Oh that sense of déjà vu

There will be many arguments for staying in the EU but you can bet your bottom dollar that we shall see this one over and over again: The UK has a vital role to play in shaping the future of Europe. Now is not the time to turn our backs.

I can only surmise that Ian Baxter, Chairman and Founder of Baxter Freight and guest author on Open Europe has lived in a yurt in Outer Mongolia for the last twenty years and has not bothered to catch on the voluminous literature on the subject of Britain being able to shape "Europe" according to its ideas and how much "Europe" needs it.

We must stay in the EEC, we were told officially and unofficially in 1975 because that is the only way it can be turned into a democratic structure. How did that turn out, I wonder.

We must stay in the post-Maastricht EU and, indeed, support that treaty because that is the only way serious changes can be implemented and the structure made more open, more manageable, more democratic. Calling John Major.

We must go into the euro because otherwise the structure will not work (that is true but it would not have worked anyway) and, in any case, if we don't, we shall be the losers. Ahem, yes.

So here we are again. Britain has once again a great opportunity to shape the future of the European project, having not managed to do it in the past. Oh, I lie. There is one definite development in the whole history of the project that was put together by our own civil servants: the Single Market that imposes all the rules on all firms and organizations whether they trade with the other member states. Is that what these people had in mind?

Back home

Back in Britain I find that not only nothing much has changed - the same dull election campaign going on in the same dull fashion - but we seem to have regressed. Open Europe tells us

The latest British Chambers of Commerce EU barometer found that 63% of the 3,800 businesses surveyed said that withdrawing from the EU would have a negative impact, while 12% and 11% said it would have a positive impact or no impact respectively. The poll also found that 55% of businesses felt that remaining inside the EU but with specific powers transferred from Brussels back to Westminster would be a positive scenario compared to 10% who felt it would be negative.

That's good. Has anyone told those businesses or their representatives who were packed off to answer the survey, that there really is very little possibility of specific powers coming back to Westminster in the circumstances as they are? Probably not.

After all, the Director of Open Europe has the following to contribute:

I think the Conservatives could reclaim some powers, strengthen the role of the UK Parliament and have more of a Common Market-style membership. That’s what the UK joined for in the first place.

Not exactly Mr Persson. What the UK joined and what a number of people thought they joined are two different things. That appears to be the problem to this day.

Open Europe speaks

I follow Pawel Swidlicki of Open Europe on Twitter because I like to know what that benighted organization, formerly of the perestroika europhile variety, now openly so, says. Often I get angry enough to reply to his maunderings but the conversation is never very satisfactory. Anyway, I found these two tweets from him today:

Agree we shouldn't leave EU but annoyed by how Clegg misrepresents many outers' argument who want UK to be more globally oriented not less

And two minutes later:

Of course no reason why UK can't be both in EU and more globally orientated but that's a separate argument

This, dear readers, is the opinion of one of the researchers in an organization that claims to be knowledgeable about the EU and to be ... ahem .... eurosceptic. I rest my case.

Lord Leach in the Evening Standard

The Evening Standard has a thoroughly sycophantic whole-page interview with Rodney Leach, the chairman of that perestroika organization, Open Europe. Readers of this blog will know that I have some problems with Open Europe, not least the fact that they keep trying to explain how wonderful the EU would be if we could just reform it or change our status in it with nary an idea as to how this astonishing development could be achieved.

The interview starts with the following words:

His campaigns might have ensured that Britain said non to the euro and nein to the European constitution, but Lord Leach of Fairford isn’t saying no to European Union membership this time around.

To begin with saying non to the euro and nein to the European constitution (that, too, was more of a French project than a German one) was never the same as saying no to European Union membership. This is shoddy journalism but what can we expect from the Standard?

In any case, the word "might" here is not used as a supposition or, in other words, the assumption is that Rodney Leach's campaign did ensure that Britain said ......  Oh really? I was under the impression that it was a combination of Sir James Goldsmith's Referendum Party and Gordon Brown's petulant but useful desire to stymie Tony Blair that ensured Britain's non-participation in the euro. It is true that Mr Leach's (as he then was) organization, Business for Sterling, helped to strengthen the already existing public dislike for the euro and he did manage to persuade some business leaders that staying out of what was clearly an economic disaster would be a good idea. However, as I once pointed out to one of Mr Leach's minions, it would have been then and would be now courteous and graceful to acknowledge the work done among business leaders to counter the CBI propaganda by the British Management Data Foundation and its founder, Brigadier Anthony Cowgill long before any Leach organization was even thought of.

As to saying nein to the European constitution, that is an even more doubtful proposition, as the Constitution for Europe was resurrected in the shape of the Lisbon Treaty and has been transmogrified into the Consolidated Treaties, published by the selfsame BMDF. Last I checked, the United Kingdom was still legally obliged to implement all its provisions.

The rest of the interview merely points out how incredibly sensible and influential Lord Leach is and how people are bound to listen to him, particularly as he wants to make sure that the EU's various directives and regulations are changed in order to save the City of London. Once again, we hear very little as to how that might be achieved but no doubt the bright boys and girls of Open Europe will explain it all to us in detail. I am not holding my breath.

Do read the article; it won't take long. But whether you do or you don't there is one thing that we must all remember: Open Europe together with a number of other supposedly eurosceptic organizations will use all its resources (and they are not to be sniffed at) to support the IN campaign, should there be a referendum on the subject.

Why do I even bother?

No, this is not another agonizing self-appraisal about the pros and cons of blogging but a rant about certain organizations. Earlier today I decided to go along to a discussion organized by Open Europe who no longer hide the fact that they think Britain should stay in the EU. The theme was: What is the Coalition's record on Europe so far? I ought to have known better when I saw the title. Really, what kind of a question is that.

So, we had Tobias Ellwood MP for Bournemouth East speaking for the Coalition or, at least the Conservative bit of it. He spent a good deal of time explaining how much this country gets out of the EU, how we always lead from the front (that's the army officer speaking) and why the problem is that most MPs do not like going there and that is why we have less influence than we would otherwise. Oh and he asked if anyone in the room knew about "the yellow card system" (that's the one where nine national parliaments can get together and send back a piece of EU legislation to be reconsidered and has been used successfully once so far). Sadly for him, quite a lot of people in the room knew about it and, I assume, knew what a ridiculous bit of nonsense it is. No, Mr Ellwood, it is not an adequate substitute for legislating for ourselves.

Then we had Chris Leslie, Labour MP for Nottingham East and Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who told us at slightly shorter length that the problem was that we did not have enough clout in "Europe" because the Conservatives are so against it and because of the "phantom veto". Mind you, no man who uses that expression can be all bad but did he do so at the time?

Finally, we had Baroness Falkner, Lead Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs in the House of Lords, who started her talk with a bad joke and continued by explaining that the two most important events in all our lives except the really aged members of the House of Lords (yes, that's what she said) have been the refusal to enter the eurozone and the refusal to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. How old is this woman, I wondered, that she cannot remember anything else of importance. Anyway, apparently, these two events affected our ability to do anything anywhere, let alone in Europe.

As they used to say in the less reputable Sunday newspapers, I made my excuses and left. Why did I even bother?

Here are the figures

As readers of this blog know I have very little time for Open Europe's endless call for that elusive reform of the EU. However, when they deal with facts, they are worth listening to as they have the resources and they use them to produce good research of primary material.

Here is their analysis of the second Greek bail-out. The figures are not good. Well, you would not have expected them to be so. Reading the key points will take a couple of minutes. Then go and have a stiff drink.

Misleading titles

Even though my knowledge of German is shaky, I could understand this title in Die Welt: "Die Deutschen wollen mehr Europa". The Germans, I read, want more Europa. But not, I noticed, more European Union. My reading of the title and my stuttering through the article was confirmed by Open Europe and its team of translators:

According to a series of Deutschlandtrend polls conducted by ARD, only 35% of Germans accept “limited” versions of Eurobonds, with 55% opposing them. 66% do not support stronger eurozone countries providing credit guarantees for weaker ones, while 80% believe that “the worst of the euro– anddebt – crisis is yet to come.” 64% support “more common policy making in Europe over the next few years” (mehr gemeinsame Politik in Europa). However, the question does not mention the EU and does not ask whether respondents agree that powers should be transferred to the EU institutions. Answering a separate question, 53% of respondents said they were opposed to the idea of “United States of Europe”, with only 42% in favour.

Then Open Europe makes something of a boo-boo of its own. They quote from the Finnish business magazine Talouselämä (goodness, do they have Finnish translators in Open Europe?) and say in the heading: "47% of Finns think euro has done more harm than good, down from 71% a year ago". What?

Ahem, no. As you were. The translated and summarized text says:

Meanwhile, a poll conducted last week by Taloustutkimus Oy for Finnish business magazine Talouselämä shows that 49% of Finns are opposed to Finnish participation in EU emergency aid to Greece, while only 34% support the EU bailout. The same poll showed that 47% of Finns think the euro has done more good than harm, down from 71% in a Eurobarometer poll a year ago.

Exactly, the opposite to what the title says. Here are the figures on the opposition to the bail-out on Reuters. And here is the full story in English on YLE. Maybe there are no Finnish translators in Open Europe, after all. That might explain the perplexing heading.

Finland, meanwhile, refuses to budge on the question of the collateral agreement with Greece and the Prime Minister has been threatened with a meeting with Council President Van Rompuy on Monday morning. There's a threat to bring terror into any politician's heart.

Look, it really doesn't matter how many reports you produce

Thanks to my daily e-mail from Open Europe I find that there is another time-wasting very important report in existence that proves at great length that it is a waste of time, money, energy and good will on everybody's part for the European Parliament to have sessions in Strasbourg as well as Brussels.

There are two main problems with all these reports. No, make that three because the first and most obvious one is that it is a waste of everybody's time, money and energy to keep producing reports of no significance whatsoever simply to justify an MEP's, his staff's and the Brusssels-Strasbourg Study Group's existences and the funds allocated to them.

Secondly, to argue that there is something wrong with the European Parliament having two seats is to suggest that if that noxious organization did not ever leave Brussels it would be something to love and admire. Wrong, ladies and gentlemen, especially of Open Europe and other organizations who periodically campaign for getting rid of the Strasbourg sessions: the European Parliament has no justification whatsoever, regardless of how many seats it has. Even one seat and set of luxurious offices is too many.

Thirdly, all these campaigns tend to forget that the Strasbourg session and all that it implies are written into the treaties. The provision, always in existence in practice, made its way into theory in the Treaty of Amsterdam as it had been agreed at the European Council at Edinburgh in 1992. Here is what Protocol 8 says

(a) The European Parliament shall have its seat in Strasbourg where the 12 periods of monthly plenary sessions, including the budget session, shall be held. The periods of additional plenary sessions shall be held in Brussels. The committees of the European Parliament shall meet in Brussels. The General Secretariat of the European Parliament and its departments shall remain in Luxembourg.

See? Nor has that Protocol been deleted from subsequent treaties. It is still there in the Treaty of Lisbon and the Consolidated Treaties, to all intents and purposes the real and present constitution of this country and of all EU member states. Protocol 6 on page 265 repeats the text above. So, the geographically dual parliamentary procedure is part of the treaty and can be changed only through a change of the Consolidated Treaties, which would require unanimity. What are the chances of France agreeing? I think it might be easier to shut down the European Parliament altogether.

ADDENDUM: Edward McMillan-Scott thinks the monthly sojourn in Strasbourg induces stress-related problems in MEPs and the Parliament's staff. Well, diddums!

Open Europe reminds politicians and analysts of past crimes

It is really hard to be a perestroika europhile as you are doomed to constant disappointment (as were the proponents of the original perestroika). You call for reforms, you put forward all sorts of excellent ideas for reforms of the EU, which would be a very good and popular organization if only its bosses would listen to your ideas for reform, and what do you get? The EU and its institutions powering ahead with their own plans, which are not very sensible and not very popular but are what the EU is all about.

So you find yourself publishing pamphlets with titles like THEY SAID IT .... How the EU elite got it wrong on the euro, which is OK because Open Europe and its various predecessors were always against the euro. Or there is one that is called STILL OUT OF CONTROL - Measuring eleven years of EU regulation. Goodness knows the Boss and I get despondent about lack of progress but, at least, neither of us makes the mistake of thinking the EU can be reformed.

Actually I rather enjoyed THEY SAID IT. It is always good to be reminded of the blatant idiocies people came up with (or possibly blatant lies but the two are not mutually exclusive). Take the case of a certain Nick Clegg.

In 2002 he said:

The single currency, far from being an agent of continental style corporatism, is probably the greatest export vehicle of Anglo-Saxon economics. The euro has done more to enforce budgetary discipline, to promote privatisation and force through labour and product market liberalisation in the rest of Europe than any
number of exhortations from the IMF, the OECD, or the editors of The Economist.

He had already said in 2001

If we remain outside the euro, we will simply continue to subside into a position of relative poverty and inefficiency compared to our more prosperous European neighbours. Remember, we are already only the tenth richest nation in the EU in terms of national wealth per head. Yet you seem to think that such relative decline is a price worth paying for the sentimental satisfaction of retaining increasingly meaningless ‘control’ over our own interest rates.

In January 2009 he wrote in the Independent

The euro may well come to be regarded in the coming years as part of the answer to saving the City from permanent decline. It was easy to dismiss the fledgling euro as a ‘toilet currency’ before we realised our own economic growth was built on sand.

Yet on April 7, 2010 he told the BBC a very different story:

I don’t think the euro is for now. I go even further and say I don’t think interest rates under the Eurozone over the last few years wouldn’t have been right for the British economy […] I accept that Eurozone interest rates over the last few years would have been wrong for Britain.

Hmm. Those "last few years" included years in which he was praising the euro as the way of the future though, apparently, the interest rates were always wrong for Britain. He just forgot to mention it.

So, the pamphlet is very useful but it does soar into realms of porcine aviation by ending its Introduction with the following paragraph:

This note highlights that the politicians who sold their citizens the euro failed to either grasp or tell the whole truth about the single currency. While it is a reminder that the experts and our elected representatives can get it wrong, more importantly, it is a call for greater honesty about the future of European cooperation and a reminder of the urgent need to find a new model that is both politically and economically sustainable; one that is more in tune with the interests and preferences of European citizens.

Can't wait for the appearance of that new model.

Being reasonable

Open Europe is nothing if not reasonable. For the span of its existence it has provided the rest of us with excellent research - they have the staff dedicated to it - and with plaintive calls for the need to reform the European Union. If only everyone was as reasonable as they are, they imply, there would be none of this mess.

Their hour has come, one might say. After all, we now have a coalition government, led by Tweeedledum and Tweedledee with Dum assuring us that his party wanted to be in Europe but not ruled by Europe.

The actual plan the DumDee coalition produced for their policies on Europe is also in line with a great deal of Open Europe's thinking - sound tough but avoid all difficult problems and never go too far. For instance they do not intend to join or prepare to join the Euro in this Parliament, which is quite sensible of them, as Britain is no longer eligible for the Euro.

The coalition will also

ensure that there is no further transfer of sovereignty or powers over the course of the next Parliament. We will examine the balance of the EU’s existing competences and will, in particular, work to limit the application of the Working Time Directive in the United Kingdom.

Not quite repatriating powers but that promise was in another political era before the new politics of Britain had begun by the new coalition government that will build a new country.

Nothing daunted, Open Europe has produced a number of ... ahem ... "broken promises" from the EU elite on the euro. Actually, most of us would call them lies and, indeed, that is what we called them all at the time. So, we are not altogether surprised by the fact that all those promises were "broken" or, to be quite precise, unfulfillable.

Still, it is nice to have at least some (not very many) of those quotations in one place, so we can refer back to them and quote them in future when the DumDee coalition decides that, well, perhaps, we ought to have a look at the advantages of joining a stable single currency in order not to pay transaction charges (the biggest red herring in that entire debate).

However, Open Europe, bless its good-hearted attitude, is ready to give good advice. If only was as reasonable ... oh I do beg your pardon, I am repeating myself. Anyway, here is the advice:

While it is a reminder that the experts and our elected representatives do get it wrong, more importantly, it is a call for greater honesty about the future of European cooperation and a reminder of the urgent need to find a new model that is both politically and economically sustainable; one that is more in tune with the interests and preferences of European citizens.

Well, here is my advice to Open Europe: why not collect all those suggestions that you made to the EU, its politicians and bureaucrats in one place and call it Tales of Porcine Aviation?