08 November 2012 7:53 PM
Eurocrat strikers, a dull Italian and the death of a civilisation
Thursday afternoon: I'm just back from the commission, where the eurocrats are on a one day strike over budget cuts.
I was rather hoping there would be picket lines and frozen strikers huddled around blazing braziers outside the Berlaymont, but alas, no. I suppose the eurocrats are instead showing solidarity with workers' rights by spending a few hours at one of the day spas here in Bruxelles, or on the Thalys high speed train for a day in Paris.
Either way, I wish them well, and I send them an assurance there is no need to hurry back. Having them out of the Berlaymont leaves our liberties just that little bit safer for 24 hours. Alas they are due back tomorrow, Friday.
Today however the press officers did turn up for work. I considered shouting 'Blackleg!' at the podium from the back of the press room, but since the interpreters were on strike and I didn't think 'Jambe Noire!' would have the same effect on the French-speaking commission spokesman, I didn't bother.
What was laid on for the journalists was a presentation by Antonio Tajani, the Italian who is commissioner for 'industry and entrepreneurship.' (Yes, I know: 'entrepreneurship' in this place.)
Tajani wanted us to hear his 'action plan' for the EU automotive industry. He wanted to present it in French. So there I was, sinking in the ennui of an 'action plan' that was remarkably like the Old Labour 1970s action plan for saving British Leyland - note for younger readers, it didn't work - being presented in French by an Italian standing in front of a PowerPoint presentation in English. This represented just the sort of efficiency which the commission delivers to everything it touches...
But the worst of it was the utter banality of Tajani's 'action plan.' The motor industry, of all industries, is the hottest on earth, short of high-grade weapons manufacturing. It occured to me ten minutes into the drone that this was possibly the first time I'd ever been bored by an Italian talking about wheels.
Tajani is from the race that once gave us the Alfa Romeo Spyder, Gianni Agnelli, and the Testarossa. Now he is giving us PowerPoint plans for electric cars and implementation of CO2 strategy.
This marks the death of a civilisation.
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05 November 2012 1:10 PM
As the nations of Europe lie bleeding, the eurocrats' party goes on
Here is an edited version of my column in Monday's Irish Daily Mail --
Prepare to get annoyed. I’m going to write about the demands by the euro elite that
member states increase the EU’s 2014-2020 budget by five percent.
That would take the budget to over a trillion euros.
The euro-mandarins want the money for their pay increases, their fabulous retirement deals, for taxpayer-funded elite education for their children, of course, but also for their new imperial projects and much else that will increase their power.
To illustrate the attitude of the eurocrats to the taxpayers’ cash provided by us ‘little people,’ I will give you an idea of some of splendours these people expect as their due. That’s when I reckon you are going to get annoyed.
Among the many elitist projects the eurocrats are financing with taxpayers’ money is a frenzy of luxury construction reminiscent of Louis XIV’s building mania at Versailles.
I will let the description of this construction frenzy come from a former top European mandarin, Derk-Jan Eppink. Mr Eppink, a Dutchman, is now a member of the European Parliament, but before that he worked for seven years as a senior official at the European Commission.
Mr Eppink speaks about the construction frenzy in a video he has posted on YouTube. First he notes the €240m being spent so that EU president Mr Herman Van Rompuy can have a new office in which to host European Council meetings.
The building is flash and excessive, a glass-walled vanity project in the shape of an egg
being built right next to the already-vast and modern council headquarters.
Yet as Mr Eppink says, ‘the most preposterous construction is taking place in Frankfurt. It is the construction of the European Central Bank, the ECB. The building is getting too expensive. The cost was estimated on €800m, but now it is €1.2bn, and there are still two years of construction ahead. So the ECB, preaching austerity in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy [and of course Ireland], practises profligacy itself.’
Mr Eppink suggests we compare this ECB grandeur with the headquarters in Frankfurt of the Bundesbank, the German central bank: ‘It is low, grey and boring, just as the Germans like it. The ECB headquarters reflects pomposity, prestige and power, just as EU leaders like it.’
Then there are the plans of the European Parliament to construct a prestige building, the ‘House of European History.’ As Mr Eppink says, ‘There is some delay, because there is not one interpretation of European history. So to be safe European history starts in 1946. The building is going to be shiny, impressive and expensive yet again.’
‘The budget is planned on about €60m. But there is one problem. Underneath the foundation is a subterranean river. Now the foundations have to be strengthened and fortified, if not, the building would collapse. According to an architect familiar with EU constructions, that operation doubles the cost to over €120m.’
What the EU is demonstrating in all this is ‘hubris, an over-reach.’
That’s just the building programmes. Expand that hubris, that over-reach to all the projects and imperial designs and centralising plans of the EU, and what you have is the demand for a trillion euro budget.
That brings me to the European Council meeting due to take place on Thursday and Friday November 22nd and 23rd. It will be entirely devoted to the budget. The line being put out is that there could be great fights over the budget. Britain, Sweden, Denmark, France, and to a lesser degree the Netherlands, are all threatening to make demands or veto the thing, but for different reasons.
However the council could be spinning that to increase expectations of a brawl, in order that Herman Van Rompuy can emerge at the end and announce that, under his magnificent leadership, a compromise has been reached.
The reason I am suspicious that the brawl scenario has been beefed up is that someone has also suggested that Mr Van Rompuy is willing to keep the council in session through the Saturday and Sunday if need be to get an agreement. I doubt the prime ministers would put up with such an attempt by the unelected colourless Belgian Van Rompuy to show his power by holding them prisoner.
More, the EU officials are doing the rounds of the national governments, and already they report ‘movement’ in the national positions.
Still, whatever fighting there is, you can bet none of it will be done by the Irish Government. The Taoiseach’s only line will be ‘Whatever you say, Chancellor Merkel.’
Instead the fighting will be done by other politicians, the ones who have some skin in the game: as I said, prime ministers from countries such as Sweden and Britain, the ones who have to make billions in net contributions to the EU budget.
These politicians are being told by the euro elite that they must go back to their parliaments and their anaemic economies and come up with plenty of cash for the eurocrats’ imperial plans. Because however much the euro elite prescribe austerity as good for the rest of us, they have no plans to, ahem, ‘benefit’ from austerity themselves.
The argument the commission makes on why the budget must be increased is that it is necessary so the EU can boost economic growth in Europe, as well as pay for further political and economic integration which eurocrats and eurofanatics claim is necessary to deal with the euro crisis.
None of which stands up to scrutiny, so you can just take it that they want the money because they want the money and the extra power it will bring. The budget commissioner, Janusz Lewandowski, recently said he ‘doesn’t believe Europe should cut its way out of the current economic crisis.’ Cuts, like taxes, are for little people.
So here is a glimpse of the life led by eurocrats such as ‘No Cuts’ Lewandowski: according to a report last year by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism covered by BBC Newsnight, over €300,000 was spent on cocktail parties alone by the commission in 2009, including €75,000 for one party in Amsterdam. Between 2006-2010, €7.4m was spent on private jets for commissioners and eurocrats.
You have seen the reports that David Cameron plans to take a tough line on the EU budget, indeed, that he is under pressure from a House of Commons vote demanding he goes to Brussels and negotiates a cut in real terms.
None of that will happen.
First, Mr Cameron is gutless about confronting the EU powers, for many reasons (such as his all-around gutlessness) but mostly because he is one of those Tories who actually want Britain to be surrendered to the EU. He doesn’t want Britain to come out. He was elected on a pledge – ‘a cast iron guarantee,’ he called it – to give the British people a chance to reject the Lisbon Treaty. That was just pretend. Once elected, he wriggled out of his guarantee.
Now he pretends he is willing to fight to freeze the budget.
He is either dishonest or misinformed. If he vetoes the budget, and he has no list of credible threats to follow the veto (and he hasn’t), then all that will happen is that the EU budget will just carry on at its 2013 level, adjusted for inflation.
Member states would then negotiate an ad hoc deal, and a further veto by Mr Cameron would be impossible, because the voting would move to qualified majority vote (QMV).
More, according to estimates by the Open Europe think-tank, even under a freeze, the UK’s net contribution could rise by between €1bn and €2.4bn over seven years. In the end, the European Parliament could throw out the whole thing and the commission would start drafting a budget all over again, which would also be subject to the no-veto QMV.
I’m going to stop there, otherwise I will be taking you into the badlands beyond Article 312 paragraphs 4 and 5 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and you will not enjoy it.
Mr Cameron is posing, not planning any strategy. Don’t imagine the Jesuits of the commission and council don’t know it.
At this point, either Britain – and any of the rest of us who can find the kind of guts Mr Cameron lacks – get out of the EU, or we admit that we must all now devote ourselves and our money to finance forever a Palace of Versailles and a Sun King lifestyle for our new ruling class.
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