International

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte put in an appearance this week at the ALDE (centre-right liberals) European Parliament group conference held on this occasion in Warsaw. There, he warned that Europe could fall apart if the politicians didn’t listen to what the public were clearly saying: not still more Brussels, please. It’s just a pity that the government he heads wants precisely the opposite: more economic diktats from Brussels, a European Public Prosecutor, a European security force and even intensive European defence cooperation. But things didn’t work out so well for Rutte. The conference which the SP held yesterday with a number of sister parties in Maastricht was where you wanted to be to hear clear language. After twenty-five years of neoliberal deception it’s time for a new EU treaty which puts the national parliaments back in the driver’s seat. While the neoliberals twist and turn, the modern left is clear: No to this EU; build a new form of European cooperation.

Each year the Bertelsmann Foundation, a German thinktank linked to the media giant of the same name, publishes its index of social justice. As in previous years, the latest edition shows that this form of justice remains a distant prospect. In most member states things are still worse than they were before the financial crisis. Little attention is being paid to inequality in society, and poverty is on the rise rather than falling. This isn’t an encouraging picture, and represents a slap in the face for all those budget fetishists like our own Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Not only Bertelsmann, but also the European Commission itself has now come to the conclusion that state investment wouldn’t be such a crazy idea. It’s indeed sad that we can talk of seven lost years in which all member states alike imposed spending cuts and in so doing held back economic recovery. If only people had listened to the SP and in particular the party’s leader Emile Roemer when he stood up against the 3% norm laid down by Brussels.

The news agency Politico this week launched a frontal attack on the wastefulness of Euro-MPs who consider that they must travel throughout the world in luxury in order to develop and maintain contacts. This year I’m Rapporteur for the European Parliament’s financial accountability, reason enough to dive deeper into this matter. And sure enough there’s a lot of weeding to be done in this particular garden. Not every journey to a country beyond the European Union is useless, but accountability could be improved. We have no need for champagne diplomacy.

This week the European Commission announced that they had selected ‘in a fully transparent manner’ five members of the new advisory council on national budgetary policy, the so-called ‘European Fiscal Board’. The European Parliament was not involved in the selection. And so once again we see a new organ, far away from the European public, which will soon be able to issue important advice on the running of national budgets. The Commission will hide behind the advice notes when it comes to making its ‘recommendations’ to the member states. This has really nothing to do with democracy and transparency. It’s a pity that both the Dutch national Parliament and the EP have just sat back and let this happen.