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Daniel Hannan

Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes that the EU is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free. He is the winner of the Bastiat Award for online journalism.

MEPs claim to be under attack 

from, er, Colombian secret service

 

By Daniel Hannan Politics Last updated: June 25th, 2010

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The European project is under attack. This time, the threat comes, not from American neo-cons or British Tories, not from Polish nationalists or short-selling bankers, but from Colombian spies.

MEPs are demanding an investigation into the activities of the Colombian intelligence agency, DAS, which they accuse of having mounted a campaign to destabilise the European Parliament (hat-tip, EU Observer).

As regular readers will know, a number of Euro-MPs have always seen Colombia, and in particular its recent leader, Alvaro Uribe, as proxies of Washington. South America has its share of caudillos at present. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador have all rewritten their constitutions to remove the checks on presidential power. Uribe, by contrast, insisted on standing down when his term came to an end, defying the clamour of his people who had wanted, by a large majority, to amend Colombia’s constitution so as to allow him to stay. Last month, the diminutive Liberal politician returned to his hacienda, as Cincinnatus to his plough, leaving a stronger, freer and richer state behind him.

Yet it is his regime, not the surrounding autocracies, which MEPs choose to condemn. Small wonder that Euro-MPs display such an equivocal attitude to referendum results within the EU when they have such a shaky understanding of democracy elsewhere.

Tags: Alvaro Uribe, Colombian intelligence, DAS, European Parliament,Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez