January 8, 2007
Far right-on democracy
Democracy is slowly coming to the European parliament. It’s hard to tell whether that, or the formation of a far-right group, is more shocking for the mainstream MEPs who provide most of the voting fodder.
One can deride the 20 or so MEPs from six countries who are set to form a new caucus on Wednesday that would give them speaking rights in parliament. A motley crew, ranging from holocaust deniers to gypsy-baiters, most people wouldn’t want to sit next to them on a bus never mind in a parliament. But they don’t particularly like each other any more than most like them.
It’s the EU’s expansion to Romania and Bulgaria on January 1st that has made the far-right nightmare, long talked-about in Strasbourg, close to coming true. Veterans like Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front now have allies in the requisite five European countries to form a group. Bulgaria’s anti-Roma Ataka party and the nationalist Great Romania party of Corneliu Vadim Tudor are set to join what could be known, evocatively, as "Europe of the Fatherlands" or "Identity, Sovereignty, Tradition".
But they would not even be talking to each other if it were not for the consensus-cloying way the parliament works.
Despite being voted for by electorates, parliament has denied anyone outside the cosy Euro-consensus a voice, driving them into each other’s arms. Only the multinational political groups can set the agenda, table amendments to legislation, guarantee speaking time in crucial debates and draw on translation allowances and extra staff funds.
Frank Vanhecke, an MEP who is also boss of the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Belang, which had to change its name after being judged racist by a Belgian court, said that even he did not want to treat with someone on trial for holocaust denial. But he wanted to be able to represent his constituents.
“We have been asking to receive some political rights from parliamentary authorities for two and a half years and they have impolitely refused. We are third class citizens. We have been forced into this.”
The two biggest blocs, the centre-right European People’s party and centre-left Socialists, will continue to dominate proceedings but it is getting harder for them to keep control
The third force, the Liberals, have made inroads by holding the balance of power. The Greens were pushed into fifth place late last year when one of Poland’s governing parties joined another rightwing bloc, and there is a sizeable Eurosceptic grouping dominated by the UK Independence party.
UKIP received a boost at home on Tuesday when Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Willoughby de Broke defected from the Conservatives. They see David Cameron, the new leader, as too pro-EU. Yet Cameron has tried to appease the sceptics by pledging to pull his party out of the EPP at the next elections in 2009. Increasingly, it looks like they have nowhere to go but the wilderness.
Andrew Bounds
How has the EP denied anyone outside the euro-consensus a voice? Surely this development is an excellent example of how it does not deny them a voice? The same is true for the IND/DEM group - anti-EU, and yet benefiting from EP money to staff their secretariat and provide them with meeting venues and other parliamentary privileges.
There is also the European Political Parties Regulation, which (unconnected to the European Parliament) provides for money for parties that are cross-border in nature. There is nothing to prevent an IND/DEM-type grouping from taking this money (indeed, they take the EP’s money); you could argue that the EU gives them funding opportunities they don’t even get in their Member State!
The UK’s parliamentary system excludes smaller parties much more effectively by using the first-past-the-post system.
I would argue that the EP is in fact much more open to small parties than some national systems.
I thought the defection of some Polish and Italian MEPs to the UEN group from the IND/DEM group was interesting, mainly because of the reasons given - it sounded an awful lot like the Poles and Italians couldn’t stand working with the UKIPpers - probably because they don’t actually work. I did a bit of checking on EP committee meeting minutes for 2006, and from the data available, it appears that only 5 of the 12 of them ever spoke up more than once in committee in the entire calendar year. Top performer was Titford, who spoke up 9 times and is a member of two committees. Wow.
Posted by: Chris Sherwood | January 9th, 2007 at 4:10 pm | Report this commentNow, Chris, do keep up.
The Independence and Democracy group tried to sling out the Italian Lega Nord last year after a series of embarrasments, the last straw being the notirious incident when the Lega Nord minister Calderoli appeared on Italian TV wearing a Muhammad cartoon T-shirt (riots in Tripoli ensued).
Turns out the Group could not get the necessary majority to exclude the Italians, so it just dissolved itself and re-formed without them. Unfortunately for Ind-Dem, most of the League of Polish Families delegation declined to re-join the group, and some of these have now ended up with the UEN.
Posted by: Austin Lane | January 10th, 2007 at 10:13 am | Report this commentAustin,
Thanks for the info and correction - I admit that my knowledge of the inner workings of those groups is pretty poor. What I saw was a quote from one of the Italians about the rest of the group, but of course, there are at least two sides to every story!
Posted by: Chris Sherwood | January 10th, 2007 at 1:20 pm | Report this commentChris, my point is simply that this group would not have been formed had there been no advantage to doing so. Individual mavericks can get elected but they have to club together to get real power.
Posted by: Andrew Bounds | January 14th, 2007 at 4:11 pm | Report this commentThe group called Identity, Sovereignty, Tradition, could be shortlived. Some MEPs believe it is merely a platform for Jean-Marie Le Pen ahead of the French elections in April and May. Parliamentary authorities are also apparently considering raising the bar higher, above 20 MEPs, to form a group in a near-800 member parliament.
I’m not sure why you call where the Tories may end up once they leave the EPP a ‘wilderness’.
Tory MEP Roger Helmer reported that during his recent whipless period outside the group system he enjoyed both more funding and more speaking time that he was more beneficially able to use to further the principles on which he was elected - not the contrary principles of the EPP.
Cameron’s problem in forming an alternative post-EPP group wasn’t so much a lack of potential partners from other countries as his own unwillingness to face down federalist ‘old guard’ dissenters among his own MEPs.
Posted by: Stuart Coster | January 23rd, 2007 at 2:50 pm | Report this comment