Isolation vs co-operation

The European elections are shaping up to a battle between those who believe that Britain's future lies with isolation and those who believe that it lies in co-operation with other countries, in particular with its neighbours in Europe.

With the increasingly isolationist and extremist Conservatives competing with UKIP, Libertas, the BNP and sundry others for the ultra eurosceptic vote - and fighting like dogs while they're at it - the way should be clear for Labour to make a clear principled case for engagement and participation in the European Union.

The world economic crisis has shown clearly how interdependent countries are in the economic field - particularly so within Europe where we share the world's largest single market. Climate change has similarly underlined how interdependent we are on environmental matters. International criminal gangs trafficking drugs and people can only be tackled through co-operation. On all these and other matters, the EU is the framework where we and our neighbouring countries come together to seek common solutions to common problems.

Yet, instead of addressing these problems, the Conservatives want to re-open last year's decision by our national parliament to ratify the Lisbon Treaty - a set of reforms designed to make the EU work better and to subject it to more parliamentary scrutiny. Revoking Britain's support for this treaty - now ratified by almost all our partners - is scarcely a way to help us co-operate on the economic and environmental challenges that we must focus on. It would plunge the EU into turmoil and take Britain to the exit door at a moment when we need co-operation in Europe more than ever. And quite how it would help us deal with the world economic crisis is unclear - most of our trade is with the rest of the EU, and most inward investment into Britain from abroad is from our fellow EU countries. 2 million British people live or work in other EU countries. Yet the Conservatives propose to stick two fingers up at the rest of Europe.

Iceland moves closer to EU membership

The resounding victory for Iceland's left-wing coalition at the weekend has brought Icelandic EU membership much closer. The Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir has made it clear that her priority is to begin negotiations on EU accession, with the deal being decided by a referendum. Given that Iceland has access to single market, and has therefore adopted a large amount of the Community acquis, there is no reason why accession could not be concluded quickly.

It is truly an historic result in Iceland - the most novice MPs ever elected and the most women MPs in the country's history, and it also demonstrates how quickly things can change in politics. After all, it's less than a year ago that some British Eurosceptics were looking to Iceland as a country to emulate. Indeed, one increasingly prominent Conservative MEP, known for his unstinting Euroscepticism and commitment to privatising the NHS, proclaimed that:

"Being outside the EU, Iceland has been able to cut taxes and regulation, and to open up its economy. For 70 years the Althing has been dominated by the splendidly named Independence party, which has pursued the kind of Thatcherite agenda that is off limits to EU members... Icelanders understand that there is a connection between living in an independent state and living independently from the state. They have no more desire to submit to international than to national regulation. That attitude has made them the happiest, freest and wealthiest people on earth."

I'm sure Dan won't mind being reminded!

European Parliament wins big victories for consumers

It’s been a week of good news for consumers after this week's voting session in the European Parliament resulted in the adoption of new rules which will save millions of people money.

First, and most importantly, is the news that energy suppliers will no longer be able to charge a premium to people who pay for their gas and electricity on prepayment meters. Currently people who use their prepayment meter for both gas and electricity will pay on average an extra £215 a year more for their energy than people paying by direct debit. This is a patently unfair system, all the more unjust when you consider that you are a third more likely to buy your energy with a prepayment meter if you have a disability, live in social housing or are a single parent.

This practice will now end thanks to this week's vote in the European Parliament, a decision which will reduce bills for millions of people living in Britain who pay for their gas and electricity with a prepayment meter (there are 5.9million meters in the UK alone).

Along with the end to price discrimination, the new rules effectively give a bill of rights to energy consumers. Customers will be given the right to change their gas and electricity suppliers within three weeks and free of charge, be able to claim compensation in cases where people are given inaccurate or delayed bills. Finally, 80% of consumers across Europe must have access to energy-efficient SmartMeters for electrical appliances.

Mobile phone users will also save money after further caps were agreed this week for people using text messages and downloading data while abroad.

Back in the summer of 2007 a maximum tariff for people making or receiving phone calls abroad was introduced, and a ceiling price for data and text messages will come into force on July this year while receiving and making abroad will once again drop.

The cost of sending a text message while abroad will not be able to exceed 11 cents form 1st July this year while one megabyte of data (which is used to send emails and pictures and for web-browsing from mobile phones or laptops) will be limited to one euro (prices do not include VAT). By July 2011 this will drop to 50 cents.

In the past people have ended up with astronomical bills into tens of thousands of pounds (see here) by downloading programmes and games abroad because there was simply no warning or limit to how much they were spending. The new rules will give people the opportunity to impose a limit on how much they download abroad, a service people will have to opt out from by 2010.

Once again the European Parliament, thanks in part to the work of Labour MEPs, has stood up for the rights of consumers against big business, leaving ordinary people with more money in their pocket.

Tom Wise charged with money laundering

UKIP have been dealt a severe blow this week following the announcement that the Crown Prosecution Service is charging Tom Wise with money laundering and false accounting.

Wise will appear in court next week. The allegations that Wise had claimed just under £40,000 to pay an assistant, but then funnelled most of the money into his own bank account, came to light in 2005, prompting a lengthy investigation by the Parliament's anti-fraud office OLAF, before the case was passed on to Bedfordshire police.

Wise is, of course, not the first UKIP MEP to face criminal charges. Ashley Mote was convicted on multiple counts of benefit fraud and jailed for nine months in 2007.

Wise has not been convicted of anything and, needless to say, remains innocent until proven guilty. But for a party that often decries EU 'corruption' to have two of its elected MEPs charged with financial irregularities looks like more than carelessness. To have lost no less than one third of the 12 members elected under its banner in 2004 is shambolic.

Declining turnout is not exclusive to the European Parliament

Much ado in the media these last few days about the likely level of turnout in the European elections, with the inevitible Eurosceptic claim that a low turnout lessens the legitimacy of the parliament.

I think it is important to distinguish two aspects: the level of turnout and the trend.

It is perfectly normal that European elections, like local elections, have a lower turnout than national elections. After all, less is at stake, as the EU's responsibilties are far smaller than those of national parliaments. That being said, European Parliament elections have a higher turnout than most mid-term Congress elections in the United States.

As regards the trend, the turnout has declined from 63% in 1979 to 46% in 2004 – a fall of about 17% in a quarter century (though accentuated by the accession of the eastern European countries, several of whom have an extraordinary low turnout in all elections). It is this decline that is siezed on by Eurosceptics.

However, this decline is not peculiar to the European Parliament. There has been a similar decline in national parliamentary elections in many countries over the corresponding period. For example, turnout declined by over 16% in Germany from 1972 to 2005, 27% in France between 1973 to 2007, 19% in Portugal from 1979 to 2005 and almost 20% in the UK between 1974 and 2005.

In other words it is a challenge for democracy at all levels, not a phenomenen particular to the European Parliament.

Non-debate with Declan Ganley

Last week, I had a discussion on BBC TV about democracy in the EU with Declan Ganley, the Anglo-Irish businessman who financed the “No” campaign in the Irish referendum on the Lisbon treaty and who is now trying to field candidates in the European elections in every Member State under the banner of “Libertas”.

“Discussion” is a term that might be applied to the first five minutes, but can scarcely be used for the remainder, (it is still up for a few days on the BBC website at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7982217.stm if anyone wants to see), as his tactic in the latter part of the discussion was to interrupt, heckle and shout to make inaudible any point he disagreed with.

What stands out is the breathtaking hypocrisy of the man.

In the discussion, he sometimes claims not to be anti-EU at all (he said, “I like the European Union”, “I have particularly benefitted from the European Union as a businessman”, “It is essential that this European project succeeds”), yet the allies he has selected to fight with him in the European elections are invariably anti-EU groups, usually on the extreme right, and the arguments he uses draw heavily on the clichés of the eurosceptic British tabloids and the more sophisticated lines drafted for him by Jens Peter Bonde. When he gave a press conference last year in the EP, he was flanked by MEPs from UKIP, the French Front Nationale and Dan Hannan.

Of course, he knows that, in Ireland at least, he has little chance of success if he is classed as anti-Europe, so he will try to keep his alliances quiet and shout from the rooftops that he is simply for a more democratic EU – and deny that the Lisbon treaty actually makes the EU more democratic. Indeed, EU legislation must pass a double democratic check: acceptability to elected governments in the Council of ministers and acceptability to the directly elected MEPs in the European Parliament – the only case of an international structure with such a degree of accountability. But don’t expect him to highlight that!

His allies will be a severe embarrassment. But, as with questions about the source of his finance, instead of answering, he will attempt to smear anyone who questions his actions. When I mentioned Libertas’s links with the League of Polish Families, he accused me of lying (a bit rich coming from the man whose No campaign said the Lisbon Treaty would lead to children of 3 being incarcerated!) and claimed that “we have nothing to do with these people”. Yet Libertas’s own website shows the League’s former minister Daniel Pawlowiec as the head of Libertas in Poland.


Talking of lying, his website also claims that the European Parliament “is spending 9 million euro of taxpayer’s money on an aqua gym for its members and employees”. It is doing no such thing, and the BBC interviewer (the fiercely impartial Shirin Wheeler) took him up on this (in a part of our discussion that sadly wasn’t be fitted in to the broadcast programme). She pointed out that Ganley had already been told some time ago that this was untrue, yet he has kept the lie on his website. This illustrates his tactic of spreading myths of the sort that lazy journalists will lap up if they are looking for sensation and aren’t too bothered with facts.

So, what actually bothers him about the treaty of Lisbon? He says it is “what the treaty takes away from national parliaments” (nothing – it strengthens their role). Apparently “Brussels” or “bureaucrats” want to seize more power from the Member States. Yet it is the Member States, not the EU institutions, who decide on the EU’s remit and then anyway authorize any EU action within that remit. The Lisbon Treaty was agreed by the Member State governments, not the European Commission, and in any case is not so much about increasing the EU’s remit (on the contrary, it delimits it more carefully than in the past) as about improving the way it handles its existing responsibilities, with a more efficient structure but with more checks and balances.

As to what kind of reformed EU Ganley would like to see, he remained extremely vague. He seems to have dropped his idea of an American style elected President of Europe, but has no concrete suggestions for the reforms he would want instead of Lisbon, simply saying in our discussion that “We need to rid [the EU] of a system of governance which is undemocratic and unaccountable” (same old cliché), “I would like to see a lot more accountability and power given to the European Parliament” (which, of course, is what Lisbon does), and “I would like to see real political parties in the European Parliament” (maybe parties with actual members and democratic internal structures, like most of its current member parties, instead of a businessman’s appointees, as Libertas is offering?).

He remains confused as to how the EU actually works, repeating the old canard that “well in excess of 70 percent of new laws in most Member States originate from this town [Brussels]”, yet saying also that “they can’t initiate law, here”. He complains that “The European Parliament doesn’t function like national parliaments normally do in their legislative role” (its legislative role is precisely like national parliaments, voting for or against or amending proposals for legislation put before it, with the one difference that it is not a parliament controlled by a governing majority which accepts everything its government proposes – something one might have thought that Ganley would approve of) and that “for it to function properly, it needs to have real political parties” (has he never seen or read about the parliament?). He also says “We would like to see the Commission ‘opened up’ … it’s very secretive right now…we don’t know who these people are, we don’t know what they look like” (eh? membership of the Commission is secret? Granted, he is so ill informed that he appears not to know that the Commission is elected by Parliament and is dismissable by it too, but to claim that the Commission’s membership is secret is wilfully misleading).

When caught out in the debate, he occasionally beats a hasty retreat. The Lisbon Treaty, he eventually admits, “marginally increases the powers of the European Parliament”. “I haven’t called the EU unelected and unaccountable”. “Even its harshest critic would have to admit that this has been the most successful peace process in the history of the world” (the last an unacknowledged quote from Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume).


Not an illuminating discussion, but at least it illustrates some of the tactics of Ganley’s anti-Europe “Libertas” campaign, which plans to have candidates standing in every EU country in June.



P.S. For anyone interested in finding out more about the mysterious Mr Ganley and some of his past political and business dealings, the following wevbsite looks interesting: http://www.whoisdeclanganley.blogspot.com/

Green Lane sets an example for us all to follow

Thanks to an email from a constituent called Ian Lewis I was pleased to discover that Britain's "greenest street" is in Yorkshire & Humber.

Green Lane, in Leeds, took part and won the Green Streets initiative which involved several streets from across the country competing to see who could save the most energy.

While the houses on the streets were given help (such as solar panels and loft and wall insulation), most of the savings came from simply turning things off at the mains, not leaving lights on, cooking more efficiently, not over-filling kettles and ditching the odd appliance. The savings made were astonishing, with Mr Lewis and his family reducing energy consumption by 45%, with Green Lane managing an average of 35%.

As Mr Lewis points out, if we were all to follow Green Lane's example across Britain, Europe and the rest of the world, we could start having an immediate and significant impact on climate change.

These are very easy changes we can all make and must start making. And if we do, we'll not only start having a real impact on the environment we’ll have more money in our pockets too.

Congratulations to all involved in Green Lane's triumph and lets hope everyone else follows in their footsteps.

Click here and here for a little more on the Green Streets initiative

A trio of Danish Rasmussens

I enjoyed Hugh Muir's piece in the Guardian today noting Denmark's fondness for electing people called Rasmussen, and the potential savings it might make.

"Tonight, the world leaders' cavalcade rolls on to Germany, and Baden Baden, for celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Nato. On Saturday, following ceremonies in Kiel and Strasbourg, either side of the Rhine, the 28 heads of state of Nato spend the day in a working session, seeking consensus on the choice of the new general secretary. The favourite is Denmark's right of centre prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who is popular here, with the French and in the US, and who succeeded Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, now a leading member of the European parliament. His replacement is likely to be Lars Lokke Rasmussen. All three are unrelated, but if the seers are right, consider what the country saves in name badges and stationery."

It's still fine to fish for your supper

Those who think that "Brussels bureaucrats" can impose barmy rules without further ado would do well to look at the story of anglers coming under the Common Fisheries Policy. In fact, it is proof that the EU's democratic process can and does stop the adoption of barmy rules.

In this case, amateur anglers were understandably taken aback when they heard or read that they were to be included under the Common Fisheries Policy. In fact, it was just a Commission proposal - a first draft.

The proposed regulation would have required recreational fishermen to register their boats, with their catch having to be counted against the fisheries quota for that country. This would have been, justifiably, a gift for those who claim that the EU imposes bonkers legislation and ignores common sense.

However, MEPs on the Fisheries Committee voted through amendments to leave this matter at the discretion of each country to decide, while the Commission has also seen reason - with Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg giving written assurances that recreational anglers now have absolutely nothing to worry about.

In his words: "The normal hobby angler who catches an insignificant number of fish when he goes out fishing and uses it exclusively for his private consumption will not be covered by the control regulation, even if he catches fish like cod which is under a recovery plan."

Even Tory MEP Struan Stevenson, a regular exaggerator of the story, said "anglers have nothing to fear".

That should settle it. The bottom line is that any angler who has the patience to go fishing to catch themselves their supper can rest easy. They'll still be able to do it.

Celebrating the minimum wage with a bit more holiday!

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the minimum wage, introduced by the Labour government and opposed by many of today's Tories who claim to be on the side of working families. If you visit here you can see the dramatic difference the minimum wage makes each day.

Neatly coinciding with this year's anniversary is an increase in holiday leave for all workers in Britain. EU law already guarantees everyone 20-days paid holiday a year, however some employers were forcing people to include public holidays as part of their leave. From today, this loophole has been closed by increasing the minimum amount of leave for all full-time workers to 28 days (it's pro-rata for part-timers). So even if people must take their bank holidays as leave they will still have the equivalent of four working weeks off a year, a change which will benefit six million people.