International

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.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, together with – amongst others – Eurogroup chair (and Dutch Finance Minister) Jeroen Dijsselbloem, has already announced in The Five Presidents Report, that an advisory council was to be established, responsible for the Commission’s advice to member states on their national budgetary policy. A few years ago you would have thought it impossible that ‘Brussels’ would interfere in the detail of our spending on health care and education, with our pensions, with wage development – you name it. At the same time few people yet appear to see that the Commission is simply trying to play the role of our national parliament. The europhiles think it’s fine and the EU-critical see it as just the latest confirmation of Brussels’ meddlesome ways.

Foto: DonkeyHotey

All eyes have been turned this week on the trade treaties and on Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s bumbling over the Ukraine Association Agreement, but meanwhile the presentation by the Commission of its new advisory council slipped almost noiselessly by. That may well have been the Commission’s intention. If they had agreed in advance with the national parliaments and the EP, it would have been clear that there were perhaps objections to one or two of the nominees, but certainly against the advisory council itself, and there would if necessary have been protests, if not amongst the people’s representatives than amongst the people who elect them. And the last thing Brussels wants in such cases is a broad social debate. So the Commission simply went ahead and set up the advisory council itself. True enough, any interested experts could register, but no elected politician made it past the selection procedure. As long as we continue down this path, the anti-EU vote in the member states will only grow bigger. Yet Juncker and his ilk believe that all will be well. Sad.