Listening to the MEPs in the European Parliament debating changes proposed by Guy Verhofstade the Belgian MEP (who has been given the role of heading the EUs negotiating group to put the EUs position regarding Britain's withdrawal) one is drawn to the
conclusion that Europe and its Parliament are made up of a rich
combination of people who represent populations drawn from all corners
of the Union, historically who are very different in their specific political journey.
Verhofstade has a mission to federalise and centralise the system
under the banner of the unelected Commission with a "business as usual" proposal which try's to ignore the rise of nationalism and the two tier economic schism which has gripped the north
and the south of the continent.
Like the "First Past the Post" system in the UK, which is clearly
biased and undemocratic, the EU Commission steam rollers its will on the representatives of the national populations which make up the continent and not unnaturally, there are, as in all
nations, many different views, many different claims, many different interests.
In a purely national parliamentary setting these differences are
more local specific, more home grown and the problems, whilst still largely binary, with little common ground there is always the hope that at the next election you can vote them out and
rectify the wrongs and inadequate's by new imperatives.
In the European setting "compromise" was part of the balm which made the system work. The regulations and the uniformity, the conformity of principles of practice, these were the great achievements of the EU. Common laws towards employment, protection
of safety through rules of working practice, information regarding food, common laws to arrest criminals, removal of tariffs and the creation of common standards for the manufacture of goods, all this was to the good.
I have often been at odds with people over here in the UK, carping
on about the rules emanating from Brussels since I have little or no trust in my own government to protect my interests. Witness the deliberate dismantling of the NHS and the Social Care
provisions we have built up since the War.
Europes main Achilles heel is also its strength. Having a separate
executive as relieved the need to bring along all the time the competing interests of 28 member states, each with such divergent agendas and priorities. As long as there were advantages
for the majority the interests of the minority could be swept under the
proverbial carpet but once the minority became large and growing, it has created its own, inter related national following and threatened the so called unity, with the potential threat
of other Brexit style withdrawals.
We are all indebted to the creation of Europe as a collective of
States which historically had fought between themselves but which now stand, as they do today, within one building to debate their differences. It has taught us all, if we care to see,
the 'commonality', which can lie behind European nations so long as the
people of those nations are consulted and is more important than the petty differences which used to perpetuate the quarrelling.
Listening to Hungarians, the Poles, people from Finland as well as Germany, the Dutch and Italians all those disparate cultural identities. Latvians and Lithuanians, Rumanians and Czechoslovakians, people who cling to their ethnicity but now begin to see
themselves as Europeans as well.
It is still tenuous of course and people with ambition can wreck to
plan. The ambition of Nigel Farage, Gert Wilders or Marie Le Pen just as
much as Jean Claude Juncker, Barroso and Prodi. Each has an agenda, one camp the polar opposite to the other. One
harking back to the time of nationalism the other desperate to leaver nationalism out of the way and create a super-national federal establishment which rules outside the constraints of the nation state.
Sadly I think the way it has been done, by slight of hand and subterfuge, building monetary union before proper unitary
political union, shoehorning nations into a Union, a collective which
was always going to be unequal without establishing the props
and responsibilities which proper Federalisation brings. The Commissioners, playing the long game, deceitful and opaque. Making rules which certain powerful nations could break for political convince but rules which were rigidly enforced when the country was
weak and desperate.
Like so many things, a wonderful concept, bastardised by power, wealth and influence.
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