Saturday, 25 October 2008
Mandelson: What is the EU hiding?
With so much important news requiring coverage, from the economic crisis to the role of our armed forces in Afghanistan, the new found focus on the activities of Peter Mandelson may appear to be trivial fare. But the latest investigations by those in the media who do a little more than rewrite the wire pieces that appear on their screens reveal once again the lack of accountability of the European Union.
One thing that is a consistent theme with the EU is its propensity for ignoring its own rules. We can all think back to our childhood to a time when we played our games. Most of us can probably remember times when someone in our game, who was having the worst of it, attempted to change the rules to suit themselves. So it is with the EU - only this is infinitely more serious as it undermines the supposed protections put in place to safeguard transparency and accountability.
If the EU finds the rules allow dissent, they ignore the rules and move to silence opposition. If corruption is uncovered the whistleblower is the one who suffers, not the perpetrators. Now we see that if the EU is brought into disrepute because of the questionable actions of one it its all-powerful commissioners,
it refuses to abide by its obligations to publish details of its commissioner's meetings and activities. It may not seem as immediately serious as investigating and reporting on the economic crisis, but the EU's behaviour should be a concern for us all. This is, after all, our real government. Over 75% of our laws and regulations originate from Brussels/Strasbourg.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats want to continue down the path of handing over even more control of UK matters to the EU's bureaucrats. The Conservatives want to reform the EU from within and repatriate some of the powers the UK has handed over. What this shows is appalling judgment all round. Only a complete fool would give more power to an entity that refuses to be held accountable or be transparent in its dealings; and that changes the rules on a whim in acts of self preservation at the expense of the public. Only the foolhardy would believe that such an entity can be reformed when it has doggedly resisted all attempts to make it act appropriately and scrutinise its activities. Change is not in the EU's interest - and it will never govern in ours.
In all likelihood the EU has been caught out in another of its deceptions and is therefore refusing to hand over the evidence that could prove Mandelson lied about his involvement with Oleg Deripaska. It cannot stand the public enquiring into its methods or decisions. And it gets positively hostile when the serfs refuse to accept the EU's answers at face value and demand the truth. So here we are again but for once it seems some good has come out of the media's obsession with trivia - as it has accidentally stumbled upon something of substance.
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