-:Undertaker:-
04-06-2014, 11:06 AM
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100274672/which-faceless-eurocrat-did-you-vote-for/
Which faceless Eurocrat did you vote for?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2014/06/Schjuncstadt2.jpg
Juncker, Verhofstadt, Schulz – they're all interchangeable federalists
Brussels is already back to business as usual. The European election results have been buried deeply away, like a traumatic childhood memory, and the haggling for jobs has started.
You might have got the impression that rebellious, Euro-critical parties made the greatest advances, but that’s not the view they take in the palaces and chanceries. As far as Eurocrats are concerned, the people have given them a massive mandate to carry on as before. Nearly two thirds of the total vote, they say, went to Euro-integrationist parties. The populist insurgency has peaked.
Of course, when they speak in public, EU leaders have to go through the motions of taking the results on board. So they talk of the need to “do more” to create jobs, “do more” to connect with people, “do more” to make the EU relevant. What they absolutely won’t admit, though the opinion polls clearly show it, is that most people in most member states want the EU to do less.
So, who will get the goodies? Will it be Jean-Claude Juncker, the canny Luxembourger who dominated the Grand Duchy’s politics until being dumped at the last election? Or Martin Schulz, the owlish German socialist who was catapulted to fame when Silvio Berlusconi likened him to a concentration camp guard? Might the zombie of Tony Blair rise again, trailing malodorous rags? Or will the post go to a national leader – Ireland’s bland and blameless Enda Kenny or Finland’s Jyrki Katainen?
You might ask what kind of politician would regard an unelected position in Brussels as a step up from running his own country, but plenty do. A prime minister can typically treble or quadruple his net income – plus he never needs to worry about the pesky voters again.
Not unnaturally, those pesky voters don’t like being told that they’re the second choice, so serving premiers are obliged to campaign in secret, winning pledges of support from their fellows in closed summit sessions.
Even then, it can go wrong. When Katainen’s ambitions leaked out, he was more or less obliged to deny everything and pledge his support for Juncker. A light-hearted competition followed online to describe the poor fellow’s plight in verse, Katainen being a notoriously difficult word to rhyme. The Brussels blogger Berlaymonster came up with the winning entry:
There once was a Finn called Katainen
Who for a top job was a-pinin’
But the rise of the Right
Landed Europe in sh–te:
Now I bet he’s regrettin’ resignin’.
Fortunately for Katainen, and indeed for all the rest, there are several big jobs to go around. Apart from the presidency of the European Commission (presently occupied by José Manuel Durrão Barroso), there is the presidency of the European Council (Herman Van Rompuy), the presidency of the Eurogroup (Jean-Claude Juncker), and the post of High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs (embarrassingly, Baroness Ashton).
This horse-trading will go on for weeks, as people balance big against small countries, Left against Right and so on. There is an understanding that at least one of the top posts must go to a woman, and one to a candidate from a former Communist country. Dalia Grybauskaite, currently President of Lithuania and a former commissioner, happens to fit both criteria – which, in the smoke-filled (or, these days, smoke-free) rooms of Brussels counts for more than you’d imagine.
Others will seek to advance narrower interests: François Hollande, whose party has just been clubbed to a bloody pulp by Marine Le Pen, is optimistically pushing the claim of Pierre Moscovici, a former minister, so as to show that he still counts for something in Brussels.
What of Britain? As usual, our officials are mainly involved in mitigation. They know that the job will go to someone who wants a politically united Europe; but they’d rather that the winner were not too provocative about it. That rules out Jean-Claude Juncker, a 1950s-style palaeo-federalist who doesn’t trouble to hide his view that the EU should be a single country, with its own army, police force, currency, judicial authorities and tax system.
Yet it is precisely these views that endear Juncker to the more integrationist governments and, of course, to MEPs, who must endorse the winning candidate. More than this, Juncker claims a direct electoral mandate. As he immodestly Tweeted last week: “I am not on my knees before any leader. I won the elections. #withJuncker”.
Now this might come as a surprise to you. Indeed, it will come as a surprise to almost everyone in Europe. But, in the parallel world of Brussels, Juncker is said to have “won the elections”. This is because he was the “leading candidate” of the European People’s Party, which secured the largest number of seats in the European Parliament.
You didn’t know that these were federal elections? Well, you’re in good company. According to a poll published today by the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists – the association of free-market, anti-federalist parties to which the British Conservatives belong, and of which I am secretary-general – hardly any voters were aware that their ballots would later be claimed by pan-European parties.
Our survey of more than 12,000 people across the EU showed that only 8.8 per cent could name, unprompted, any of the European political parties, and only 13.6 per cent could name a candidate. This despite all the razzamatazz, all the hundreds of millions of euros spent on advertising the pan-continental nature of the contest, all the televised debates in which Juncker and his rivals chuntered on about “more Europe”.
The truth is that almost no one feels European in the same sense that we might feel British or Swedish or Portuguese. Europe lacks a demos – a unit with which we identify when we use the word “we”. If you take the demos out of democracy, you’re left only with the kratos – the power of a system that must compel by law what it dare not ask in the name of patriotism.
To appoint Juncker would be to play along with the ludicrous pretence that the EU is already a single country with a unified public opinion. In fact, people voted in 28 separate elections on national issues. (In Britain, for what it’s worth, only 0.18 per cent of voters supported the candidates of Juncker’s EPP. The Conservatives and UKIP refused to legitimise the charade by nominating commission candidates and Labour pointedly distanced itself from the socialist leader, Martin Schulz. The Lib Dems did more or less acknowledge Guy Verhofstadt as their man – and a fat lot of good it did them.)
My sense, for what it’s worth, is that support is ebbing away from Juncker: several national leaders, though they intone federalist pieties, are reluctant to allow the power of appointment to pass to MEPs. So let’s suppose that David Cameron is able to put together a blocking group. What real difference would it make? All the potential candidates are federalists. Some just happen to be more overt about it than others.
When John Major vetoed Jean-Luc Dehaene, the former Belgian prime minister, in 1995, the post went instead to the equally integrationist, but slightly lower key Jacques Santer, whose commission ended up collapsing in a sleaze scandal. Poor Major had used up all his bargaining chips for nothing. David Cameron faces an even worse dilemma: he knows that, if he is seen to have blocked the MEPs’ candidate, they will almost certainly return the favour by vetoing his nominee for the Commission.
No doubt the PM wants someone more presentable than Juncker for when the In/Out referendum comes: someone who can be relied on to play along with the idea that Britain has secured meaningful improvements. And he may well find one: when that moment comes, there will be a great deal of choreography as EU leaders and officials, like ham actors, claim that London has won concessions. In the meantime, the grand dinners and summit meetings will carry on until some lucky people bag the offices, salaries and perks. That’s what the EU is about these days. Having begun as an idealistic – or at least ideological – project, it is now a handy way for some politicians and officials to make a living. The generation of believers has given way to the generation of employees. Oddly enough, it makes them cling on more determinedly than ever.
Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP
'Democracy', EU style.
The project rolls on (and over public opinion) regardless. Great article by Hannan.
The only way is out.
Thoughts? Which washed up unpopular politician do you want? Not that you'll get the choice...
Which faceless Eurocrat did you vote for?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2014/06/Schjuncstadt2.jpg
Juncker, Verhofstadt, Schulz – they're all interchangeable federalists
Brussels is already back to business as usual. The European election results have been buried deeply away, like a traumatic childhood memory, and the haggling for jobs has started.
You might have got the impression that rebellious, Euro-critical parties made the greatest advances, but that’s not the view they take in the palaces and chanceries. As far as Eurocrats are concerned, the people have given them a massive mandate to carry on as before. Nearly two thirds of the total vote, they say, went to Euro-integrationist parties. The populist insurgency has peaked.
Of course, when they speak in public, EU leaders have to go through the motions of taking the results on board. So they talk of the need to “do more” to create jobs, “do more” to connect with people, “do more” to make the EU relevant. What they absolutely won’t admit, though the opinion polls clearly show it, is that most people in most member states want the EU to do less.
So, who will get the goodies? Will it be Jean-Claude Juncker, the canny Luxembourger who dominated the Grand Duchy’s politics until being dumped at the last election? Or Martin Schulz, the owlish German socialist who was catapulted to fame when Silvio Berlusconi likened him to a concentration camp guard? Might the zombie of Tony Blair rise again, trailing malodorous rags? Or will the post go to a national leader – Ireland’s bland and blameless Enda Kenny or Finland’s Jyrki Katainen?
You might ask what kind of politician would regard an unelected position in Brussels as a step up from running his own country, but plenty do. A prime minister can typically treble or quadruple his net income – plus he never needs to worry about the pesky voters again.
Not unnaturally, those pesky voters don’t like being told that they’re the second choice, so serving premiers are obliged to campaign in secret, winning pledges of support from their fellows in closed summit sessions.
Even then, it can go wrong. When Katainen’s ambitions leaked out, he was more or less obliged to deny everything and pledge his support for Juncker. A light-hearted competition followed online to describe the poor fellow’s plight in verse, Katainen being a notoriously difficult word to rhyme. The Brussels blogger Berlaymonster came up with the winning entry:
There once was a Finn called Katainen
Who for a top job was a-pinin’
But the rise of the Right
Landed Europe in sh–te:
Now I bet he’s regrettin’ resignin’.
Fortunately for Katainen, and indeed for all the rest, there are several big jobs to go around. Apart from the presidency of the European Commission (presently occupied by José Manuel Durrão Barroso), there is the presidency of the European Council (Herman Van Rompuy), the presidency of the Eurogroup (Jean-Claude Juncker), and the post of High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs (embarrassingly, Baroness Ashton).
This horse-trading will go on for weeks, as people balance big against small countries, Left against Right and so on. There is an understanding that at least one of the top posts must go to a woman, and one to a candidate from a former Communist country. Dalia Grybauskaite, currently President of Lithuania and a former commissioner, happens to fit both criteria – which, in the smoke-filled (or, these days, smoke-free) rooms of Brussels counts for more than you’d imagine.
Others will seek to advance narrower interests: François Hollande, whose party has just been clubbed to a bloody pulp by Marine Le Pen, is optimistically pushing the claim of Pierre Moscovici, a former minister, so as to show that he still counts for something in Brussels.
What of Britain? As usual, our officials are mainly involved in mitigation. They know that the job will go to someone who wants a politically united Europe; but they’d rather that the winner were not too provocative about it. That rules out Jean-Claude Juncker, a 1950s-style palaeo-federalist who doesn’t trouble to hide his view that the EU should be a single country, with its own army, police force, currency, judicial authorities and tax system.
Yet it is precisely these views that endear Juncker to the more integrationist governments and, of course, to MEPs, who must endorse the winning candidate. More than this, Juncker claims a direct electoral mandate. As he immodestly Tweeted last week: “I am not on my knees before any leader. I won the elections. #withJuncker”.
Now this might come as a surprise to you. Indeed, it will come as a surprise to almost everyone in Europe. But, in the parallel world of Brussels, Juncker is said to have “won the elections”. This is because he was the “leading candidate” of the European People’s Party, which secured the largest number of seats in the European Parliament.
You didn’t know that these were federal elections? Well, you’re in good company. According to a poll published today by the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists – the association of free-market, anti-federalist parties to which the British Conservatives belong, and of which I am secretary-general – hardly any voters were aware that their ballots would later be claimed by pan-European parties.
Our survey of more than 12,000 people across the EU showed that only 8.8 per cent could name, unprompted, any of the European political parties, and only 13.6 per cent could name a candidate. This despite all the razzamatazz, all the hundreds of millions of euros spent on advertising the pan-continental nature of the contest, all the televised debates in which Juncker and his rivals chuntered on about “more Europe”.
The truth is that almost no one feels European in the same sense that we might feel British or Swedish or Portuguese. Europe lacks a demos – a unit with which we identify when we use the word “we”. If you take the demos out of democracy, you’re left only with the kratos – the power of a system that must compel by law what it dare not ask in the name of patriotism.
To appoint Juncker would be to play along with the ludicrous pretence that the EU is already a single country with a unified public opinion. In fact, people voted in 28 separate elections on national issues. (In Britain, for what it’s worth, only 0.18 per cent of voters supported the candidates of Juncker’s EPP. The Conservatives and UKIP refused to legitimise the charade by nominating commission candidates and Labour pointedly distanced itself from the socialist leader, Martin Schulz. The Lib Dems did more or less acknowledge Guy Verhofstadt as their man – and a fat lot of good it did them.)
My sense, for what it’s worth, is that support is ebbing away from Juncker: several national leaders, though they intone federalist pieties, are reluctant to allow the power of appointment to pass to MEPs. So let’s suppose that David Cameron is able to put together a blocking group. What real difference would it make? All the potential candidates are federalists. Some just happen to be more overt about it than others.
When John Major vetoed Jean-Luc Dehaene, the former Belgian prime minister, in 1995, the post went instead to the equally integrationist, but slightly lower key Jacques Santer, whose commission ended up collapsing in a sleaze scandal. Poor Major had used up all his bargaining chips for nothing. David Cameron faces an even worse dilemma: he knows that, if he is seen to have blocked the MEPs’ candidate, they will almost certainly return the favour by vetoing his nominee for the Commission.
No doubt the PM wants someone more presentable than Juncker for when the In/Out referendum comes: someone who can be relied on to play along with the idea that Britain has secured meaningful improvements. And he may well find one: when that moment comes, there will be a great deal of choreography as EU leaders and officials, like ham actors, claim that London has won concessions. In the meantime, the grand dinners and summit meetings will carry on until some lucky people bag the offices, salaries and perks. That’s what the EU is about these days. Having begun as an idealistic – or at least ideological – project, it is now a handy way for some politicians and officials to make a living. The generation of believers has given way to the generation of employees. Oddly enough, it makes them cling on more determinedly than ever.
Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP
'Democracy', EU style.
The project rolls on (and over public opinion) regardless. Great article by Hannan.
The only way is out.
Thoughts? Which washed up unpopular politician do you want? Not that you'll get the choice...