Dream or nightmare? “European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has a son from an affair with an African girlfriend. He was born during the oil crisis of 1973 – just a year before the Portugese revolution, lives somewhere in Europe, and now is old enough to become the first European President. Could he be the saviour of the European Union? Could he be Europe’s own Obama?
A few days before Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States, a dream inspired Cloggie to write the following commentary about why Europe’s needs its own saviour, but is unlikely to get it:
Watch Europe’s ‘President’ as a maoist student leader in 1976:
Barack Obama is not only going to be the first black president ever. He also is seen as the saviour of the United States, and, through natural extrapolation, the rest of the world. After eight years of political abuse, war and greed, massive media manipulation, and a stolen election under George W. Bush, the White House now is set to be guided by sanity and political common sense. Democracy has truly prevailed.
Analysis anyone? I’m going to see my shrink.
The world is elated to see Obama take office as 44th President of the United States. In electing Barack Obama, the United States as a country has demonstrated that it is a true democracy. Despite the financial crisis, its people are fortunate. They live in a democracy capable of creating real change. A democracy in the classical sense. One that can turn around mistakes from the past. A democracy where scandals can be reported openly. A democracy where the son of an immigrant from Kenya can become President.
Here in Europe, many of us envy the American people for the democracy they live in. It’s a democracy that allowed ‘W’ to walk away free with stealing the elections from Al Gore, but also one that demonstrates a self-cleaning capacity that one would expect of a real democracy. Thank God the presidential term is limited to a maximum of eight years only.
The European Union is no such a democracy. We still live in a divided union, ruled not by democratic political visions but by nationalist sentiments, in a system that lacks the proper checks and balances that one would expect in a democracy. That is what makes Europe basically powerless on the world stage. Not the absence of something like the ‘Lisbon Treaty.’
To be fair, the individual 27 countries that together create this European union are real democracies. Each one of them can elect a parliament that can directly hold its government accountable. But that’s where democracy stops. At a European level, there is no more accountability.
There is involvement, yes, but that’s a long way short of democratic accountability. European politicians can’t be sent home.
At the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, individual European Commissioners have to report regularly to the European parliament but they can’t be forced to step down when they prove incapable of serving the office they hold. Only the nuclear option exists as an option to the parliament: sacking the entire college of 27 Commissioners. The lack of individual accountability leaves room for the incapable, whose only purpose is to serve a political agenda.
Barroso says sees EU as new European empire:
The Council of the European Union Council, Here, the Presidents, Prime Ministers and ministers of the EU member states that shape European policies naturally are accountable only to their national parliaments. And these parliaments have national priorities and national agenda. The national parliaments, naturally, are unlikely to make European interests their first priority.
The European Parliament, with its 735 members, is the only parliament in the Western world without a right to initiate legislation. Anyone taking a quick look concludes that simply having a parliament makes Europe a democracy. But those who take a better look will notice that the parliament mostly is the place where the interests of lobbyists are represented; a talking shop for political statements; with very limited powers.
Judging from the constant political mayhem at the parliament, not having the right to initiate legislation actually is something to be thankful for.
Admittedly, the parliament’s powers have increased gradually over recent decades. It can force the Commission to change proposed European laws. It even has used its nuclear option once, sending home, in 1999, the Jacques Santer team after the French Commissioner Edith Cresson admitted to having appointed her dentist as a member of staff.
Paul van Buitenen, the former commission official who exposed Cresson’s fraud, has been a member of the European Parliament for four years now, repeatedly disclosing new cases of corruption, embezzlement and irregularities at the Commission and the Parliament. But is anyone listening? No. Many journalists find it difficult to sell EU fraud and corruption stories to their newsroom. European media play a role in this debate as well, but that is an issue to explore at another time.
When it comes down it, the European parliament remains a democratic facade for a European Union ruled by a political elite that is afraid of the people’s voice. Historically, Europe of course has a problem with nationalism. That fear now seems to stand in the way of turning the European union into a real democracy.
That at a time when the concept of nation-states is becoming increasingly seen as old-fashioned. Traditional nation-states have no more roles to play in a globalized world. In recent weeks, Europe’s desperate plea for a cease-fire in Gaza, at a time that the United States are essentially headless, demonstrates Europe’s incapacity.
The European Union system, as it is now and as it would be under the Lisbon Treaty, simply emphasizes national differences. It leaves too much power to the member states themselves. Power that can not be checked at a European level. Europe needs far more changes if it is to be influential in this internationalized global world of our 21st century.
The widely-discussed Lisbon Treaty would entitle the European Union to its own diplomatic corps, with its own Foreign Minister. And there would be a permanent President of the European Council, a position to be held by a prominent former prime minister like Tony Blair for example.
This would allow Europe to finally answer Henry Kissinger’s famous question: “Who do I call when I want to talk to Europe?”
The Minister and the President would have to answer to the European parliament. But the parliament would not be able to ‘impeach’ them. They would be appointed by the national governments that make up the union in a process of meetings and back-room discussions that would be shielded from democratic accountability. Impeaching of a European president would be impossible.
The Lisbon Treaty would not give the parliament the power to hold individual commissioners, and the president, accountable. It would not give the parliament the right to initiate legislation, although admittedly it would encourage more involvement of national parliaments.
Ireland and the Czech Republic are the two remaining EU member states that still need to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. Ireland has promised to hold a second referendum before the end of October. It’s not clear at this time how the Czechs, who currently hold the EU’s rotating presidency, want to go about ratifying ‘Lisbon’.
The European Union is holding high hopes for a United States under Barack Obama. Transatlantic ties are to be reinvigorated. No doubt about it. But under Obama, the US will call on Europe to deliver support when it comes to solving some of its biggest problems. Closing Guantanamo Bay? Some but not all European countries already signalled they are willing to take in some of the prisoners. More troops to Afghanistan? NATO’s future? Anti-missile radar in the Czech Republic and Poland?
Among the 27 member states of the European Union, there simply is no consensus on these thorny issues. The US will have to continue to deal with European divisions. There simply is no European unity.
So, back to my dream. Against the backdrop described above, the following issues play: – Lisbon, Barroso, European leadership, change, renewal, hope, new course. Obama of course. Europe has its own elections for the European Parliament in June. The Lisbon Treaty remains challenged.
It’s obvious that Europe could do with a saviour. Unfortunately my dream was only a dream. Barroso did not have a child from an extramarital affair – at least now that we know about.
But even if there would be such a person out there, he, or she, would never be able to become ‘President of Europe’. Because, as planned under the Lisbon Treaty, that’s a job that would be assigned in back-door meetings between the EU’s heads-of-state and heads-of-government. They would choose one of their peers. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is interested. And French President Nicolas Sarkozy would love to succeed him.
So is this dream completely absurd? Yes of course. The illegitimate son of an African immigrant in Portugal would never make it into the Portuguese government, would never be able to represent his country in Brussels, and would never make it to the inner circle that handpicks Europe’s President.
But then again, just reflect on the following facts about European politicians that made headlines in recent years:
- The mistress of Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, currently presiding over the European Union, gave birth to a son in July 2007. He is called Nicolas Topolanek. The Czech prime minister left his wife for Ms Talmanova, Radio Praha has reported.
- European Commission Vice President Gunter Verheugen in 2007 admitted to having an affair with his chief of staff, Petra Erler.
- And Barroso was a good-looking guy when he was a Maoist student leader in the 1970s.
So who knows? There really might be a 30-something man or woman out there who was conceived in Portugal during the 1970s, and who will be able to turn around Europe’s fortune at some stage in the coming years.
Now I really am going to see my shrink.
