MEP Nigel Farage and his complaints

Here's Nigel Farage, the leader of the UKIP in the European Parliament. For more on him, check wikipedia and this article.

As the following clips show, Mr Farage has decent points, but his cynical and personal rhetoric typical of the Westminster Parliament, does not work so well in a sensitive Europe. Where as in the UK that rhetoric is acceptable, and normal, in Europe it becomes offensive and is unacceptable. He has good points, but wouldn't they be better made if they were put according to the rules of the game everyone else is playing?

Sarkozy, Lisbon Treaty, Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton, Van Rompuy and No apologies to Van Rompuy

On another note, I feel sorry for the members of the European parliament who can't speak either French, English or German, but still try. They ought to make better use of the translators. The bulgarian lady who talks about "popo" is just sad...

So what do you think about the Lisbon treaty? Should there have been a referendum? Was it worth having it? Was it possible to come up with a better treaty, and if so which one?

Lisbon Treaty and the road ahead

So it turns out that the Lisbon Treaty really is going to come into force (here, here and here), probably by the end of December or January, latest in February of 2010. That's nice! It means that the decision making in the EU will be simplified, that the European Parliament will have a stronger voice in that decision making, thus reinforcing (albeit only marginally the EU electorate would say) the democratic legitimacy of the EU. This will be done by decreasing the threshold for the approval of directives (EU legislation approved by the European parliament and by the European Council, tantamount to ordering countries to pass legislation that achieves a certain end, leaving it to the countries to find out what the most appropriate way is). Countries will be given a de jure opportunity to leave the EU and individual citizens of the EU will be able to present petitions to the European Union, for the proposal of new legislation. The EU will get 1 representative for foreign policy (and security BTW...) with rather wide ranging powers, although he will not be the boggey man that Eurosceptics would make him/her out to be. He will be no where near the president of the USA, but more like his secretaries of state or defence. Nonetheless there will be nothing resembling an imperial presidency of the EU, along USA lines. Indeed, the role of the permanent president of the council of the EU is still very much unspecified and there seems to only be some consensus that his or her influence will be shaped by whoever becomes the first permanent (only 2 and half years mandate renewable only once). Thus if a Blair type becomes the first president, he will try to shape it into some wide ranging position. If however a Juncker type would take over it would be a more discrete political role, building consensus and setting the agenda, which would be a good idea. As a matter of fact all that this treaty really does is to give more coherence to European institutions, and decrease the noise around the voice of Europe (by simplifying decision making and defining the division of labour within the EU better, once we'll know what the president does). Member states are still able to make a fuss, to posture and more importantly, to defend their constituents' interest.However, and until the next generation of EU treaties comes along, they will not be able to freeze European integration; at least not without a far reaching support for their position. Hopefully, by providing this new framework for decision making it will allow the EU to be a more determined government. Hopefully by decreasing the threshold for legislating it will make the EU more responsive to political concerns. "Hopefully", because there's a ton of things to take care of and the end of this constitutional soap opera eliminates a most distracting excuse. As Barber puts it, now is the time to turn to the daily business. Here is a prior discussion and beneath are some ideas: Fiscal policy - The SGP (stability and growth pact which regulates the size of deficits <=3%) is likely to be a rather deficient tool, although only the recovery from this economic crisis will tell. How can the EU sort its fiscal policy out? It needs to decrease fiscal deficits, while allowing for a system where in the face of economic contraction, it allows for deficits to rise in order to permit tax smoothing. The present SGP permits such a thing to happen, but it has three problems and one advantage: first, it is likely to be too lax, there are too many excuses for running a deficit. Secondly, it is a system where the states police themselves. For anyone who knows human nature and anyone who's studied delegation (eg: to central banks) or principal agent problems, it is obvious that humans very easily tend to follow an atomistic, myopic short termist behaviour, and as a whole or as a group we should not be trusted to regulate ourselves, as there will always be an incentive to break promises ex post. Moreover due to alliances in the EcoFin committee it has created an environment where legislation is not applied equally and where smaller countries endure and larger countries do what they please. Finally, the present arrangement of the SGP does not have much in the way of (European) parliamentary supervision. This may be right (given that national budgets are scrutinised by their respective national parliaments) or not (given the fact that there are externalities and spillover effects from one country's budget to the next), however somebody ought to seat down the economic thinking heads and figure out what could be done to make this process better and then someone ought to seat down the political thinking heads and ask them to figure out what the best course of action in order to approve that preferred process. The advantage that the SGP has is that it is flexible (enormously so). At the moment this has been good. Keynesian economics are very useful during a crisis. However, once the economy picks up it will be interesting to see whether the EcoFin committee will be able or even willing to coerce member states to decrease their deficits. A concluding remark on fiscal policy should say that in the present context of recovery economics it is better to run a little too high deficits than to run too little ones. Pollution - I know little about this, other than that if we don't decrease carbon emissions we'll cook ourselves to death like frogs and that if we don't find a sustainable and reliable way to diversify our sources of enegy, Russia will eventually reprivatise it's industries along national lines and we won't be able to do anything about it except pay the natural gas bill at the end of the year. (this is a very far fetched scenario until Russia develops anything close to a sustainable form of economic growth and development based on anything else than exports of raw materials) Foreign policy - Will the HRUFAS be able to create a better more coherent and far reaching foreign policy for the EU? Will there be a coherent approach to USA, Latin America, China, India, and (most doubtfully) to Russia? Will some countries prefer to abandon their diplomatic missions abroad and delegate this task to the EEAS? Or will it become more and more apparent that the national diplomatic missions are fundamental lobbies for the maintenance of contracts and export agreements from smaller European nations to non EU states. Will this mean that the nations will further decrease their diplomatic missions and specialise them in their trade targets? On another topic, how loud will the HRUFAS be in the defence of Human Rights? Security and Defence policy - What will happen to European military and security cooperation? One of the biggest problems is that different EU states have different weapons and military gear. This means that in the unlikely even that we go to war, French and British pilots will not be able to fly each others planes, or operate eachothers tanks. It decreases the size of the market and thus the economies of scale that can be derived from it. This is caused by the fact that military industries are still considered to be strategic national industries and that despite their security cooperation, European states still want to be able to develop armament independently of the USA and of each other. The biggest military contractors are german, british and belgian companies which face some competition from Belgium (I think) and Sweden ( or scandinavian conglomerate). Moreover, the majority of these industries have a monopoly-monopsony type of relationship with their national governments. Will we finally get a proper European procurement? Only if one way or another, these industries are given some protection, ie only if the EU and the national industries are able to come to an agreement where profits are not threatened and job losses are minimised, while countries still feel comfortable and safe in their defence. There is thus a triangle of interests, which must be protected in order for military integration to happen: National security - profits to investors in the arms industry - workers in this industry. What will the HRUFAS do? We shall see...

Lisbon after the Irish ratification

It may have been the financial crisis and the intervention of the ECB, the redundant and legally binding commitments made by the other 26 countries that the EU would not attempt to conscript Irish youths into a European Army nor would it force irish women to perform abortions, or the galvanization of the private sector (at least Intel,of all ppl, and Ryan Air made clear their support for the Lisbon Treaty), the lack of major blunders by public officials or the fact that Declan Ganley got thoroughly defeated in the European Parliament elections (which must have made him loose face and interest). Regardless of what the causes were, there is one less obstacle to the implementation of the Lisbon treaty (a brief description here and the actual text here).

There are only 5 things left to do. The treaty has been ratified by all the member states. The next step is Presidential assent (where this is still needed: Ireland and Czech republic). The last step (according to the information on wikipedia, which states that the Polish president Lech Kaczynski has given it his assent) is then to deposit it in Rome.

In conclusion there are two steps left. First, the presidents of Ireland and of the Czech Republic still need to sign the laws. In the case of Ireland this is a mere formality which should not take long, given the President's outspoken support for the Lisbon treaty. In the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus will take his time. As this article puts it, there's a legal challenge against the treaty (the second such challenge actually) brought by 17 Czech senators. Finally Ireland, the Czech Republic and Poland still need to deposit the treaty in Rome.

This could be done in 5 hours maximum. It's ridiculous, and a testament to political bickering, that it may take all the way to December before anything relevant happens.

The Lisbon Treaty, National Politics and the potential backlash

The Lisbon treaty is an annoying little monster which may be messing around the normal path of domestic politics... This is the case in the Czech Republic, Poland, Ireland and the UK. In the latter, this may be particularly strong. I'm not sure about this and it is only a hunch. However, if only on the surface of it, the story takes turns which seem to plot to make me believe I am right. Here's what we know:

If Gordon Brown had called an election just around the time he came to power, he would have probably won it. At least so everyone said in the summer of 2007. Certainly he would have had a better shot at it than what it seems he will in june 2010. He was deemed as politically unable for not having done so. I really ought to know more about British politics, but I think that the Lisbon treaty might have had something to do with it. Could it have been that Brown feared having to address the issue during the election and that that would have exposed the issue and made it more salient raising even more problems for the EU? Could it have been the looming financial crisis which kept on growing? Could it have been the bad polls? its hard to say... It also hard to understand why no one has yet made a decent leadership challenge. Really Brown is a fairly lame duck prime minister. Many things would change if the Tories came to power, though may be not as many as people would want to. Anyway, may be I am not cynical enough, but one thing I do suspect would happen would be a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, which if the media and the last European elections are at all representative would result in the reversal of the British position on the Treaty. This would make a mess for everybody. Who is holding the boat for labour? I believe it is Peter Mandelson, who was a EU trade commissioner and is just about the only person aside from Miliband with a decent knowledge of politics and of the influence of the EU, and most, likely no significant ambition for the premiership. Could he be protecting Brown in order to protect the EU treaty, or could I have the causation all wrong, and despite rivalries, he is protecting Brown in order to aid himself and as a result that protects the EU treaty. Its difficult to untangle these causalities, but the matter of the fact is that at this stage the UK is an extremely important player.

Nonetheless, I must say that if Ireland rejects the Lisbon Treaty for a second time there really isn’t any precedent to throw around. Normally countries and treaties get a second chance, but not a third. It is either unnecessary (because their vote does not stop others from moving forward: Norway, Sweden, Denmark) or undesired (because national politicians refuse to call a second referendum: France potentially the Netherlands too). There's never been talk of a third referendum. Not even now. The idea is that Ireland will pass the referendum. There is no plan B.

So now we know when Ireland will hold its second referendum: 2 October 2009. In the most optimistic of scenarios, Ireland approves the treaty, the Czechs and the Poles deposit their treaties in Rome sometime before the British election is held and then no one cares any longer about what happens to Gordon Brown. But what if either or all of these 3 things happen:

1)What if the Poles decide to delay the deposition of the treaty?

2) What if the Czechs decide to delay the deposition of the treaty?

3) What if after the treaty is passed in Ireland, the House of Commons withdraws support from Brown and the election does not happen in June 2010, but in January? What if everyone else does everything right, but Brown is kicked out too early?

If any of these things happen, on retourne à la case zero as the French say...And here is where it gets interesting. Imagine that either one of these countries fails to ratify the treaty and effective puts an end to the process, with 5 years waisted in meetings, votes and referenda and no advancement made... Can you imagine the backlash? Whoever makes a mess out of this won't get a thing from the other countries, particularly from France. the one who has a better chance is Ireland, but still there, if the treaty fail, Sarkozy is going to beat the Taioseach into a gruesome rotten peach for not campaigning better. It won't be pretty. If it's one of the two Eastern European countries, they will be so heavily pounded they will be sorry for joining the EU... The same applies for England who might actually decide to do that, under Cameron.

So what happens then? European academics like to say that countries join because of each other. The UK joined because the EEC(read France and Germany) was growing faster. This made Ireland and Denmark join too, because they were heavily dependent on the UK for trade. This coupled with the fall of the Soviet Union also incentivised the rest of Scandinavia to join in. Would Denmark and Ireland leave if the UK left and become simple members of EEA, like Switzerland and Norway? Would Sweden and Finland also leave?

que sera sera