We'll Watch You Mr. Van Rompuy

Daily Telegraph, Daily Telegraph November 21, 2009

The new "foreign minister" of Europe is British. According to Gordon Brown, that should make us proud. The reality is that Europe does not need a foreign minister, and the person chosen to fill the post, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, is a Labour peer who has never been elected to a political position in her life. As for the new "President of Europe", the Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy, he was hardly better known until he emerged as a front-runner a few weeks ago.

The phrase "a pair of nonentities" is on many lips, and it is easy to understand why. David Miliband recently called for an EU representative who could stop the traffic; she may be a decent and capable individual, but it is hard to imagine Lady Ashton, former chairman of Hertfordshire Health Authority, stopping the traffic in St Albans, let alone Washington. Until her appointment as Trade Commissioner she had no background in foreign policy. No wonder she was not the first choice to fill this post (which a back-room deal had assigned to a Briton). She was not even the second. Or the third. Mr Miliband did not want the post; neither did Lord Mandelson, while Geoff Hoon was unacceptable to Brussels. At which point Mr Brown came up with the name of Cathy Ashton. Such is the transparent process by which the "high representative" of 500 million people was chosen.

Some Eurosceptics are comforting themselves with the thought that it is better to have "minnows" in these two posts than charismatic attention-seekers. Mr Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton are, at heart, local politicians who have been dragged into the limelight. The former was reluctant to take the job of prime minister of Belgium, let alone one that makes him sound like the president of a continent. These functionaries will not exceed their job descriptions, the argument goes. Mr Van Rompuy will be a slightly harassed chairman of the European Council rather than a chief executive with delusions of grandeur; Lady Ashton will co-ordinate rather than determine European foreign policy. So, unedifying though the past few weeks have been, we have not laid the foundations of a superstate.

There are several things wrong with this argument. For one, Mr Van Rompuy, coming from a country with an exceedingly fragile concept of national identity, is a convinced federalist: he is a Eurofanatic even by the standards of Brussels. Beneath his modest exterior lurk some utterly crazy ideas, such as the Europe-wide tax on businesses to fund green initiatives that he proposed this week. One has to wonder: what nonsense will he dream up when he is in office? And, even if Mr Van Rompuy and Lady Ashton make little personal impact, their successors may prove much more ambitious. The EU is becoming more pompous by the day: European Commission offices around the world are being turned into "embassies" staffed by a network of 7,000 diplomats, and the Ruritanian trappings of the posts of president and high representative would perfectly suit a politician with a self-aggrandising federalist agenda. (We should bear in mind that Mr Van Rompuy's term of office lasts only for two-and-a-half years, and Lady Ashton's for five.)

One consequence of Lady Ashton's elevation is that Britain no longer has a European commissioner with a specific portfolio. William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, has argued that what this country really needed to secure was a top economics job. How right he was; for now we face the prospect of a commissioner from France or Germany holding a new portfolio that covers banking, pensions and financial markets in Europe. This appears to be the "get London" mission – an attempt to wrest supervision of the City of London from the Financial Services Authority and impose meddlesome regulations that drive hedge funds away. Whether the money would actually flow to Europe is doubtful – but a powerful EU financial commissioner hostile to the City could certainly make it an unfriendly place for investors. And that is something that a British prime minister cannot allow to happen.

David Cameron has already promised to assert parliamentary control over the sneaky mechanisms of the Lisbon Treaty that allow further power to be

Telegraph View: Published: 8:07PM GMT 20 Nov 2009

Comments 11 | Comment on this article

David Cameron has already promised to assert parliamentary control over the sneaky mechanisms of the Lisbon Treaty that allow further power to be ceded to the EU without a new treaty. How he will achieve this if he is elected remains to be seen: the weapons available to him include a Sovereignty Act protecting the British constitution, and the threat of a veto of the next EU Accession Act (for Croatia) unless Britain is granted exemption from damaging social and employment laws. If Mr Cameron's critics do not believe these weapons can be used, we hope they underestimate the Tory leader's resourcefulness. We trust that he is working now on a plan to resist any EU assault on the City of London, with support from everyone who cares about the capital's position as one of the world's two great financial centres.

Meanwhile, we have the prospect of two little-known politicians taking up offices that move the EU in the direction of federalism – the opposite direction to that favoured by the British electorate, who have been given no say in the matter. Defenders of the new arrangements argue that, because the president and high representative are answerable to politicians, they strengthen the hand of elected governments as opposed to that of the unelected Commission. But, given that we have just lost our veto power in many areas of legislation, we take that reassurance with a pinch of salt. We shall be watching Mr Van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton closely.

Comments: 11

You say that the British are against EU federalism. But how do you/we know? Until there is a referendum giving options on in-or-out and a couple of choices inbetween we will not know the level of feeling here. It is the frustration of not knowing that will ultimately cause the undoing of our relationship with the EU. Even with an election, like the result or not, the people have had their chance to speak.

Belgium, "a country with an exeedingly fragile concept of national unity", echoes exactly a statement I made in a previous blog. Mr Rompuy perhaps feels that he can unite his people under the EU flag, which is something they cannot do under their own. However, this appointment is more than this individual and his country of origin. Behind the scenes, it is perfectly apparent, that the Franco/German axis has been at work to ensure it will still be able to exert power in respect of advancing its agenda. The Foreign Minister post is a joke. A total non-entity being appointed makes a farce of the whole thing but more importantly has now actually weakened Britain's executive power in the EU. The EU is a dangerous sham being an intellectual concept game, operating for a left leaning political elite. Gorbachev was so right when he said he couldn't understand why the West strove so hard to bring down the USSR. only to recreate it in Europe. If the EU is aspiring to be one political and physical entity along the lines of the USA, why is it that the Royal Navy is almost constantly having to see off aggressive intrusions by Spanish naval vessels into the waters of British Gibraltar? Could it be that Gibraltar may end up the Fort Sumpter of The United States of Europe?

A few pointers for the Telegraph Editor: 1) Watch Van Rumpy-Pumpy all you like - he won't be watching, reading or listening to you - your vote doesn't count - you are powerless to change anything in or about the EU. 2) As you should well know, this talk of "we need a British Commissioner" is nonsense. All commissioners swear allegiance to the EU and serve the commission - they do not "bat for their own side". Cathy "No I'm not Margaret Becket" Ashton will not be listening to our Foreign Office (but then, not many people do) - she might occasionally speak to our foreign secretary but her powers far outweigh his (or at least will in time). She will represent the EU's interests (and hers) long before she worries about the UKs - as far as she is concerned we are just one of 27 votes in the council of ministers - subject to qualified majority decisions. 3) Europe is no longer an issue. All three main parties are behind it. The fringe parties can barely muster enough support to fund a tea party let alone an election campaign. Their last chance for a break-through "no" vote to further EU integration was in the May 2009 Euro-Parl elections - sadly few of us actually bothered turning up to vote let alone put our tick in the radical agenda box. That is why Cameron can safely ignore the euro-sceptics in his own party. They might huff and puff like Heffer and Hannan but they won't ever actually do anything. They can't even command a majority in the parliamentary party, so cannot get one of their own in as leader. And politicians won't give up on their cushy positions for the sake of mere principle - otherwise they would have formed a breakaway party in the dog days after Major's demise. Blessing for clarity of thinking and honesty of reporting Father Ignatius Brown www.father-ignatius-brown.com

What is there to watch? We don't vote for any of these people. The system is undemocratic and politicians are in 'Cream off the Top' paradise. This whole EU thing is based on toilet paper and dodgy deals.

I'm personally sceptical that either individual named here is sufficiently criminally corrupt to represent the EU in its most appropriate form. Surely an official openly and unambiguously a Crook can be the only suitable holder of such posts?

Betrayal by Brown and Co = Anarchy by the electorate. Nobody will stop me from flying the Union flag!

How I wish one of the heavyweight newspapers, preferable the DT, would finally come out in support of what the British people clearly want: to belong to a free trade area with Europe but NOT the EU. The EU had its chance to reform Democratically and failed. It's time for the UK to get out. The world is changing and fast. We don't need to tie ourselves to an outdated European federalist superstate. We need to cultivate our links with the emerging powers of India, China and Brazil by strengthening our relations with the AngloCommonwealth and India.

If the elected governments of Europe (AKA the Council of Ministers) had chosen figures with strong whiff of power to them, the Telegraph would be the among the first to be up in arms against that. Now you whine because the persons selected are consensus guys rather than great, inspiring leaders. Oh well. You would also be the first ones to oppose any sort of direct EU wide elections for a EU president, because that would turn this position into something more than just a relatively meaningless figurehead. In fact, Britain's permanent, undirected opposition to just about anything related to the EU is a major reason as to why the EU parliament has so little power. There has never been a significant British move to make the EU more democratic and Britain itself in 2009 is hardly the shining example of freedom and democracy some of her citizens imagine her to be. Britain's opposition to the EU is NOT routed in any high minded political ideals. And there is no British vision for the future of Europe and for Britain's role in this Europe. And that's a shame because a Britain fighting for a more democratic EU would have a lot of support. So I for one am incensed that even one of the jobs is handed to the most destructive force in EU politics. It's not even clear if Britain will still be in the EU in 10 years time. A British High Representative is like Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams as the UK foreign secretary. This would have been the perfect time to make one thing abundantly clear: Europe does not really need Britain for anything (your enormous net contribution of less than 0.01% of combined EU GDP included). Alas it was not to be.

Stuart (0925pm) is right: the general election should be a straight fight between the Lib/Lab/Con cabal, all of whom were complicit in the expenses scandal, and who are content for the UK to be run from Brussels, and UKIP, who would take us out of the EU, saving the UK �50 million every day and giving us back the power to say how this country should be run. The EU is now a state, so unless UKIP wins the general election, there may never be another: after 5 years of the Lisbon Treaty, Westminster will have become redundant, as the EU moves towards regional government. Only UKIP can save us: it's now or never!

why bother, iam not on your "regular" list

How will Ashton be able to stand up to states such as Afghanistan, where its President was elected on an undemocratic vote? She cannot lecture them about democracy when out of the 300 million EU electorate, not one has cast a single vote for her, ever. Rogue nuclear states will presumably also be able to dismiss Rumpuy, on the grounds that his only military qualifications are being PM of the armed might of the Belgium forces.

The usual Telegraph piece with more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese. Federalism was spoken of in the earliest treaties and by the founding fathers openly, so federalism is nothing new. William Hague once said we want to be "in Europe, not run by Europe". So why does he think we need to secure a top economics job in this European government? The EU has one goal, to replace national governments with a European one. At least you got one thing right. The British electorate do find this unacceptable. Unfortunately, all the main political parties and the Telegraph don't seem to want to admit the truth and the only conclusion possible: that we must leave the EU if we are to retain our sovereignty and independence as a nation, with our own government.

We'll Watch You Mr. Van Rompuy

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