25 June 2010 1:48 PM
Paying for propaganda: how the European Commission plans to buy journalists
The International Herald Tribune appeared shocked, really shocked, to find out that the EU had been paying selected journalists to travel to Strasbourg to cover the dull and dangerous activities of the parliament. The paper gasped that such 'payments spark questions on free-press principles.'
Bless their innocent little American hearts. Research published by Open Europe in December 2008 showed that the annual propaganda budget for the EU was at least €2.8bn (£2.3bn at today's exchange rate). Did the Herald Trib really imagine none of it was sloshing over into the expense accounts of EU-friendly journalists?
And did they really imagine no European journalists would take such money? Remember, there are Continental journalists here in Brussels who submit to licensing from their home governments -- in other words, submit to the practise of politicians deciding who is free to practise as a reporter and who isn't. Once a journalist will submit to that, being paid by politicians is just one more little step.
Now the European Commission intends to expand the system. They plan to start using taxpayers' money to make the same kind of payments to journalists and television crews travelling abroad with José Manuel Barroso, the commission president, and other commissioners.
According to a letter dated June 21st and written by Viviane Reding, a vice-president of the commission, to Barroso, and seen by an on-line journal, Euractiv (which itself has a history of taking money from the European Commission), Mrs Reding intends that the commission 'take in charge some of the costs of journalists travelling with you [Barroso] and fellow commissioners.'
Mrs Reding also plans that two photographers be hired to stay on permanent call for Barroso. This is meant to ensure the commission president has a 24-hour coverage. A television crew will also travel with him. According to Euractiv, the service will also be extended to commissioners on 'media-sensitive missions, like the planned visit of Olli Rehn [economic commissioner] to Athens in the coming weeks.'
All this is going to make Barroso's entourage very crowded, what with having his personal photographer and personal television crew and personal pet journalists in tow, since apparently he will also have a team of four new speech writers going along, too. The commission president is going to have such a fat doughnut around him that real journalists won't be able to get through. Though obviously that's the point.
Daniel Hannan: the export-model Conservative
The Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan did another star turn here in Brussels yesterday evening, this time at an Open Europe debate on 'The EU after the crisis -- superstate or disintegration?'
The man is the perfect Tory: educated, articulate, principled, patriotic, straight-talking. All of which made try to picture him sitting alongside David Cameron, in just the way these days we so often see Cameron sitting alongside Nick Clegg. I couldn't conjure up the image. I couldn't see Cameron ever sitting next to Hannan with the same natural ease -- both physically and politically -- with which he sits next to Clegg.
The problem is that while Hannan is the perfect Tory, Cameron is the LibDem Tory. Which is near enough no Tory at all. I'd say Cameron is very glad Hannan is kept shifting between Brussels and Strasbourg and his South East England constituency. The prime minister would only suffer by comparison if Hannan were in the Commons.
Meanwhile, the debate. One point Hannan made which is worth considering is this. In 1970s, the 15 countries which made up the EU before the accession of the new central and eastern European members represented 35 percent of the world's GDP. Today, they represent 24 percent. In 2020, the forecast is they will represent just 15 percent.
I'd say a case could be made from those figures that Britain has tied itself to an increasingly irrelevant continent -- not least because, as Giles Merritt, a pro-EU journalist and think-tank director said during the debate, one of the great problems Europe faces now is its declining and ageing population.
Merritt didn't offer any of the usual 'more Europe' solutions to this population problem he presented. But I do have to say this. If the problem is persuading more European women to become pregnant, Herman Van Rompuy is not the solution.
Then there was a small dust-up between Hannan and Merritt on just what allowed Europe to establish global hegemony after 1500. Hannan said it was the competition which resulted from the great diversity of all the various independent powers of the continent. Merritt said it was just the opposite, that Europe only gained its influence because of the Treaty of Westphalia (in case you are a long time out of school: that is name given to two treaties of 1648 which ended the 30 Years War and established large sovereign states).
I usually consider the Treaty of Westphalia a stinker. But it is interesting that both Hannan and Merritt saw the key reasons around 1500 for the leap in power of the European nations to be their political structures. I'd tend to think about finance instead: around 1400, Europe acquired double entry book-keeping. Around 1500, banking. Around 1600, the joint stock company.
The combination drove history in a way few political structures or treaties ever could.
19 June 2010 7:25 PM
Footie for euroseptics
It really, really wasn't where I wanted to be. In fact, in between shouting scraps of conversation -- damn those vuvuzela, which have made their way into the German population of Brussels -- about the Belgian elections to the Flemish lawyer I was meeting for lunch, I was grousing loudly that I had no idea who was playing Germany but I was about to start cheering for them.
A shout came from the next table: 'Serbia. They are playing Serbia, and I am supporting Serbia.'
'So, you're a Serb?' I asked.
'No, I'm a Slovenian, but out of solidarity with a member of the former Yugoslavia, I'm supporting the Serbs.'
Okay, so I started cheering for Serbia. I have to like any nation that breaks up a fake supranational 'state' such as Yugoslavia to re-establish itself as a sovereign country.
And my Flemish lawyer friend? He decided to join the cheers for Serbia, too. After all, as a decent Flemish democrat, he wants Belgium to split up, just as Yugoslavia split up (though with less blood, obviously). He wants Flanders to take its place as a sovereign country. So, cheers from him for the secessionist team.
Then there was a Finnish diplomat nearby. He joined in our exclusive corner of Serbian supporters: Finland once had to break free of the Russian empire, so Id say he knew all about a nation regaining its sovereignty.
All of which rather raised the heart: it was a reminder that European history isn't really about ever closer union. It's about nations, time and again, throwing off empires. And I'll always cheer for that. Where's my vuvuzela?
Posts
