17 September 2012 7:02 AM
Barroso: eurosceptics are 'dangerous.' I say not yet dangerous enough
This is an edited version of my column in Monday's Irish Daily Mail --
Spot the paradox.
Ireland needs a deal on its bank debt to get back to growth and out of this depression.
The European Union needs a success story to show that its austerity policies are working.
Ireland is the EU’s best chance of a success story. So the EU must give Ireland a deal to cut the burden of bank debt.
Or so the Irish are told by their government.
Yet the eurozone powers have shown they are in no hurry to give Ireland a deal.
Indeed, if you listened closely to the statement made by Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the eurogroup, at the end of the eurogroup meeting in Cyprus on Friday, you would have noticed he said nothing about delivering a deal for Ireland.
All he said was that the ministers from the other euro countries would discuss a ‘possible improvement’ of Ireland’s programme ‘at one of our next meetings.’
But that discussion will not come until after the end of the technical talks. And they could go on for months more.
The point to note, though, is that Mr Juncker only spoke about a ‘possible’ deal for Ireland. No deal has been agreed. Even the certainty that Ireland will sometime in the future get a deal has not been agreed. All those things are merely ‘possible.’
This is despite the Irish government’s announcement in June that the European Council statement meant a ‘seismic change’ which would ‘lift the burden of debt from the shoulders of the Irish people.’
In fact the statement merely promised that the situation of Ireland's financial sector would be ‘examined.’
That word meant nothing in June, and it means nothing now. Which is why Finance Minister Michael Noonan came away with nothing after his tour last week of top eurozone finance ministers and his pleadings in Cyprus.
So, it looks like Ireland is faced with a paradox: the Irish are told ‘Europe needs an Irish success story,’ but Europe has shown no interest in giving the Irish the one thing -- a cut in the debt – that would make their country into a success story.
Except it isn’t a paradox, because there is no such thing as a paradox. As the philosopher tells us, a paradox – facts which contradict themselves -- cannot exist. Whenever you think you are faced with a paradox, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
Here is the premise that is wrong: it is not true that Europe needs a success story. Talking about how ‘Europe needs a success story’ might have been fashionable in Brussels two years ago, but not now.
What the euro elite – by whom I mean the likes of José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, and Mario Monti, the former European Commissioner who was parachuted by Angela Merkel into being the unelected prime minister of Italy – what these men now want is for the crisis to roll on.
A continuing crisis gives them an excuse to rush exhausted and terrified governments into agreeing to a new EU treaty (‘Quick, hurry, sign here! We must have more Europe or the crisis will not end!’).
So what one hears in Brussels now is not ‘Europe must have a success story.’ No, this crisis is beneficial as far as Brussels is concerned.
The reason is that if the current EU institutional arrangements, and the current policies on austerity, suddenly started producing success stories, the excuse for a new treaty, for new EU institutions putting more power into the hands of the euro-elite, would be gone.
So one hears nothing now (except from increasingly-pathetic Irish ministers) about ‘Europe needs a success story.’
What one now hears instead is a series of choreographed calls for a ‘federal Europe.’
Earlier this year Mr Van Rompuy announced that the ‘four presidents’ – himself, Mr Barroso, Mr Juncker and Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank – would put forward plans for ‘more Europe.’
In June their first efforts were published with calls for a banking union, a common eurozone treasury, common eurozone bonds and a deeper political union. They want ‘a genuine economic and monetary union.’
On September 8th Mr Van Rompuy gave a speech in Italy, repeating his calls for more powers to be surrendered by member states: ‘We have a chance to finish a house half-built.’
At the same event, the president of Italy, the former communist Giorgio Napolitano, called for a ‘true political union’ in Europe.'
Then last Wednesday Mr Van Rompuy tabled an ‘issue paper’ to be agreed at the European Council meeting next month, calling again for the same things as in the June paper, but adding the idea that the eurozone member states form their own parliamentary assembly.
Just how this ‘completed’ union is supposed to look was outlined by Mr Barroso in his State of the Union address in the European Parliament on Wednesday. In a series of non-sequitors translated into 23 working languages, he insisted: ‘Globalisation demands more European unity. More unity demands more integration.’
He said Europe ‘requires the completion of a deep and genuine economic union, based on a political union.’ Also fiscal union. Also a defence policy.
And yes I did say that was Mr Barroso’s State of the Union address, you know, like the president of the United States of America gives a State of the Union address to Congress every year.
Of course it is pretentious, that this unelected, private-jet-loving Portuguese former Maoist eurocrat is posing as the European equivalent of the President of the United States of America.
The US Constitution established a State of the Union address by the President ‘from time to time’ in Article II. President George Washington made it an annual tradition starting in 1790. Mr Barroso started his annual State of the Union ‘tradition’ three years ago, though it is established nowhere except in his own vanity. That tells you a lot about where he thinks he is going.
What tells you even more about where Mr Barroso thinks he is going were comments made earlier this month by Viviane Reding, the Luxembourg politician who has been a European Commissioner since 2004. She is cheerleading for a third term as president for Mr Barroso.
Mrs Reding said she admires him ‘for his strength, his legal mind, his patience and his wisdom’ – at which point I believe she swooned – ‘in managing the current crisis. My personal wish would be that José Manuel stays on for a third term.’
Not that ‘José Manuel’ has put forward his name for an unprecedented third term. His spokesman said this ‘is not on the President’s mind.’
Except it is. That is why among other musings from ‘the President’ (as the commission eurocrats are trained to call him) is that there is no reason the commission president should be directly elected.
One of his spokesmen explained Mr Barroso’s position: prime ministers in European countries are not directly elected, so why should the commission president be?
Note how Mr Barroso is trying to put himself on a par with the prime minister of a sovereign state, yet at the same time fudging the fact that all prime ministers (except Mr Monti of Italy, and he was dropped into the government by an EU/ECB coup) must be elected first to parliament and then by members of parliament.
No doubt Mr Barroso would dismiss such a comment about elections as ‘populism.’ Which is why in his State of the Union speech he also made a point of attacking ‘populism’ and ‘nationalism’ and announced that EU money would now go to towards financing European political parties to combat those things.
In his State of the Union address, Mr Barroso said: ‘We must use the 2012 [European parliament] election to mobilise all pro-European forces. We must not allow the populists and the nationalists to set a negative agenda.’
Apparently his definition of populism and nationalism is anyone who is against 'more Europe.'
Which means we now have an unelected European bureaucrat trying to command an election campaign, and using taxpayers' money to do it.
He went on and denounced the scepticism of the ‘anti-Europeans’ – note, in the Brussels orthodoxy to be anti-EU power is to be anti-European – as ‘dangerous.’
Yet to be sceptical of what the unelected euro-elite have in mind to increase their powers over us is the only rational position to take.
Mr Barroso calls any such questioning, doubting, thoughtful attitude ‘dangerous.’
Maybe.
But until it’s dangerous enough to topple the likes of Mr Barroso, I’d say it’s not dangerous enough.
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