You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September, 2008.
Report by JMECE Lab, ICS, University of Leeds.
13/09/2008 / Euro Election Roundtable in Sheffield (2008 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue Festival)
Yorkshire MEPs: Climate change, workers’ rights and helping the poor, key reasons for voting in the June 09 Euro elections
- ABOVE: Fabro Steibel, Francisco Seoane Pérez, Labour MEP Linda McAvan, May Jacob, Labour MEP Dr. Richard Corbett, Conservative MEP Timothy Kirkhope, Stergios Mavrikis, Prof. Juliet Lodge. BELLOW: Citizens of Sheffield enjoying the event. Copyright: UK Office of the European Parliament
Getting the rest of the world to agree on global pacts to fight climate change, ensuring workers’ rights all over the European Union, and helping the countries in the developing world. These were the three reasons for voting in the next European elections due in June 2009 given by Yorkshire MEPs at a public roundtable in Sheffield on 15 September 2008 organised by the UK Office of the European Parliament.
Richard Corbett and Linda McAvan, Labour MEPs, and Timothy Kirkhope, one of the two Conservative MEPs from the region, took questions from the public in a lively debate moderated by BBC Yorkshire’s Political Editor, Len Tingle. The Liberal democrats and the UKIP, each of them with an elected MEP from the Yorkshire and Humber region were unable to attend but had supporters in the audience.
The European representatives were asked to comment on two recurrent criticisms about the EU: its alleged transformation into a superstate that would challenge national sovereignties and the presumed cost to the UK of EU membership.
Dr Corbett rejected the myth of the superstate claim, and pointed out that the European Commission was smaller in size than many municipal and local authorities’ bureaucracies. Responding to those who fear a loss of national sovereignty, Dr Corbett explained that all European legislation proposed by the Commission has to be approved and decided by the Council of Ministers (which comprises a minister from each state) and the European Parliament, whose members are directly elected by voters in each of the member states. Mr Kirkhope said he shared many of the criticisms regarding ‘red tape’ but dispelled the notion of a European superstate: “We don’t have a superstate, we are not likely to have that, and people in the member states would not like that.” Linda McAvan stressed her firm belief in local government and taking decisions close to the people. She argued for taking decisions on each issue at the right level: “I don’t think you could run a health service at a European scale, but for some rules you need such a European level, as it happens with the environment.”
The concerns about the costs to Britain of EU membership, voiced by one of the UKIP members in the audience, were rebutted as exaggerated by the MEPs. Dr Corbett said that any of the costs of being a contributor member (the UK gives more than it receives from the EU) were compensated by the access to the EU market, “the biggest trading block in the world.” Mr Kirkhope and Ms McAvan also highlighted the pro-European stance of most businesses. The Conservative MEP said almost every piece of new legislation is accompanied by an impact and cost-effectiveness analysis on its actual application. Ms McAvan stressed that businesses favoured supranational European laws that enforce common standards as being more effective and fairer than the pre-1993, pre Single Market situation of having to meet the very divergent requirements of individual national regulations.
The referendum on the EU Constitution
“Why have we been denied a referendum on the EU Constitution?” asked a member from the public. Dr Corbett said that, contrary to popular claims, the British Government had never suggested the idea of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. “There was an argument to have a referendum on the Constitution, not on a treaty”, he said. “Britain has never ratified an international treaty through a referendum”, he contended. Previous European Treaties like Amsterdam or Nice were approved in the national Parliament, as Lisbon recently was. Mr Kirkhope deemed Dr Corbett’s reasoning as “cynical”, because in his view the Lisbon Treaty contained broadly the same text as the Constitution. He declared himself in favour of the Lisbon treaty, but supported a referendum on it. Ms McAvan cautioned about the populist appeal of referendums. “If asked whether there should be a referendum on any issue, the majority will say yes”, said the Labour MEP. She did not favour a popular vote on the Treaty, and defended representative democracy: “We elect politicians to take decisions.” Britain has ratified Lisbon in line with parliamentary procedure. The chairman asked the audience what their position on a referendum was. A small minority favoured one; the majority opposed one and a few people abstained.
Jonathan Arnott, the young leader of the UKIP, asked MEPs about the alleged mismanagements of EU accounts. The European representatives rejected the accusations of fraud in the EU, put the issues in perspective and underlined that the locus of responsibility for this lay in the member states where there was, in some cases, mismanagement. The member governments deal with the implementation of the funds provided by the EU.
The debate ended with a call for participation in the next European elections. Dr Corbett said that, besides fighting against climate change and for workers’ rights, UK voters have an extra reason for going to the polls next June: preventing the entry of the British far right in the European Parliament. If the Yorkshire region elected a British National Party representative, it would be “a shame for the country”, lamented Dr Corbett. Linda McAvan backed her Labour colleague on this issue: Electing a BNP as a European representative would be “a disaster.” “Make sure Yorkshire is represented by mainstream parties”, she added.
The roundtable with Yorkshire MEPs was held at a conference room in Sheffield Cathedral and was part of a larger event, the European Festival, organised in Sheffield by the UK Office of the European Parliament. This special day, which included dance, theatre, and music performances of a wide range of cultural backgrounds, celebrated the 2008 European Year of InterCultural Dialogue and 50 years of the European Parliament.
For a set of photos please click bellow:
[Article from Independent.ie: http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/eu-president-demands-probe-into-source-of-libertas-funding-1480303.html]
Tuesday September 23 2008
THE president of the European Parliament yesterday demanded a full investigation into anti-Lisbon treaty group Libertas over the source of its funding.
Hans-Gert Poettering said serious questions needed to be asked about where Libertas had got its money from and the links of its chief Declan Ganley to the US military.
“We require total transparency. We need to know how much money Libertas had and where it came from,” Mr Poettering said at the opening of this week’s plenary session in Brussels.
Investigation
“A total of €200,000 came from a single donor who was a key organiser for Libertas and has military procurement contracts with the US government. I ask Dick Roche, the Irish Europe minister, to make sure he carries out a full and thorough investigation so that we can have full transparency.”
Speaking as he arrived in Brussels last night, Mr Roche said his European counterparts had “huge concerns” about Libertas’s funding and its fundraising plans for the future.
“During the campaign, Mr Ganley talked about lack of transparency, lack of accountability and lack of democracy in Europe, which I disagreed with. Yet, he’s the very one who has shown absolutely no transparency and no accountability,” the Irish European Affairs Minister said.
“Reviewing the Libertas funding, which is the same for all parties as we all have to make a disclosure, is a matter for the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO). I’ve no doubt that given recent statements about €200,000 loans there will be significant interest in Libertas.”
Mr Ganley last week admitted to loaning €200,000 of his own money to Libertas after reports had surfaced that his company Rivada has contracts with the US military worth hundreds of millions of euro.
Under campaign finance laws, loans which are not subject to normal commercial terms — involving interest, a repayment schedule and a formal agreement — can be classed as donations.
Mr Ganley has insisted the loan he gave to the organisation was a normal commercial transaction subject to standard terms. However, he has also confirmed that Libertas has yet to begin repaying the loan.
Maximum
Under EU rules, the maximum donation allowed is just over €6,000, meaning that if Ganley’s loan is classed as a donation, he could be liable to prosecution.
“There is now a direct link between Irish referendum, the US military and the Pentagon. I call on the authorities to probe the matter,” said Greens’ leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit.
- Darren Ennis and Aine Kerr
DebateEurope (http://europa.eu/debateeurope/index_en.htm) is the official forum of European Union with thousands -not to say million- posts.
EUtube (http://www.youtube.com/EUtube) is the official platform created by EU to host official videos being produced by the Directorate General Communication and not only.
So, the core question is NOT to create on more common communicative e-space, as suggested e.g. via the European Parliament’s webTV, but to gain more visibility for the existing ones and – from DG Communication’s point of view – to analyse the innumerous contributions so far…
Europe is over-represented especially on line. The question is: who is listening and moreover who cares?
Here is a recently released video from EUtube (right to the target) about Climate Change:
The Euro Parliament TV (http://www.europarltv.europa.eu/) has just been launched, and it needs to be remembered from now on as a visionary project that aims to create a single TV in which different languages, different cultures and different countries can share a single message related to the EU. It is not (yet) exactly what John Lennon imagined to be a place for “all the people, sharing the entire world”, but it is a start.
The first thing to notice about the Euro Parliament TV is the different number of audios and subtitles available in the site. I am not talking about the possibility to listen to news dubbed in your own language, but mostly I am referring to the chance to listen to other languages being spoken by other EU citizens. This is something that we cannot easily find in most of the national TVs. We can often listen to German, French and English people speaking, but EU has got much more languages than that. In this sense, Euro Parliament TV needs to be celebrated because it offers content with more diversity.
Some could argue that the Euro Parliament TV is the beginning of a unified European Union public sphere, but we need to emphasise the word “beginning”. We can use it to listen to news, we can see other people from other parts of the Union, and we can share a single message if we all access frequently the site, but we cannot express ourselves on Euro Parliament TV. It is, so far, a good example of a communicative sphere, but it’s not yet a complete deliberative sphere.
Some suggestions for the future should point to this direction. For example, in the current site people cannot post their own videos if they want to reply to what they just saw. If video comments can be moderated in order to remove hate speech or spam messages, why people could not be allowed to express themselves (directly) through the TV?
Another idea equally important is to let people choose what they want to see in Euro Parliament TV. Why not attach a discussion forum to gather ideas? Forums like that already exist in each national “blog sphere”, but the EU Parliament TV can use its expertise to create a shared forum across EU countries. The idea to join TV (an audiovisual experience) with a forum (a textual experience) is not that bad if we can translate messages to other languages.
One last point of attention: the page needs to improve its “technicalities” and make it simpler to share videos over the internet. Blogs for example are always “spreading the news”, but the embedded function is not as good as it could be (see for example how YouTube deals with it, and it becomes clear that things can be improved). For example, click here to see news about immigration and check how the embedded functions are limited.
In sum, Euro Parliament TV needs to be celebrated. It is a massive work that requires a massive investment. In the future, it will have grouped lots of expertise to produce content oriented to all Europe, which can be used in other projects. But so far, more deliberation is required to be included in the project.
[Link: Euronews youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzM8tqjmCU8]
Of all Europes thinkers, Slavoj Zizek is one of the most outspoken. The Slovenians philosophical works include thoughts on such diverse topics as Lenin, the Iraq war, cyberspace, globalisation and Alfred Hitchcock. euronews caught up with him at the Sarajevo Film Festival, seen as a key event in rebuilding the Bosnian capitals self confidence after the conflict of the 1990s. Zizek gave his thoughts on cinema and the Balkans.
Less than 50% vote?
It is never late to remind that the next European Parliament election is coming, and that it will happen in June/2009. The next ballot will include all member states (27 countries) and will also be the first time that Bulgaria and Romania will simultaneously cast their vote with the rest of the EU population.
In the next election, about half a billion citizens will elect over 700 Ministers of the European Parliament (MEPs). But how many citizens will in fact show up on Election Day? The question is not pointless: as it is well known, in democracy, those that do vote make decisions also upon those that do not vote.
How many citizens will cast their vote next July for EU? Previous records can help us make a projection. It is also good to remember that until 1979, no direct elections were hold for EU Parliament. The European Coal and Steel Community’s (ECSC) “assembly”, the forerunner of the ‘parliament’ for the three European communities (ECSC, European Economic Community, and Euratom) was set in 1952. However, the Assembly (parliament) was a purely consultative institution without legislative power. Its members comprised 78 nominees from the national parliaments of the founding Six Member States of the ECSC. In sum, from 1952 until 1979 national populations haven’t vote for EU elections, but the situation changed since them. The following turnout records can be considered:
June 1979: First ‘direct elections’ ( 63%)
1981: First Euro-election held in Greece following its accession to the EC (compulsory voting)
1984: EC-10 Euro elections ( 61%)
1987: First elections to select Members of the European Parliament in Portugal and Spain following their accession to the EC
1989: EC-12 Euro elections ( 58.5%)
1994: EU-12 Euro elections ( 56.8%)
1995: Elections to select MEPs in Austria, Finland and Sweden following their accession
1999: EU-15 Euro elections (49.8%)
2004: EU-25 Euro elections (45.6%)
2007: Euro-election in Bulgaria and Romania
June 2009: EU-27 Euro elections
Based on the previous turnout rates, and following a linear statistical reasoning, we may project that out of the half billion European citizens at least 250 thousand of them are expected to cast their vote in the next 2009 election. Will they show up?
FURTHER information – starting points
The definitive work on the European Parliament’s role and powers is that by R.Corbett , F.Jacob & Michael Shackleton The European Parliament (latest edition, Harper).
Series of books on each Euro election edited by Juliet Lodge, (including The 2004 Elections to the European Parliament published by Palgrave Macmillan ); and Wouter van der Brug and Cees van der Eijk European Elections and Domestic Politics (Uni Notre Dame).
See too Election reports from the European Parliament and its party groups. On the background to mobilising voters and Euro election information programmes, and the role of the European Broadcasting Union, J.Lodge & V.Herman Direct Elections to the European Parliament: A Community Perspective (Macmillan).
Day-to-day updates : see the online press including EUObserver and EUActiv.
Recent Comments