Britannia Radio

The author, Jamie Smyth, does a good hatchet job on the ranting 
maniacs in the European Parliament but spoils it at the end by a very 
shallow grasp of EU issues!

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IRISH TIMES   30.9.08
MEPs transparent in their suspicions about Libertas

EUROPEAN DIARY: Anti-Ganley hysteria has been sweeping through the 
corridors of power in Brussels, writes Jamie Smyth

IT WAS an extraordinary week at the European Parliament. MEPs held 
their second successive plenary session at their Brussels home rather 
than in Strasbourg, where the roof had collapsed because of a design 
fault in the famous hemicycle debating chamber.

Masonry and rubble fell on scores of seats in the chamber and, 
according to a report into the incident, several British Tory MEPs 
and Fine Gael's Gay Mitchell could have been crushed had the accident 
happened during a plenary debate.

Even the Socialists would not wish this on their centre-right 
opponents. But judging from the ferocity of the attacks MEPs dished 
out last week to Libertas founder Declan Ganley, some clearly want to 
remove him from EU politics permanently.

Co-president of the Greens Daniel Cohn-Bendit used the order-of-
business session at the opening of the plenary to repeat allegations 
that Libertas may have benefited from funding from US agencies such 
as the CIA or the Pentagon. And, in an unusual move, the normally 
conservative [many say ‘neo-Nazi’ for his anti-democratic rulings -
cs]  European Parliament president Hans-Gert Pöttering called on the 
political groups to consider setting up a committee of inquiry.

The following day, the European Commission weighed into Libertas when 
the official spokesman of commission president José Manuel Barroso 
accused Ganley's organisation of double standards. "It ought not to 
be too much for those who ask transparency from others to be 
transparent themselves," he said at the daily briefing for EU 
journalists.

With all the anti-Ganley rhetoric in the air, it was no surprise to 
meet Minister for European Affairs Dick Roche in the European 
Parliament last Tuesday. The pugnacious Wicklow TD has declared all-
out war on Libertas since the referendum defeat in June, and 
enlisting pro-European forces to help combat Ganley seems the natural 
thing to do given Libertas may relaunch as a pan-European group to 
fight next year's June elections.

But the anti-Ganley hysteria could play into the hands of the media-
savvy businessman by allowing him to claim that he has become the 
target of a pan-European witch-hunt.

There was also a certain irony in the parliament's president 
Pöttering calling for transparency from Libertas when MEPs still 
refuse to provide a full and detailed account of their own expenses.

On Thursday the conference of presidents - attended by all the 
political group leaders - decided to ask the US Congress for help in 
investigating Ganley.

Liberal leader Graham Watson justified the decision by saying, rather 
dramatically, that Congress had proved useful in helping to track 
down the source of IRA financing during the Troubles.

Perhaps, but Ganley has not threatened to blow up the Strasbourg 
parliament, a move some MEPs might actually support to relieve them 
of the monthly commute.

It is also rather ludicrous to expect Congress to investigate Ganley 
at a time when it faces the collapse of the US financial system.

Those who allege that the CIA or Pentagon funnelled money into 
Libertas to undermine the EU fail to square this with the fact that 
Washington has been trying to persuade the union to boost its foreign 
and military presence for years.

Jonathan Evans, a British Tory MEP who chairs the European 
Parliament's committee on US relations, confided on Friday that he 
was at a loss to understand the conference of presidents' request to 
Congress. "Do you Irish not have an appropriate body to investigate 
the funding issue?" he asked. "You know Congress is quite busy right 
now."

Evans is right: investigating the funding of Libertas should be an 
Irish responsibility.

To his credit, Fianna Fáil MEP Brian Crowley, who attends the 
conference of presidents as leader of the Union for Europe of the 
Nations (UEN) group, told his colleagues that the Standards in Public 
Office Commission was the appropriate body to undertake any 
investigation.

But it seems that Libertas's plan to launch anti-Lisbon candidates 
across Europe for next June's European elections has spooked pro-
European MEPs into making a pre-emptive strike.

As The Irish Times has reported over the past few months, Ganley has 
questions to answer over the way the Libertas campaign was funded.
But MEPs would be better served challenging his ideas and Libertas's 
vision for Europe, and leaving the investigation of his finances to 
the commission.

It is not as if they don't have enough ammunition. Ganley ran a smart 
referendum campaign by providing a simple, if not always coherent or 
truthful, message to voters about Lisbon. But he has so far failed to 
articulate any viable alternative to the Lisbon Treaty [what about 
‘NO Lisbon Treaty’ as a viable alterrnative? -cs]  or a coherent 
vision of his own ideology.

At a recent meeting in Brussels, he said he was deeply committed to 
the EU, yet he has spent the past few months consorting with 
Eurosceptics [Well that’s what Ganley is, or hadn’t the journalist 
spotted that ? -cs] such as Czech president Vaclav Klaus. He says he 
favours the federalist dream of a directly elected EU president, yet 
rails against European regulation. [two different things! -cs]  He 
wants Georgia to join Nato, so should Ireland join up also? [non 
sequitor -cs]

Surely there is enough meat on the bone here to keep the parliament's 
misguided MEPs occupied.