European elections: Libertas saving our money?

Someone might see an ironic contradiction in the two announcements we see today on the web pages of Libertas.eu:



1) The European elections begin in some 28 days.
2) Policies: The Libertas programme for a better Europe will be published on this site in the coming weeks.

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Waiting for Godot, we turn to what Libertas has on offer regarding the future of Europe and the next five years of legislative work in the European Parliament.

The third core principle of Libertas is:

“Save money: €10 billion in savings to be identified by the Commission in the next financial year.”

Sounds great, doesn’t it? At least until you take a closer look. Let’s do that.


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Long term budget

The European Union lives by the multiannual financial framework essentially set by the heads of state or government of the member states, currently from 2007 to 2013, although formalised by an agreement between the institutions.

Income and expenditure hover around 1 per cent of gross national income (GNI) annually, far from a federal budget of proportions.


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Annual budget

The framework is the basis for the expectations of the EU member states and for recipients of EU funds until the end of 2013.

The annual budgets are prepared within this framework by the Commission, and approved by the Council and the Euroepan Parliament.

Based on the existing framework and legitimate expectations, the Commission presented its preliminary draft budget for 2010 on 29 April 2009.

Mainly within the framework constraints, but with new measures towards an economic recovery, the proposed sum total of expenditure grows to € 139 billion. This translates into about 284 euros per EU resident.

How does a radical proposal for savings fit the economic circumstances and the timetable?

Even if the final vote on the budget takes place in December, the financial framework is in place until the end of 2013, and the European Council has given green light to certain recovery measures.

The budget exercise for 2010 is well under way. The Commission will take the opinions of the Council and the European Parliament into account before its final proposal. The Council and the EP will then fix their positions, before having to reconcile their views before final approval.

Nothing tells me that any of these institutions is going to veer off course to heed calls for unspecified budget cuts.

Libertas’ “core principle” is a figment of their imagination, meant to be swallowed by uninformed voters.


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Who is responsible?

We have to admit that calls for profound change, including budget reform, can be justified even if they have no immediate chance of success. Every reform starts from modest beginnings until it gains acceptance.

What makes Libertas’ call hypocritical and cowardly is that they don’t even try to tell us where to cut. The savings should be identified by the Commission, without Libertas taking any responsibility.

In the realm of sanctimonious bluster, this is worth an Oscar.

The draft budget contains € 59 billion spending on agriculture and € 49.4 billion on structural funds. This is about 78 per cent of the total budget, and it is mainly spent in the member states.

Does Lisbertas want to cut back our dependence on subsidy-driven farming? Do they want to terminate “cohesion” funding in rich member states, or deprive the new member states of their structural funds?

Surely, a new political party with a “pan-European vision” knows where to save and has the guts to tell us(?)


The rest of the proposed budget (about 21.8 per cent) is shared between competitiveness, citizenship, freedom, security and justice, external action and administrative expenditure.

Even if the sums are minor in comparison, we need to be told about possible savings.


Ralf Grahn


P.S. A few observations outside the theme of this post: Libertas has introduced a certain professionalism and dynamic in its campaigning techniques during these last days. They contact people through e-mails and social media. Today there are several additional posts on their central web pages. Behind language barriers activists in different member states seem to be free to concoct wildly diverging messages without much outside notice.

In terms of (inter)active campaigning, the competition is still in the starting blocks. Despite the fact that the policies we have looked at this far have been shown to be populist rubbish, the established Europarties ignore Libertas at their peril.

For Libertas Brussels is Washington

Most of Libertas’s political message seems to be cloned on the age-old platform of American populist movements and politicians: Vote for us to clean up Washington!

The only real difference is that Brussels has replaced Washington.

After muckraking demands for disclosure of EU expenses, budget cuts and reducing the number of meetings, there is not much policy left.

Interestingly, Libertas has been extremely shy of disclosing its own affairs. As long as no credible information is given, the only reasonable assumption is that Libertas is a vanity project of Declan Ganley and that its courtiers and national chapters depend on his largesse.


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Policies

The Libertas web site reminds us that the European elections start in some 33 days, but we are still greeted by this disclaimer about policies:


“The Libertas programme for a better Europe will be published on this site in the coming weeks.”


For a new political movement, there may have been excuses for this message until its great gathering, but it remains posted on the web page even after the first Libertas congress in Rome.


Ralf Grahn

Europe: Populism or democracy?

Ahead of the European elections in June 2009, we have seen two political trends. One the one hand, after the historic EU enlargement in 2004 and 2007 and since the beginning of the current Commission, the communitarian spirit seems to have ceded to increasing intergovernmentalism and national self-interest. The financial turmoil has accelerated both nationalistic responses and intergovernmental summiteering, with various ‘ad hoc’ initiatives thrown in for good measure. The Treaty of Lisbon would have brought some belated efficiency gains after the expansion to 27 members, but the Lisbon Treaty fails miserably in creating a European level democracy.

On the other hand, popular estrangement has increasingly favoured nationalistic and populist parties in national and sub-national elections. Referendums, purportedly on pan-European issues like the Constitutional Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty, have boosted anti-reformist and self-absorbed movements, left or right, in France, the Netherlands and Ireland.

Municipal elections in Finland are hardly hot stuff for international media generally, but the spectacular gains by the populist True Finns are the latest indication of anti-European sentiments on the rise. Although the True Finns captured less than six per cent of the vote, their swayed almost six times as many voters as four years ago.

The International Edition of Helsingin Sanomat has more:

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/MUNICIPAL+ELECTIONS+SUNDAY+2345+National+Coalition+Party+largest+party+True+Finns+big+winners+gains+for+Greens+/1135240557573

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More than ever, pan-European solutions and actions are needed to enhance our security and to regain our prosperity, but populations are increasingly rejecting the European leaders’ intergovernmentalist and functionalist project.

The group of wise persons has been expressly forbidden to even think about so called institutional issues, but today’s challenges do not call for institutional tinkering in the customary manner.

The wise persons ─ and the European leaders ─ have to look at the foundations of the European project. Without democratic legitimacy and accountability the European Union is running aground. Only a European Union based on its citizens can give us the foundations we need to weather the storms.


Ralf Grahn

Populist Euroscepticism

Fabian Guy Neuner has started a blog, Embracing the Union, with the aim to face up to the destructive power of populist Euroscepticism. The address of Embracing the Union is:

http://embracingtheunion.blogactiv.eu/

Neuner’s first post ‘Now is the time! Lessons from Dublin and Vienna’ (26 June 2008) discusses the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty. Neuner sees the ‘no’ vote in Ireland as a victory for targeted misinformation which uses people’s fears to mobilise the masses.

On the same day as the first post, the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) leadership caved in to populist pressure by proclaiming that they would put further treaty ratifications to a plebiscite. In Neuner’s view, populism nurtured by Euroscepticism has the power to make leaders drop their commitment to European integration in order to remain in power (or at least increase their chances of doing so).

Neuner sets himself the objective of critically discussing the EU’s democratic credentials and discrediting the myths that permeate the debate on Europe.

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It is always a pleasure to see a new critical and constructive Euroblog in English. I wish Neuner good luck in his endeavour and I look forward to his following posts.


Ralf Grahn