International

Tuesday will see an extraordinary plenary session of the European Parliament in the wake of the Brexit referendum. The centre-right European People’s Party, the centre-left Socialists and Democrats, the Liberal ALDI and the Greens have put forward a resolution which shows absolutely no respect for the British voter and includes no condemnation of the EU’s longstanding neoliberal policy. Instead these political groups call on the British to pack their bags as soon as they can and state that they should be heavily punished for their defiance. The masks have definitively fallen. The groups listed above have completely lost the plot. If they carry on like that, they will have no-one to blame but themselves for the collapse of the European Union.

In a period of mourning you will often witness the pattern of denial followed by anger and finally acceptance. The political establishment in Brussels has for years denied the aversion among the people of the member states to the EU’s passion for interference and its neoliberal policies. The EU has become the plaything of the multinationals and has increased the inequalities between the members states. The ‘no’ to the European Constitution from the French and Dutch voters was seen as a misfortune for business. The ‘no’ to the Association Agreement with Ukraine has been ignored in Brussels. And now the Brexit: the British shouldn’t have voted for it? But things didn’t work out that way. Denial no longer makes sense: the British people have spoken.

And so then comes the anger. The results will be seen in a debate on Tuesday morning, when Guy Verhofstadt will undoubtedly be spitting fire, just as the resolution which he co-wrote does. The British must be punished, if only to demonstrate that the EU is a sort of Hotel California: you can check in, but you can never leave, at least not in one piece. Sniggering about a possible collapse of the United Kingdom, sniggering about the rows in the British Conservative and Labour Parties. And the Brits have to get out right away, no foot-dragging, because then Verhofstadt and his henchmen can get on with building a neoliberal and federal Europe in the service of major corporations and the eurocrats.

So will we also see acceptance? I hope so. In which case my fellow MEPs will have to realise two things. First of all that it is for the British Parliament and the British government to determine whether the UK is to leave the EU and if so when and in what fashion a new relationship will be shaped: the Norwegian, the Swiss or something even looser. Only then will Brussels come into the picture. It is in everyone’s interest, and certainly that of the Netherlands, which traditionally conducts a great deal of trade with the UK, to come to businesslike commercial agreements which serve everyone’s interests. ‘Punishment’ has no role in this.

Secondly, that the EU itself must be transformed. Not to widen the gap with the public via Verhofstadt’s wild plans, but by returning to national parliaments the right to decide for themselves over their budgets, to take hold of the internal market whenever the situation demands it, and to put restraints on freedom of movement. And also to reorganise the European Commission: what its president, Jean-Claude Juncker, says is the most political Commission ever might also be the last. That’s the best way to arrive at a form of European cooperation which can count on the support of the public, one which does not increase conflict, but which sets the peace and prosperity of all as its priority. I hope passionately that my fellow MEPs understand this in time. Otherwise we can expect a Frexit, a Grexit or a Portuguese exit, where the people are fed up of imposed and utterly counterproductive austerity. Then it won’t be Cameron, but Verhofstadt who has skilofully destroyed the EU.