Perhaps it was just the novelty of it, or maybe I’m just too much of a political geek, but I was very happy to get the chance to sit in the back of the AFCO (constitutional affairs) committee in the EP today. I was mainly there for the morning’s discussion of the Duff Report, but seeing as I’ve previously blogged on the citizens initiative, I popped back after work to hear the concluding speeches on that. I kind of forgot to keep following what was going on with the Initiative over the past few months, but it seems it’s still doing the salami rounds, losing thin slices of legitimacy as a “citizens” initiative. Unfortunately I missed most of the summing up, as it was delivered by the Chair of the Petitions Committee, Erminia Mazzoni, and while I have nothing against her personally, she doesn’t half shout! She managed to drown out the interpreter on the headset I was using, even with the volume turned up.

Anyway, the Duff Report was my main focus, and seems quite interesting in its proposals. I hadn’t encountered it before today, but the idea of transnational lists for the European Parliament elections is one that has been floating around for a little while. Theoretically, I like the idea, but it looks like something that would be nigh on impossible to implement, requiring as it does, a treaty change, and by extension, consent from member states, which by even more extension means national political parties voting to give up some of their control over who can be the MEP for their ideological stand-point. Andrew Duff, the rapporteur on the Electoral Act, seems to think a constitutional convention is a good idea for bringing together the proposals on the matter of pan-EU MEPs into a concrete treaty change, but his enthusiasm for it begs the question of whether he paid any attention to the rhetoric that was flying around at the time of the Lisbon Treaty’s ratification. Frankly, I can’t see a way for a Europeanising treaty change, or constitutional convention to take place for a few years at least.

It’ll be interesting to see how this one pans out though. I quite like the idea of pan-European MEPs—especially if they could represent the interests of Europeans who’ve ended up living outside their own state—and some of his other proposals are amusingly outlandish (harmonising electoral procedures/dates, votes at 16 in European elections*, making the Belgians accept noticeably fewer seats than the Dutch).

* I’m for votes at 16, but to introduce for only one election, and to try to do so in all member states at once?! Not an easy place to start.

Thanks to very little BBC reporting on it, it wasn’t until I noticed the European Council lanyards on the other people in the pub last night that I realised that there had been a summit during the day (somehow, despite working in the centre of Europe, and dealing with EU related things all day, I manage to miss the big stuff), but with the reports today of a confrontation between Sarkozy and Barroso, I’m glad that for once we see some passion in a European summit. It’s just unfortunate that it was over the appalling treatment of European citizens.

I’m a bit surprised that Sarkozy is still pushing on, claiming support from other heads of state and government, despite the fact that he really does seem to be standing alone on this one. I suppose it shows a modicum of decency in the leaders in the EU that there have been public condemnations of the French Government’s actions, and it certainly is nice to see a Commissioner willing to publicly criticise a member state, but I can’t help but feel that it is all a bit too little, and a bit too late. I don’t want Europe to be tiptoeing around, with everyone playing diplomacy. The EU should be part of the rough and tumble of politics, just like any national capital or regional government. Maybe the next time a member state does something reprehensible—though obviously it’d be nice if whatever it was simply didn’t happen—the Commission and Parliament speak out sooner.

If there is one thing that is sure to enrage the more Eurosceptical ‘contributors’ to the debate on whether or not the EU is a good thing, then it is the prospect of Brussels levying a tax on something, whether it be financial transactions, or aviation; just look at the way that Osbourne has had to drop the reassuring word, “sovereignty” into his remarks about the outcome of the Council of Ministers meeting the other day, where the proposed Financial Transaction Tax was discussed. But giving the EU the ability to levy taxes would surely bring a major benefit to individual member states, and one which might in other circumstances be welcomed by the likes of UKIP: it would let the EU raise part of its own budget, reducing the burden on member states’ budgets. It needn’t even increase the burden on the taxed, as the newly instituted EU taxes could be raised in areas that need to be taxed more stringently (aviation providing a prime example of this), but where this is not yet the case. Nevertheless, I’m pretty certain that the likes of the Taxpayers’ Alliance in the UK, and their friends around the continent will quickly paint any proposals on that note, should they ever emerge, as the self-aggrandising Eurocrats trying to get their mitts on money they have no right to.

I could never quite bring myself to proclaim, “anyone but Barroso”, last year when the post of Commission President was being considered—what with the implications that I’d plump for Wilders or Griffin instead—, but still, I really can’t say that I think he’s any good.

When I think of Barroso, I think of the grey concrete and soulless boulevards of the European quarter of Brussels. He is a civil servant and a bureaucrat; I can’t summon any idea of what he stands for, and, perhaps more importantly, where he wants to take the EU. Maybe this could be seen as a good thing, for the EU to have a settled time to get used to its new system with Lisbon &c., but while the EU is doing the equivalent of breaking in a new pair of shoes, where does it leave public perception and opinion of the Union?

Various blogs and newspaper articles have suggested that the post-war idealism of peace in Europe, brought about by the unity between nations, is meaningless to most people of my generation. Frankly they’re right. I still think it is one very positive contribution of the European project, but it isn’t something that can motivate people to accept what is still an oddity in most people’s conceptions of what a state is, and where laws come from.

Ultimately I wasn’t surprised by Barroso’s first State of the [European] Union. It was as much of a feast of buzzwords as many have predicted, and it didn’t really seem to say anything astonishingly new or push forward a continuing vision of where the European project is going. Perhaps it will prove a worthwhile contribution to the political process of the EU, with a growing acceptance that the citizens, and thus their representatives in Parliament, are prime, with the executive reporting to them, but I have little faith that this isn’t just going to end up like the sort of mechanical and contrived show that so much of EU politics and governance manages to perform. The fact that the compulsory attendance of MEPs was discussed before, with members being infantilized by a requirement to press voting buttons to confirm their presence is perhaps testament enough to the unnatural character of such an occasion.

Image from the European Parliament on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons licence.

Isn’t Europe supposed to be the continent where we look after people who have fallen on hard times, and provide them with the support that they need to get back on track, and make something out of their lives? Aren’t we supposed to have the European ideals of society and working together, rather than the harsher ‘every man for himself’ attitude that prevails in some other parts of the world? I’m asking because, for the past few weeks, the ugly discrimination and marginalisation of an entire group of people has not just walked into consciousness, but has paraded its way through the media and public debate.

(more…)

Well I was going to post something about the problems facing Roma people in the EU (and that post will work its way up here soon), but in the course of trying to find out what was said in a meeting of the Civil Liberties committee of the European Parliament on that very topic, I discovered an interesting fact about the EP Live service: it doesn’t work on a Mac!

I’m used to the idea that, when it comes to certain new software, especially if I have to download and install it on my laptop, then I might not be in luck with my Mac only set-up, but where on earth is the difficulty in delivering video to a Mac?! I regularly use YouTube, BBC iPlayer, and various other flash based formats to watch videos on the Web, so regularly that I rarely watch a real TV. So why can’t the EP deliver recorded coverage of debates in a format that works on all computers? I shouldn’t be surprised that the Parliament is incompetent with technology, parliaments tend to be a bit rubbish like that, but it’s still surely unreasonable that I can’t see my representatives doing their job, simply because I haven’t bought a Microsoft Windows PC?

Update

Well, it turns out the EP Web team do care about accessibility. After an email to the Web-master, I received a reply pointing to the possibility to view archived plenary sessions in MPEG-4 format. It seems ok in Google Chrome, but (and this is probably a problem with my Mac) it’s buggy and tends to crash. Also, if you try to download the video, you get all the translations at once on the audio track. Looks like things are moving in the right direction, lets hope this continues.

What a very long time it has been since I last wrote anything here on the Thursday Briefing. My failure to post has been caused by the need to devote all my time to writing a thesis and attempting to plan and execute an international move in just a fortnight (not a wholly successful endeavour). Thankfully now though, the thesis is done and graded, and as of tomorrow the stressful nightmare that is moving house will be completed, leaving me free to pursue my attempts to become a Eurocrat here in Brussels. I have a feeling that living in Brussels and working in, and around, EU politics will be nothing but good for this blog, especially as I will have enough free time to actually write stuff.

Anyway, with perhaps a little stutter, while I attempt to get everything settled (dealing with Belgian bureaucrats is not fun), the Thursday Briefing is back. I did have a chance to think about the content of the site though, and I plan to change the focus. This started out as an attempt at a hybrid Scottish-European-Green politics blog, but since I haven’t lived in Scotland for more than a year, I think it is time to change the focus to being a much more of a EU/Green blog. Not that I won’t ever write about Scotland or Scottish politics, but it only makes sense to focus on what I know, and that is the EU.

So, what started as a little experiment in CSS3 has now entered its second year of existence. Lets hope it can last to its third birthday.