the air and sense something isn’t quite right.
Brown walked into Downing Street by arrangement with a dozen or so Labour Party colleagues, a fait accompli after Tony Blair had stepped down. He likes to say he was ‘elected unopposed’ but he wasn’t elected to be prime minister by anyone at all. The British people don’t like being put upon and it’s almost certain he’ll be sent packing when the next election is called.
The Irish people told their government to get stuffed when they were asked to ratify the Lisbon Treaty.
The people of France and Holland had made a similar gesture when asked to agree the new EU Constitution in 2005.
Nicolas Sarkozy was pretty blunt, calling the Irish ‘bloody fools’ in a newspaper interview.
The Irish ‘no’ certainly stopped Sarkozy in his presidential steps. Taking over the six-month rotating European presidency next week, he’s desperately looking for ways of keeping the Lisbon Treaty on course.
He’s reportedly trying to identify a ‘mechanism’ which bypasses the requirement for all EU member countries to ratify the treaty before its provisions can be implemented. A fudge and a fix.
The rebuff from Ireland, though, isn’t going to spoil the party being planned by the French for their forthcoming EU presidency. For starters, the Eiffel Tower, from next Tuesday evening, will be a blaze of European blue and gold.
A fortnight later, there’ll be spectacular Bastille Day celebrations.
France is spending £150m. on dazzling displays of Europeanism throughout its six-month tenure.
Sarkozy’s first Paris summit of European leaders will be on 13 July when he’ll launch his pet project for a ‘Mediterranean Union’ – the giveaway souvenirs for the legions of politicians and diplomats there are set to be the classiest ever: ties, mugs, scarves and so on, all designed by Philippe Starck.
But it doesn’t matter how much glitz European politicians put on things, the reality is that voters are largely disaffected. Never mind the treaties, the constitution, tariffs, policy directives and all the other stuff that goes with our perception of the European Commission in Brussels, it’s the sheer waste of vast amounts of money that sticks in the gullets of voters.
Green lobbyists have now calculated that the inter-city move causes the same environmental damage as 13,000 round-trip transatlantic flights, pumping 20,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
So, the EU has come up with what’s a PR disaster in the making.
On Monday week, a new luxury, high-speed train, with the correct environmentally-friendly credentials, will whisk MEPs and their attendant eurocrats from one European Parliament to the other. What we’ve all called the European ‘gravy train’ will pass from fiction into reality.
Each return journey will cost taxpayers £158,000 – MEPs will pay a fare of £170, but will be able to claim it back in expenses.
Normally, the Brussels-Strasbourg train is not much better than a cattle truck. But this new express will include all the best refreshments available on the most acclaimed European rail routes. The public, of course, will not be able to use the train, they simply pay for it.
The MEPs, apparently, have one complaint about the train – it’s slightly slower than a flight between the two cities and, most importantly, arrives too late for lunch in one of Strasbourg’s Michelin-starred restaurants.
Just watch out for reporting of the new, exclusive service in UK newspapers on Tuesday of next week. It should be fun.
But that’s not all. Over the past few weeks, there’ve been accounts of how Members of the European Parliament have been taking advantage of extremely lax rules on expenses.
Even those who stay within them are involved in practices which are clearly unacceptable to ordinary people.
Journalists investigating what MEPs claim from the European Parliament have come up with figures of between £300,000 and £600,000 a year. In the past two months, senior Conservative MEPs have been relieved of their positions within the party in the wake of expenses irregularities.
Other UK MEPs are being investigated for similar transgressions.
If Sarkozy wanted to make a real impression on European politics during his presidency, he’d agree to closing down Strasbourg as the second European Parliament and he’d clean up the expenses system. Will he do it? No, he won’t.
But sometimes, as in Ireland, the people speak.
Article posted on 28th June, 2008 - 9.00am