Open Europe is failing

I for one joyfully welcomed the creation of Open Europe, a eurosceptic think tank funded by leading UK business people. "At last", I thought, "a serious think tank, funded by serious people, taking an objective but critical approach to the EU, and challenging the more traditional Brussels think tanks like the European Policy Centre, the Centre for European Policy Studies, and others. Take a look at the vision statement. While I would criticise it in some minor respects on the substance and style, it optimistically (and I mean that positively) describes a realistic and not unattractive version of the Europe of the future.

But I have been very disappointed by Open Europe's anti-Lisbon Treaty campaign. Whereas the bulk of the organisation's research throws some light, albeit with a strong eurosceptic bent, on real issues and proposes real solutions, the pieces on the Lisbon Treaty, as well as the blog, seem to have been written by a political party and not a serious think tank. The most recent piece of research focuses on the amendments that the Irish government sought, but failed, to get included in the Lisbon Treaty. On the surface, it is detailed, well-researched, and powerfully argued. But anyone with the slightest interest in objectivity would immediately ask whether the Irish experience of treaty negotiation was so different from that of other Member States. Open Europe is a British outfit, so you would have thought that at least some UK material wouldn't be too hard to find and use. But this question does not appear anywhere in the paper. It's clearly meant more as a direct appeal to Irish voters in the context of the second Irish referendum than as a piece of research on how (un)satisfactory the process of treaty negotiation was for various countries. In fact, I can't find a single mention of any other Member State in the whole paper. In other words, this paper boldly takes the Irish experience of the negotiations out of all context, with a transparently tactical objective: getting the Irish to vote No. If Open Europe had been true to its ostensible mission, it would have provided such research for more Member States. OK, so you could argue that it was only worth investing the necessary resources in a paper on the Irish case because only Ireland was voting. But then they should at the very least have included some comparisons with other countries' positions.

In the months leading to the second Irish Lisbon referendum, the blog has plumbed the tabloid depths. Apparently the end (getting an Irish No vote) justified the means. Because I don't know how a serious think tank can take an honest look at its blog and not cringe with shame. Take a look at this piece on a Labour candidate's criticism of the UK government for failing to hold a referendum on the lisbon Treaty. It's fairly factual, but it does stray from a discussion on the merits of the Treaty into politics.

Then there's this post on the organisations that campaigned for a Yes vote in Ireland, seeking to discredit them by pointing out that they get funding from the Commission. When I questioned in a comment why funding from a body that has a treaty mandate to promote European integration should be considered improper, the Open Europe blog team was silent. Only an anonymous commenter accused me of being an "apologist". He/she obviously hasn't read this blog or my comments elsewhere.

This piece came back to the theme of the alleged "issues" with the Commission "paying organisations to come up with policy ideas to feed back into the Commission". Hang on a minute. So are they saying they would like the Commission to receive feedback only from business or from privately-funded think tanks like them? And why do they assume that the feedback the Commission is going to get is going to be "pro-EU", as if the pro- or anti-EU debate was really what people in Brussels spent their time worrying about every day? Why ignore the fact that a lot of the Commission's funding goes, for example, to environmental NGOs? The Commission does indeed get policy ideas from such organisations, and they have indeed been used in Commission policy-making. But these NGOs overwhelmingly provide input on policy, and not on an obsessive questioning of the EU's structural problems.

Here, Open Europe accused Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary of double standards for changing his mind on the Lisbon Treaty, conveniently ignoring the fact that its own white knight, Declan Ganley, had sworn he would retire from politics if snubbed at the European elections (which he was), only to return to the fray despite himself. A pretty obvious case of double standards in my book.

A really appalling example of tabloid journalism was the repetition of the claim made by the Irish Times that Commissioner Wallstrom had told Irish voters that the Lisbon Treaty was going to improve childcare. When Wallstrom's spokesman pointed out that the irish Times had got it wrong and that she had been talking about the Lisbon Agenda and not the Lisbon Treaty, did we get a retraction or an apology from Open Europe for the precipitous overreaction? Not a bit of it. We simply got more aggressive questions implying that the Commissioner deliberately sought to confuse Irish voters by making statements about the Lisbon Agenda in Ireland during run-up to a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Don't expect people to treat you as a serious partner for discussions if you question their good faith.

There are plenty of good reasons to reject the Lisbon Treaty. In my opinion, the worst thing about it is that it is so unreadable. The significance of the changes it makes are lost in a morass of legalistic text that no voter could ever understand. It also marks a failure by the Member States to grasp the nettle of reform as tightly as they should have. Some of the positive aspects, such as the simplification of the legislative process or greater involvement by national parliaments, seem like cosmetic changes when set in the context of grandiose new positions and the extension of QMV.

But sadly, here, Open Europe cast aside all pretence that it actually believed that the Irish should be persuaded to vote against Lisbon because it is a bad treaty. Instead, it expressed the hope that posters urging the Irish to vote No in protest against the government would be successful. Is this the message of a serious think tank taking a fresh, oprtimistic look at how the EU can be reformed? No. It's the voice of the worst sort of political cynicism. Shame on them.

Daniel Hannan MEP

For English-speaking blog readers who love to engage in debate as much as read the postings by the author, Daniel Hannan MEP runs a very stimulating show on the UK's Telegraph Blogs site.

Hannan himself, a British Conservative, is one of a rare breed among British anti-EU politicians - he is not only eloquent, but actually knows something about what he writes about. He is not above the occasional descent into myth and hyperbole, but he does powerfully point out some of the iniquities of the EU system.

Best of all, he does this with a certain degree of panache; he has an endearing habit of baring his soul (or at least appearing to) to his readers, which makes for a very devoted fan base. Interestingly, he seems to be able to win the admiration of not only his political soul mates, but also of a wide variety of political opponents (from members of the UK's withdrawalist UK Independence Party to tough left-wingers, to passionate advocates of European integration) - a not inconsiderable asset for a politician.

As on every major EU blog that publishes comments, some commentators are, how shall I say, intellectually more exotic than others, but on the whole the clientele is fairly thoughtful. Naturally enough for a very conservative publication, most of the local fauna is well to the right of centre.

Hannan publishes primarily pieces on the EU as he experiences it - i.e. as a Member of the European Parliament. He varies this with the odd posting on cultural or personal topics. Inevitably, I suppose, he is very UK-centric (indeed, he is very Anglo-centric) in his outlook, although, like many anti-Europeans, he is at pains to emphasise his internationalist credentials.

All in all, well worth a read, especially if you are interested in a stereotypically British approach to the EU.

Coulisses de Bruxelles

Jean Quatremer's blog, Coulisses de Bruxelles is not award-winning for nothing. It's by far the highest-quality French-language EU blog that I am aware of, with insightful postings by the author and a lively, courteous, and serious debate by commentators.

M. Quatremer's recent postings have focused primarily on the new EU treaty and on the growing political and constitutional crisis in Belgium. Belgian politics is a something of a black art, and has the ability to flummox even veteran Brussels expats.

Quatermer's latest theory is that Belgium may be heading for dissolution because the Walloons and Flemings are incapable of agreeing the terms of a new coalition government. The king recently suspended negotiations for the many players to cool off and come back to the table after the Summer with a renewed commitment to power sharing. As I understand it, the key issue is how much de-centralising constitutional reform the Flemings can extract from the Walloons. Massively oversimplified, this is about the Flemish parties pushing for more independence within Belgium, at the inevitable economic expense of their poorer French-speaking countrymen.

Last year, a Belgian state-funded French-language television channel ran a spoof news item that pretended that Flanders had seceded. Quite apart from the political furore that followed, the episode was interesting because of the scenario chosen by the broadcasters - a vote by the Flemish parliament. What we are seeing today is quite a different scenario - the simple absence of a democratically mandated federal government. I have not got the faintest idea how this will all end; for all I know, it could end up strengthening the Belgian federal state. But at the moment it looks like Belgium is slowly but surely tearing itself apart.

French-speaking and Dutch-speaking Belgians have separate print and broadcast media that focus on regional and not national perspectives. They have separate political parties (the Walloon Christian Democrats are at odds with the winner of the elections, their sister party in Flanders, over constitutional reform). They have a high degree of legislative independence from each other, including on such policy areas as environment. Their education systems are different and separate - it is rare to find a native French-speaker teaching French in a Flemish school, or a native Dutch-speaker teaching Dutch in a Walloon school. And national politics have become a sort of zero-sum game between Walloons and Flemings over money - for every subsidy granted to one region, the other insists on a matching subsidy for itself.

What are the implications and lessons for the EU? Should we be concluding that dissolution à la Belge is inevitable without greater centralisation of power in Brussels? Or should we conclude, on the contrary, that the EU is the ideal home for smaller "national" communities that prefer broader associations than the ones that have bound them to non-nation-states such as the UK, Belgium, or Spain? I tend towards the latter view, but we have not yet seen the practical effects of the dissolution of an EU Member States. The closest we have come is the velvet divorce of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but this happened some years before EU membership.

How would such a split work? Would new accession treaties be required for both Wallonia and Flanders, or Scotland and a rump England-Wales-Northern Ireland, or Catalonia and the rest of Spain? Would new calculations have to be made for votes in the Council and European Parliament seats? New allocations of Structural and other funds? How would the timing work? Would new official languages result? Would there be legal challenges to any of this? Which courts would have jurisdiction?

I'm not sure whether this post is really a review of the Coulisses de Bruxelles, or perhaps more of a collection of random thoughts about Belgian politics. At any rate, if you read French and you want to read only a half-dozen EU blogs every week, Jean Quatremer's should be one of them. Merci, Jean!

Commissioner Wallström's Blog

Communications Commissioner Margot Wallström is one of 3 (or is it now 4?) European Commissioners who publish a blog. It's by far the best of these, with the most regular postings and the best opportunity to send in comments. In fact, it gets a lot of comments. Unfortunately, they are dominated by a coterie of less than 10 annoyingly regular posters, who probably put enough other people off with their bickering to make a big difference to the numbers.



The Commissioner publishes some interesting posts on important topics, but the debate on the comments pages seems to be fated to descend into sterile discussions on the legitimacy of the EU and these days, a peculiarly British discussion on the Constitutional/Reform Treaty. I'm all in favour of freedom of speech, but I think some clever moderation could allow commentators to post say, up to once a day, leaving the field free for people who would otherwise not care enough to read through the back-and-forth of the more "enthusiastic" readers.



A big issue with the blog also seems to be the fact that it is published primarily in English. This is a cause for concern from many non-English speakers, including a dedicated band of esperantists who translate all the Commissioner's words into Esperanto and a series of European languages. I have expressed some of my thoughts on language in another post, but there is more to be said here. I think that on balance, the Commissioner could publish a higher proportion of her posts in other EU languages, but the reality is that she is a Swede who is most comfortable with English when not speaking her native tongue. If the next Communications Commissioner is Austrian, I would expect a good number of posts to be in German.



The Commissioner's most recent post attempts to bring up the subject of climate change (before being drowned out in a cacophony of "the EU is inherently evil" - "no it isn't, it's the best thing ever" comments). She tries to make a link between this Summer's extreme weather in Europe and Asia and man-made climate change. Now, between you and me, I think there may well be a link. But I think it is scientifically impossible to ascribe individual events like this to the man-made climate change phenomenon. At any rate, the scientific consensus that the trend exists is the most overwhelming there has been on any environmental issue I have ever heard of.



Which makes climate change, with its cross-border weather angle, the perfect candidate for EU-level action from the Commission's point of view. After all, here's an issue that resonates with the public in all of Europe. Following the embarrassing false start of the Kyoto targets that we aren't going to meet despite self-righteously criticising the Americans for non-participation, there seems to be a genuine desire for fresh and radical ideas in the Berlaymont. The challenge will be for the Commission to push an ambitious environmental, carbon-emission-cutting agenda without badly alienating industry. A particularly interesting challenge, given that this is the most pro-business Commission ever. The current debate on the proposals for very strict car emissions will create a hugely important precedent. Watch this space.

A good blog, Commissioner. With a few tweaks, it could be great.

Certain Ideas of Europe

The Economist is one of those publications that people either love or hate; very few who have read it are indifferent. I feel somewhat lonely as a regular reader who enjoys it but well understands the irritation and frustration of others with it.

It does at least have the virtue of providing a great deal of informed analysis on a great may issues. And its coverage of EU business, although it suffers from being too high-level and afraid to get down in the weeds, is very solid.

For those who like to look at EU affairs through the Good/Bad prism, who see any debate about the EU as being necessarily about praising it to the heavens or calling for its demise, the Economist is of little comfort. It takes a fairly middle-of-the-road stance, endorsing the idea of the EU but being critical of its workings. The Economist's excellent blog, Certain Ideas of Europe, is a good example.

I always dread the prospect of entering into a debate on the Constitutional Treaty, or the Reform Treaty, depending on the name you prefer, because it is so painfully sensitive that use of terminology has to be very precise to avoid accusations of favouring one side or the other. What the Economist does do skilfully is to expose some of the less "serious" criticisms of the Reform Treaty in one of its recent postings. I think the publication might have taken a more critical look at the treaty. But I also think that "unserious" journalism like that of British EU-sceptic Christopher Booker does nothing to aid his cause, since it is easily dismissed as ill-informed, misleading, or inaccurate.

Centre for European Reform

One of the best EU think tanks, the Centre for European Reform runs a good-quality blog, which they populate with challenging opinions from their staff. Like Caroline Lucas' blog, the postings are perhaps fewer and further between than they might be, but CER does at least produce its thoughts in written form, if not on their blog, very regularly and frequently.

The blog looks at some of the big EU issues, such as the Constitutional Treaty (now the Reform Treaty), the EU's Middle East policy, the prospects for Turkish membership, and more. I'd like to see more postings on economic policy and on hot issues like data protection and privacy, but maybe that just reflects my personal bias. After all, they do plenty of excellent work in these areas (see their publications on competitiveness and on Justice & Home Affairs), so it's not like they don't have anything to say.

Perhaps motivation is low because of the low level of comments (to be fair, at the time of writing they're doing a lot better than I am on that score, but I'm still very new!). Chicken or egg?

Anyway, what they do post is of high quality, and I enjoy reading them from time to time.

Caroline Lucas MEP's Blog

Caroline Lucas' blog, on the UK's Guardian newspaper web site, is a good place to talk about EU environment policy. The UK Green MEP is well-known as one of the most articulate leaders of the environmentalist movement, and her postings are thoughtful and thought-provoking.

The most recent one (dated March 2007) is about the fundamental contradiction between the EU-US Open Skies agreement's goal of increasing air travel across the Atlantic and the carbon emissions cutting goal of EU environment policy. Commentators have pointed out that this is a classic case of non-joined-up thinking. The parts of the EU machine that care about air transport lead the dance on air transport policy. And the parts of the EU machine that care about the environment lead the dance on environment policy. And what you end up with is bound not to be as coherent as it might be.

The mechanics of this are interesting. Consider this scenario: The Commission's DG TREN (transport & energy) comes up with policy proposals for legislation liberalising air transport in Europe. These are the fruit of public consultations that have elicited reactions primarily from direct stakeholders in the air transport industry. The DG's proposals are run through an "interservice" procedure in the Commission, during which all the other DGs are supposed to be able to submit objections and propose changes. But this doesn't happen as much as it should, because the Environment Commissioner knows that the Transport Commissioner will block his next initiative if he blocks this one. The proposal is then published with minimal changes, and sent to the EP and Council for co-decision. The EP committee dealing with it specialises in transport and not environment. It likes the idea of liberalising the sector, and delivers a positive recommendation to the plenary, which follows the lead of its expert committee. After all, they are the experts, right? In the Council, the dossier is taken through the Transport Council, populated by transport ministers and transport officials at the lower levels. And this Transport Council, together with the EP led by its in-house transport experts, delivers a piece of legislation that liberalises the sector. It may even be a very good piece of legislation. But the most powerful, institutional avenues for getting environmental concerns heard are marginalised at best. The NGOs are left struggling to lobby transport-minded MEPs and transport-minded officials and ministers.

What happens when a piece of environmental legislation goes through co-decision? Exactly the same, but the tables are turned. Now the NGOs are in the driving seat, and industry is struggling to get its voice heard.

It's a pretty fundamental problem with the way decision making is structured in all the institutions, and it results in all-or-nothing outcomes like REACH on the one hand (which is regarded as catastrophic by industry), and Open Skies on the other (regarded as catastrophic by Greens like Caroline Lucas).

Anyway, this is supposed to be a post about that blog, and not a rant about the deficiencies of the EU decision-making process. But the fact that I have gone off on the rant is evidence enough that Ms. Lucas' blog gets you thinking. The quality of comments is relatively high, especially when compared to the propagandist and ideological stuff that afflicts blogs like that of Commissioner Wallstrom!

My only regret is that her postings are so far apart - her last one was in March 2007, and her last 10 go back as far as May 2006. My last 10 go back all of a week! So much good thought in that head of yours, Caroline, and so little of it shared with your readers! Give us more!

Berlaymonster

One of the real gems of the Brussels Blogosphere is Berlaymonster, which adopts an irreverent and unashamedly humourous (and often critical) take on EU affairs. The best story on the main page at the time of writing is about the Commission's PR assault on the online world via YouTube, or, more precisely, EUtube. Most of the talk about the promotional material available on EUtube has been generated by the sexually explicit images taken from European films (subsidised by the EU).

How can you not love Berlaymonster when you read such priceless gags as:

"I always wondered what Ever Closer Union meant. That's pretty close."

"Aha, United in Perversity."

"Oof, he's no candidate for enlargement is he..."

"Well SHE clearly met the entry requirements."

"Is that what you call a horizontal strategy?"

And Berlaymonster asks for further submissions, so here's mine: "What ever happened to the precautionary principle?"

Great stuff.

A Fistful of Euros

A Fistful of Euros is a good, solid, multi-authored blog on general European affairs, not restricted to EU politics. Which makes it a refreshing change for those of us who spend so much time with our spectacled eyes glued to our EU navel that we feel s wee bit out of touch with the Real World!

It's somewhat left of centre in political sympathies, but reassuringly free of party politics and the inevitable defence of party lines that this entails.

A recent post that attracted my attention was from July 16, by Alex Harrowell, on the EU as a force for reform amongst its neighbours. This is a truism that you often hear in the Eurobubble, and the stock examples given are the EU's activities in promoting civil society in places like Georgia, Ukraine, and Russia, as well as the gradual adoption of the acquis communautaire and associated reforms in candidate countries such as Croatia and Turkey.

The nice thing about this post is that it gives an example of a specific EU action that has resulted in reform in a neighbouring country - the effect of the EU's blacklist of airlines on Moldova. Perhaps a little light on detail, but interesting nonetheless. If there are any Moldova experts reading this, I'd be curious to know if there was any background that A Fistful of Euros is missing and that might be important - e.g. pre-existing plans to ban the banned airline, the detailed context of national politics, the role of Russia and other neighbours, etc.

Anyway, A Fistful of Euros, well done for being thought-provoking. Keep up the good work.

EU Blog Reviews

The Brussels Blogosphere is sprawling. There is material out there to cater to most tastes and interests. On the left hand side of this page you will find a list of the blogs that I find particularly worthwhile. I have listed only blogs in languages I can read - which includes English, French, German, Dutch, and a wee bit of Polish and Italian. Not all those languages are represented, so any suggestions from readers are welcome.

I'm most comfortable in English, but will try occasionally to post in another language myself.

Some of the blogs I link to are simply essential, such as Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's blog - essential because of his role in the Constitutional Treaty and the Reform Treaty.

Others are worth reading for the insights they give into the way veteran pro-EU campaigners like the Federal Union and anti-EU campaigners like EU Referendum see the world.

Many are serious; some (like Berlaymonster) are not so serious.

Some are more informative, some are more geared to debate.

None of them, as far as I am aware, systematically review each other. That is something that I'd like to add to the landscape - an opportunity to discuss the Brussels Blogosphere in detail: its heroes and villains, facts and myths, hot policy debates, key players, etc. Hopefully this will become a place where opinions can be aired freely (and moderated in a neutral fashion by me).

I will simply start at the top of the list and work my way southwards...