Salocin

Buttiglione stands aside

Italy's nomination for its member of the European Commission has announced that he will stand aside in order to ease the passage into office of the new European Commission. In this astonishing, shallow and unfortunate way has the European Parliament asserted its new strength. This is an exercise in politics, not in leadership, and indicates that in the future, the European Parliament will continue to assert power for the sake of proving that it has it, in blocking actions and interference rather than leadership and advancement. This ending, and the events, brinkmanship and political-interest hostage-taking that have led to it, are a terrible poison to Europe, and serve to illustrate a weakend Union and a newly-powerful, incoherent Rottweiler in the form of powerful parliamentary interest groups.

Buttiglione has been painted as a terrible man. In the eyes of the indignant few, he was considered a backward, repugnant, biased idiot. To a man whose life is deeply affected by moral values that far surpass those of his detractors, the statements made about him by narrow-minded self-interested political power-mongers must seem a terrible injustice.

The homosexual lobby must feel that they have won a victory. Narrow-minded as such interest groups often are, they do not notice that they have been used as an excuse to assert power, to slap Italy in the face and to demonstrate that Parliamentary groups will quite happily hold the functioning of the European machine hostage, threatening everything in order to win a point they justify with values they wouldn't give a second thought to were they not leveragable.

This is what you get when national apathy results in morons being elected to the EU Parliament. This was most ably demonstrated by one of the more high-profile additions to the European Parliament. Mr. Kilroy-Silk, of the UKIP, made a complete ass of himself during a recent debate. A complete lack of decorum, hundreds of incompetent and inexperienced delegates who joined what they hoped would remain a gravy-train, elected by ignorant and apathetic communities, and justifying their presence by screaming ill-thought-out points at the top of their voices, bringing the organization they have joined into jeopardy through their embarassing contributions.

Add to that political lobby groups who seek to obtain massive power in order to achieve narrow aims, and push the entire European edifice in one direction or the other, by grouping large numbers of votes in Parliament, and you get a nightmare vision of Europe. Parliament is supposed to be the direct representation of the European people in the European political institutions. It is not supposed to be a means by which large parties can consolidate national powers, ignore the individuals they represent and play party politics at the expense of the advancement of the Union they are a part of.

The Commission has always been staffed by carefully chosen experts: Politicians who have the maturity, knowledge, experience and intelligence to understand the complex machine they are being brought in to lead. Individuals who know where the stress points are, where the Union can move forward safely and where it cannot. This is why the Commission has the power of initiative and the Parliament has not : otherwise we would be drowning in a sea of self-important, poorly reasoned legislative proposals, each suppporting a political party's personal agenda and passed into law through political horsetrading, rather than on the merits. Europe's institutional setup avoids this, the structures are there for very good reasons, and this is why Parliament is not supposed to have the power to reject an individual commissioner.

If Parliament were visible enough, and its parties identifiable enough, and their actions sufficiently publicised in the countries and communities from which its delegates are elected, then the electorate would be able to react to the actions of the EU-MPs and stupidity would be rewarded with electoral loss and embarassment. They would then think more carefully about their actions and behaviour. But no-one cares about their elected representatives because no-one understands what they do, what issues they influence or why its important that their voice be heard in the EU Parliament. If they did understand, they wouldn't be hiring imcompetents to go there on their behalf.

Bringing Mr. Buttiglione's personal beliefs into the arena, and using that as a pretext for refusing his nomination, Parliament then enacted a strategy of brinkmanship, saying that they would reject the entire College of Commissioners if this one commissioner was not replaced, thus using a vast and unsubtle power to achieve a change they were deliberately not given the ability to influence. A terrible abuse that - one can only hope - those European leaders who sign future treaties will curtail, for fear of it's being used under other circumstances, in areas even more damaging than a personal attack on a Commissioner and his country's Prime Minister.

More of us need to vote, and we need to be more careful who we elect. The individuals who currently populate the European Parliament are not experienced politicians. Were there only a few of these novices, the remainder would be able to hold them in check for the time it takes to learn how to change the boat's direction without capsizing it. Unfortunately, the vast majority of parliamentarians are idiots in this respect, and often think their own ideals are so important that it's worth threatening to sink the entire enterprise to get their way. Let's vote on experience for a while, and keep the TV presenters where they belong. (I know Kilroy used to be in politics, but based on his recent performance, there's a reason he went to TV).

European naysayers who fail to understand the benefits of the Union, and who want the advantages without the contributions, will seize upon such political crapulence as the embarassing indictment that it is. If the parliamentarians cannot grow up and act responsibly, using their power with reason and moderation, then they need to be either replaced or their power curtailed.

Posted by nlvp at October 31, 2004 01:30 PM