International

At the moment Brussels is sending out extremely mixed signals. Commissioner Rehn, a.k.a. the Commission’s Budget Tsar, remains strict in relation to countries such as the Netherlands: we shall and must come under the maximum budgetary deficit of 3% by 2013, or there’ll be the devil to pay. At the same time Brussels is saddling national governments with expensive projects and continues to dream up programmes which will cost us all deep in the purse, yet whose added value is far from clear. High time that we in the SP European Parliament team put such inconsistencies on the agenda.

Negotiations on the European law governing access to documents at EU institutions – a European Freedom of Information Act - are fully under way. The European Parliament is fighting a lonely battle in regard to these negotiations. Neither the European Commission, nor the member states, which are directly represented in the Council, are willing to reveal too much. You might have expected a different attitude, at least from the Commission, which spends millions on giving out ‘information’. But it is clearly not their intention to aid the critical member of the public. The SP takes people seriously. We don’t see them as a target group whom we must ‘inform’, but as individuals who have the right to honest and comprehensive information. That’s what we will continue to fight for in the EP.

The leader of the Greens in the European Parliament, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, has together with others brought out a manifesto, calling on all young people in Europe to sign up to it. That sounds like a good move from a former activist, but the document in question is full of hollow phrases and empty of social proposals. The EU member states have, according to Cohn-Bendit, made a real mess of things, and only Europe can help young people to move on. This is to stand the world on its head : it is precisely Brussels, with its fetishisism of austerity, which is exacerbating the crisis. Cohn-Bendit completely ignores this question. In my view, his manifesto is fit only for the waste-paper basket.

Yesterday Geert Wilders, leader of the hard right PVV, pointed to the European Union when he withdrew his support for the government’s planned round of further spending cuts. And today centre-left leader Francois Hollande came out on top in the first round of the French Presidential elections. One of his themes was that he would if elected reject Merkel’s Budgetary Pact, the treaty which further tightens the budgetary rules for Eurozone countries, as it is not a measure which would promote growth. National elections and European themes are thus becoming intertwined, which is of course logical, because through ‘economic governance’ Brussels is exercising ever more influence on national policy.