EU politics: simply not true
Monday 4 February 2013
 However, this is a carry-over story froim last week, when Andrew Gilligan wrongly asserted that the European Parliament agriculture committee had "passed" reform provisions for the CAP – one of which was the restoration of tobacco subsidies. This latter claim is being attributed to Owen Paterson, who is concerned that there is pressure in the Council of Ministers to reinstate production subsidies, reversing the so-called MacSharry reforms. He fears that, with the European Parliament offers amendments to like effect, a combination of Parliament and Council could overturn the Commission's proposals, and set the CAP back two decades. He thus condemns the amendments as "disappointing, retrograde, backward-looking" and in some respects "ludicrous", but it is a very far cry from there, to claim, as Malnick and Mendick have done this week, that MEPs have "voted to amend changes in the Common Agricultural Policy". To claim this is simply wrong, but that two weeks running the Sunday Telegraph has published exactly the same erroneous claim tells you a great deal about its journalists, their research capabilities and their concern for the truth. What the journalists have done is mistake the procedural role of the European Parliament agricultural committee, where on behalf of the Conference of Presidents, it has approved the tabling of amendments to be considered and voted on by the full Parliament, in plenary session – probably some time in March. There is a huge difference between this procedural function and the approval process. The committee itself has no powers to approve or reject amendments tabled. It simply acts as a processing body, to present them to the Plenary for a full vote. It is the full parliament that then approves or otherwise the amendments and, as we pointed out last week, there are still many hurdles before any amendment becomes policy. In fact, most amendments are rejected at the first reading. As here, they are usually grandstanding by MEPs for domestic purposes, to show their constituents that they have been active on their behalf. Each amendment is worth a press release, with the hope of favourable headlines back home. With these proposals, though, there is an additional hurdle, the EU budget. With agreement stillevading EU leaders, that is a considerable problem. If the funding is not there, the entire proposals will have to be withdrawn and rewritten by the European Commission. That deal has to be reached by Thursday, so we will know pretty soon whether there is another crisis in the offing. In the meantime, the Sunday Telegraph insists on parading its ignorance, adding to its errors with aneditorial telling us that it is "puzzling" that "the EU's representatives should even be considering reintroducing financial support for the growing of tobacco, which was withdrawn in 2004". Bizarrely, the editorial ventures that, "It is possible that the MEPs who voted in favour of the amendment were not fully aware of what they were doing", when in fact no MEPs have yet had an opportunity to vote on the amendment. The people who are not aware of what they are doing, it seems, are Telegraph journalists. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 04/02/2013 |
EU politics: power equates to size
Monday 4 February 2013
The rationale for Europe is not peace … it is about power, says Tony Blair, who equates power with size of population.
You would think, after all this time, this man would know something about the nature of power and its distribution. But, unless he is being deliberately disingenuous (which is quite possible), he clearly has learned very little from his experience as prime minister.
Richard North 04/02/2013 |
EU politics: that Norwegian fax machine again
Monday 4 February 2013
 But, if legend has got it right, the moment that dreaded fax machine started chattering with the regulation approving BASF's Amflora GMO potato, all those little Vikings would instantly have been living in GM potato-land. For some strange reason, though, nobody told the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management about this fabled "fax law". Thus, when it was told that the Amflora product had been given market authorisation, it rather irritatingly published a web page telling us that the EEA Agreement only obliges Norway to "consider" all GMOs authorised in the EU. Being good little Norwegians, indeed, they have considered Amflora. And, having done so, the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management decided that "the cultivation and use of the genetically modified potato Amflora in feed and food should be prohibited in Norway". That, it seems, is as far as they got. Unless you know different, the product was never approved for use in Norway and now that BASF have thrown in the towel, it does not look as if it ever will – all of which is rather peculiar, because Mr Cameron says that Norway "has no say at all in setting its rules: it just has to implement its directives". And, as we all know, Mr Cameron is never wrong. COMMENT THREAD Richard North 04/02/2013 |
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