Hot air - by Richard... Saturday, October 23, 2010

Hot air - by Richard... Saturday, October 23, 2010

Cameron is pledging that he will block the six percent rise in the EU budget which is set to cost us an extra £900 million this year. Can he do that? Well ... the short answer is no. Only the EU parliament can do that. And the long answer? That is here in the consolidated treaties as amended by Lisbon – Article 314.

Basically, what happens is that the Council looks at the proposed budget and agrees a "common position". This is Cameron's first hurdle. If he wants to block the budget, then he has to get a majority on the Council under the QMV procedures.

Supposing by some miracle he get his majority ... not that he will ... the next move is up to the EU parliament. The Council decision is put to the parliament, which decides whether to agree with it. If not – which would be the case - it draws up amendments and forwards them to the Council.

A conciliation committee is then formed to hammer out a joint text. This must be approved by the committee, the Council component by QMV, the parliament by a majority. But then comes the killer:

If the European Parliament approves the joint text whilst the Council rejects it, the European Parliament may, within fourteen days from the date of the rejection by the Council and acting by a majority of its component members and three-fifths of the votes cast, decide to confirm all or some of the amendments referred to in paragraph 4(c). Where a European Parliament amendment is not confirmed, the position agreed in the Conciliation Committee on the budget heading which is the subject of the amendment shall be retained. The budget shall be deemed to be definitively adopted on this basis.

In other words, if the conciliation committee comprising the parliament and the council (the latter acting under QMV) agree the budget, even if the full council then rejects it, the parliament's vote is decisive. It can still approve the budget, without the approval of the 27 member states - of which the UK is but one.

Basically, the power has shifted to the EU parliament, through the Lisbon treaty ... the one Cameron wouldn't give us a referendum on. It is very difficult for the Council to block the budget. As for any member state, without a supporting majority on the council, and again on the conciliation committee, that cannot be done. So, without the support of the other member states, there is nothing Cameron can do.

But then, in the small print, Cameron is not saying he will block the budget. He is actually saying he will "lead a rebellion" against the budget increase. He can "lead", but it is unlikely that any – or enough – will follow. Therefore, this, as always from the Boy Dave, is so much hot air. The "rebellion" will fail, but he can say he tried, knowing all along that any attempts will fail.

When you think about it though, it is more than "hot air". The boy child is taking the piss again. His advisers must have told him the chances of stopping the increase are nil. So he is concocting this elaborate little charade, so he can prance around looking as if he is doing something. But even the muppets on Tory Diary seem to have got that point.

And then they wonder why we look at their posturing with nothing other than undisguised contempt.

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Our partners in government - by Richard...

If anything can be taken to define the "European" experience, it is this amazing confrontation over the rubbish of Naples. Over this one issue, we have Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi vowing to put a stop to an ongoing dispute over whether to build another dump in a national park near Naples, after violent clashes between police and protesters.

As the rubbish piles up in Italy's third-largest city, Naples, and at least 20 police offers were injured in violent clashes with protestors. Thus is Berlusconi forced to say: "We expect that within 10 days, the situation in Terzigno can return to normal." And this at a news conference in Rome after an emergency meeting - about rubbish? He needs an emergency meeting about rubbish?

What has triggered this is the government's plans to build a new dump in Terzigno, which is located 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Naples in Vesuvius National Park. This has for years met with fierce opposition by locals, who have repeatedly blocked access to the existing waste disposal site there. Then, on Thursday, police confronted around 2,000 demonstrators, who threw stones, marbles and firecrackers and used tree trunks to block access to the dump.

Berlusconi also announced he would release €14 million ($20 million) to modernize the existing facility, which the protesters say is overflowing and causing health problems.

The bigger problem, however, is that the site is overflowing with Camorra, the Naples version of the Mafia, who have taken control of waste management in the region. And while the current report refers to the crisis being a major issue for the Italian government for several years, with Berlusconi declaring a national disaster in 2008 – which is when we picked it up, also charting EU involvement - the problem goes back over 14 years. And still the Italians can't sort it out.

Despite this, as we noted in 2008, Italy is a member of the EU. It is charged with running the government of Europe, through the European Council and other institutions, alongside our own government. Yet you have a government which can't even sort out its own rubbish problems, and it is telling us, the British people, how to run our affairs.

In a way though, the experience is a more than adequate symbol of Europe – an expensive pile of festering rubbish, mired in corruption, surrounded by inept and impotent politicians, which is managing to piss of the local population so much that they are driven to rioting. We should be so proud to belong to such an exclusive club - and hope to share in the end game some time soon.