International

With her statement that the European Constitution must be adopted within two years, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is showing total contempt for the German and French people and their recent rejection of the proposal. This was the view expressed by SP Member of Parliament and European Union affairs spokesman Harry van Bommel. Reacting to Merkel’s speech before the European Parliament today, Van Bommel said that “It is hard to imagine a worse start to the German EU Presidency.”

As expected, the German Christian Democrat Hans-Gert Poetering was this morning ‘elected’ as the new President of the European Parliament. What this rigged election did demonstrate is that there is a great deal of resistance to this system of political horse-trading, under which positions are decided and distributed behind closed doors. Poetering’s majority was significantly smaller than the majority which can be mustered by the total membership of the two political groups which cooked the deal up.