Apparently the veto is not exactly a veto

Well, well, who would have believed it? Who would have credited it? It seems that when the rejoicing nation was told that the Boy-King had vetoed the treaty he, well, ahem, hadn't actually vetoed anything very tangible. Did you ever? Certainly Iain Martin did not ever. He is rather worried that Mr Cameron, the man who by some freakish historical development has become the Prime Minister of this country, might be going back on that veto that seems not to have played much part in anybody else's consideration.

In December, we are told,

David Cameron sought assurances that he could protect the City of London from various measures that EU bodies overseeing the financial sector want to impose. No such undertaking being forthcoming, Cameron refused to sign up. The other 26 members of the EU indicated that they would press ahead despite Britain’s veto. But afterwards Cameron said he would block them from using the EU’s institutions – such as the Commission in Brussels and the European Court of Justice – to enforce any new arrangements. This infuriated the Europhile Nick Clegg.

Never mind, Nick Clegg. He is an irrelevance. Why exactly did David Cameron not insist that a change of that kind needed a completely new treaty to be decided on by an IGC, something the colleagues feared? Then he would have had a treaty to veto. At the moment he has nothing.

 Back in December he was basking in glory and even Mr Martin has to admit that the man did not know what to do with that glory.

The problem is that different groups interpreted the veto differently. For Eurosceptics, it was a joyous moment which they thought signalled that the Prime Minister wanted to negotiate a looser relationship with the EU. For Mr Cameron, it was a welcome popularity boost, but it was not clear if he saw it as anything beyond that. For the mandiranate in the Foreign Office, and its outpost in Brussels, it was a disaster, undermining their traditional approach of always getting a deal done that maintained good links with their counterparts in France and Germany. They got to work watering down the British line.

The real problem is that a veto would have meant not fiscal treaty. It would have been vetoed as this blog said a little while ago. The real problem is that not only Britain did not veto any treaty because it did not exist, but the Prime Minister actually gave up his right to veto any forthcoming treaty. He is, one assumes, looking for a way to make the truth palatable to his party and is, once again, using his preposterous Deputy as and excuse.

In the meantime, may I have an apology (and the Boss should have a few as well) from all those who attacked me (and the few others) because we did not join the mass hysteria about the phantom veto?

Bulgaria lays down conditions

Or so they say. In fact, the Bulgarian Parliament has voted to join the Fiscal Pact. But, said the Foreign Minister, there are six conditions:

Foreign Affairs Minister, Nikolay Nladenov, informed the MPs that the country has set six conditions for the joining, such as no tax harmonization in the EU.

The Eurozone pact aims at establishing more rigid fiscal discipline and stronger coordination of economic policy.

On Wednesday, MPs from three Parliamentary Committees - on Foreign Policy, on European Affairs, and on Budget, at a joint meeting, passed the proposal with which the Parliament gives the cabinet green light to take part in negotiations for the Pact.

The decision states that in joining the Pact, Bulgaria should not assume fiscal responsibilities and will not coordinate its economic policy with the one of the countries in the Eurozone; will not harmonize taxes with the Eurozone, and will have a status of observer at meetings of Eurozone members.

Another condition is for the rules to be valid for the entire EU, without exceptions and parallel structures. The decision also states that Bulgaria will fully endorse the Treaty after joining the Eurozone.

Can't wait to see how they will negotiate all those conditions.

More problems with that pact

According to Der Spiegel there is more dislike of the propose fiscal pact than anyone will openly admit to. But the high expectations awakened by Merkel are unlikely to be fulfilled. Several elements in the agreement are of questionable legality. It can't be written as an EU treaty because Great Britain won't sign it, which means it will only be an "inter-governmental agreement" between the 17 euro-zone countries and a handful of other countries participating voluntarily.

It's turning out to be a big handicap. On the one hand, the European Commission's hands are tied, because it can only act on behalf of all 27 EU members. Despite Merkel's wish, the Commission cannot legally take those that violate budgetary rules to the European Court of Justice. According to the fiscal pact proposal, national governments can only do this among themselves. But no country has ever taken legal action against another in EU history. Such a case would be seen as a gross violation of diplomatic etiquette.

Even if it comes to that, the authority of the European Court of Justice's (ECJ) remains in question. The treaty proposal states that the Luxembourg judges can impose fines of up to 0.1 percent of a country's GDP if they don't properly anchor the debt brake in their national law.

But these sanctions aren't actually provided for by EU law. In fact, they deviate from Article 126 of the Lisbon Treaty. And, according to Matthias Ruffert, a European law expert at the University of Jena, it is likely that all 27 EU members will have to ratify the fiscal pact for any ECJ sanctions to be binding.

Other lawyers argue that the sanctions would not be as binding as other ECJ verdicts. Because the fiscal pact terms involve only an intergovernmental agreement, they aren't EU law, which means they don't automatically come before national law, says European law expert Ronan McCrea, from University College London. Thus, in the case of an emergency, it would be easier for a national government to disregard such a verdict.

It comes to something when the pet project of the German Chancellor is dismissed by the Prime Minister of Luxembourg as being "a waste of time and energy". That is, apparently, what M. Jean Asselborne said.

Random discussions and utter rudeness

There are times I despair even of the House of Lords and that, in my opinion, is the only remaining part of the British constitution (oh yes, we do have one) that is even remotely functional. But this kind of random rambling and unutterable rudeness on the part of the despicable Lord Kinnock who, naturally, does not declare his interest of a very handsome EU pension, does make one thrown one's hands up in horror.

Admittedly, the subject is one HMG would rather not discuss, as the signs of a possible EU break-up in the next few years have been noted, as Lord Pearson of Rannoch says, by both Chancellor Merkel and Commission President Van Rompuy, and we need to be prepared for it, which, one suspects Whitehall is not. But what possessed other noble peers to come up with those comments and questions. (I don't mean the Welsh windbag. The only time I might be surprised by his behaviour is if it stays within the bounds of decency.)

In other words, we are not telling

As we know (or ought to know) the final decision on legislation, particularly the more important kind, rests with the Council of Ministers and, occasionally, the European Council. That does not apply to treaties, which is a completely separate problem though the Boy-King and his acolytes seem unable to grasp this.

In the Council we are told, the elected and accountable (stop laughing at the back) UK Minister can prevent legislation that is harmful or might be harmful to this country from taking shape. Of course, there is the small matter of Qualified Majority Voting, which used to be easy to compute but has become so complicated that Fibonacci would give up, but whose purpose is to ensure that measures cannot be blocked.

Theoretically, though, some measures might be stopped but, as there are no reports of those meetings we really do not know what happens and whether our Ministers or the UK Permanent Representatives do actually fight hard for British interests as they always tell us they do. (Oddly enough, the one time I had a chance to find out what really happened, over the inspection of slaughter houses and the destruction of small and medium sized ones, I was told on very good authority that those who assured us they had fought doggedly had been somewhat economical with the truth.)

In the circumstances it is not unreasonable of Lord Stoddart of Swindon to ask

Her Majesty's Government on how many occasions the United Kingdom has been successful in achieving blocking majorities in the European Council or Council of Ministers; and what are the details of those occasions.

We would, actually like to know the answer. After all, we are told that we can do this: block legislation that does not suit us. Sadly, we are not going to find out. Lord Howell of Guildford resorted to the time-honoured formula:

The UK does not hold this information centrally.

If I had a fiver for every time that formula was used not to reveal information, I would actually be able to afford to travel on London transport. But I digress. Lord Howell, or whoever wrote the answer, then added: However, under the Lisbon treaty, some information on formal votes in the Council of Ministers on co-decision dossiers is available on the following European Union website.

This information constitutes separate documents, available for download, on each formal co-decision vote since 2006, listing the issue and the voting positions of member states.

The Government recommends that the noble Lord treats this information with caution. In general, proposals only progress to a formal vote after member states have gone through a substantial period of negotiation. During that period, the UK and other member states seek to block, amend or remove proposals which do not meet their objectives. The UK would normally aim to prevent proposals to which we cannot agree ever reaching a formal vote. It is also possible that some negotiation might go to a formal vote more than once, with different outcomes. For both these reasons, a simple collation of voting numbers would be misleading.

Moreover, the information can only show whether or not the UK participated in a blocking minority; not whether the UK was itself successful in achieving said blocking minority. All these points apply equally to blocking minorities.

Or, in other words, we are not going to tell you because we do not know and do not want to find out.

Troubles with that fiscal compact treaty

Poland is being troublesome again. (Not that it ever lasts too long but while they grumble people listen.)

Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, is threatening to keep his country out of the nearly-finalised treaty on greater economic discipline, in a dispute over the right to attend eurozone summits.

Poland is insisting that it should be allowed to attend eurozone summits even though it is not expected to adopt the euro for several years. Tusk told Polish radio on Tuesday (24 January): “If Poland does not win an appropriate status of participant in the eurozone meetings, which would give us a feeling that we take part in the decision-making process, ...we will find it difficult to sign the fiscal pact.”

While it is not unreasonable for the Polish Prime Minister to demand those rights but he is not going to get them. Poland is not in the eurozone and that is the way the colleagues will regard the matter. Mr Tusk should have foreseen this problem when he first agreed to the proposed "treaty", which, as we know is not a treaty because that was "vetoed" by the Boy-King.

He has been lecturing the colleagues on something or other at Davos but even now he will not do the right thing and that is demand a full IGC and a completely new treaty. As CNN reports

Hungary, Sweden and the Czech Republic also expressed reservations about treaty change -- but left the door open, pending parliamentary debate.

Whether anything comes of those reservations is a moot point but it is good to know that somebody will have parliamentary debates about the new proposals.

Orban does the totally expected thing

It may have been noted by readers of this blog that just as the media has decided that Hungary is still a far off country of which we know next to nothing but it also seems to be having events that might affect the rest of us, interest in those events dried up here. Well, not quite. A long posting on the subject is in the works.

In the meantime, it is sufficient to say that the Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, seems to be bowing to the inevitable.

The Hungarian government is expected to propose changes to its central banking legislation in the coming weeks, in order to secure a credit line from the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The changes will be a response to the European Commission's legal challenge to Hungary's new legislation. The Commission claims that the law restricts the independence of the central bank, and must be revised before Hungary is allowed to start negotiations on a credit facility.

Of course, he may yet go back on that as well and the whole charade might start for the third (or is it the fourth time).

It is not unreasonable to call this a response to unconscionable bullying on the part of the EU on whom no less a person than Frank Furedi called to stop but there is also the fact that Hungary needs that credit line and it is, therefore, not unreasonable to expect her government to behave in a slightly less petulant and childish manner.

The real problem stems, I suspect, from those promises that were made to all former Communist countries when they were part bullied, part bribed into joining the European Union. Money was going to pour there and every problem would be sorted out. Sadly, yet again, those of us who warned that it will all end in tears, seem to have turned out to be right. Just call me Cassandra.