EUX.TV, the European affairs channel, will relaunch soon with an exiting new and regular video reporting service on European affairs. The new service will also include streaming of live events.

In the meantime, stay tuned via our YouTube channel for the biggest and broadest collection of news clips, interviews and videos collected from the EU institutions.

EUX.TV is a Brussels-based service of White Bull Communications BV, registered in the Netherlands.

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This is EUX.TV’s curtainraiser on the eve of the 2009 European elections:

Between Thursday and Sunday of this week, some 378 million citizens of the 27 member states of the European Union are able to vote for the European Parliament.

For the past 30 years, turnout has fallen at every single election for the European parliament. Sunday night at 21.00 hours, turnout projections will be posted the vote that takes place across the EU. If it’s again below the level for the previous elections, the European Union project could be in danger of losing public support.

At stake is not just the 735 seats in the parliament, but also the democratic legitimacy of the European Union.

Estonia is the first country in the EU to have on-line voting for the European Parliament elections. Vahur Orrin from Tallinn took the chance to become the first man ever to vote on-line when he cast his vote in Brussels – one second after the the polling site went up on Thursday 28 May 2009.

Filmed by Lisbeth Kirk, EUobserver.com

This is the review for the 2004-2009 European Parliament that was produced by the European Union’s parliament audiovisual service and made available to broadcasters.

For the full script:

0.00
Title

0.10
In June 2004 the new European Parliament had seven hundred and thirty two members. A few months later new Commission President Jose Manuel BARROSO takes over with the year’s major event, enlargement, the key challenge ahead.

0.24
Geoff MEADE, Brussels Correspondent, Associated Press, in English:
“Apart from the macro-politics of the whole thing, the tiny stuff… The stuff was suddenly you go from 15 EU leaders around the table to 27. And everybody wants to have their say.”

0.40
Scars in foreign policy opened up by the Iraq war a year earlier were still fresh, opinions remained divided, and Europe struggled to mean anything internationally.

0.50
Eneko LANDABURU, Director General for External Relations, European Commission, in French:
“The EU is a front-rank global player; world’s number one trade power, second biggest economy after America, and world’s second reserve currency. These all prove the EU is a global force, it’s just that it doesn’t have that political influence.”

1.17
Despite initial problems the EU rode out enlargement and the integration of ten new members without crisis. The Constitutional Treaty guaranteeing the smooth running of the institutions was signed in Rome in November. Crisis struck for a few days in May when first the French then the Dutch voted no to the Lisbon Treaty.

1.39
Geoff MEADE, Brussels Correspondent, Associated Press, in English:
“The British would always reject everything, we know that, and with the enlargement, the Poles could also be difficult. But for the French and the Dutch to reject a fundamental treaty which is designed to improve the nature of the EU? A lot of people just didn’t see that coming.”

1.53
The crisis caught the Commission cold; and countering rumours it had a contingency plan, revealed no ideas for fixing the mess.

2.00
Geoff MEADE, Brussels Correspondent, Associated Press, in English:
“After plan A was rejected by the French and the Dutch, we said ok, now you can tell us ‘what is plan B?’ And President BARROSO said, ‘I told you, there isn’t one. There is no plan B’.”

2.10
Budget failure that June under the Luxembourg presidency followed, despite hours of talks. The crisis deepened.

2.20
Jean-Claude JUNCKER, Luxembourg Prime Minister, in French:
“I was ashamed! When I heard the new member states, all as poor as each other, saying in the interests of a deal they’d abandon some of their financial demands I was ashamed.”

2.38
Eneko LANDABURU, Director General for External Relations, European Commission, in French:
“JUNCKER doesn’t mince his words when he says he’s ashamed, but he’s right. You can’t wish to associate 10 new members who have suffered the Soviet horror without helping them little by little to get up to our standard of living.”

3.02
Faced with this double-whammy of a political disaster the cowed Commission came up with a plan D out of nowhere. D for Democracy? Dialogue?Debate?

3.12
Geoff MEADE, Brussels Correspondent, Associated Press, in English:
“Plan D could always be disaster, desperation, despair.”

3.16
Pierre DEFRAIGNE, Executive Director, Madariaga Foundation, in French:
“Let’s say D for disaster. I don’t think the Commission has ever understood how to communicate. You don’t talk to people the top down, by telling them if they knew better what the EU was doing for them they’d love Europe more. It’s ridiculous.”

3.35
And the Council power-trio of BLAIR, CHIRAC and SCHRÖDER didn’t give Europe its much-needed boost.

3.42
Antoinette SPAAK, Belgian State Minister & former member of the European Parliament, in French:
“I think they were overwhelmed by the events thrown at them, and equally, not as committed Europeans as François MITTERRAND and Helmut KOHL.”

3.53
José Manuel BARROSO is no Jacques DELORS, either. The Commission struggled to influence the member states.

4.00
Jean QUATREMER, Brussels Correspondent, Libération, in French:
“BARROSO is useful because he doesn’t cause trouble, he’s a sort of loveable dogsbody for the Council of Ministers.”

4.06
Antoinette SPAAK, Belgian State Minister & former member of the European Parliament, in French:
“Mr BARROSO is an excellent representative. He seems to me to stay far in the background in Council matters, even in the group photos, which I hated, because it gave the impression of the Commission President trotting behind the Ministers.”

4.29
Dragging everyone out of this quicksand the Parliament rode over the hill to emerge as a vital political force. It acted where others dithered. Parliament entirely rewrote the much-decried Service directive, negotiated the REACH chemicals reforms, and later the Climate package.

4.41
Jean QUATREMER, Brussels Correspondent, Libération, in French:
“Without a doubt Parliament’s coming of age in the last 5 years is a significant political factor. It proved itself with the BOLKESTEIN directive, and it’s proving itself today with the Financial Services directive. Parliament was also the first to warn about over-deregulation of the financial markets, a long time ago.”

5.02
The clouds seemed to clear a little; following Parliament’s lead BARROSO turned his back on crisis and proposed environmental investment as the future.

5.10
Pierre DEFRAIGNE, Executive Director, Madariaga Foundation, in French:
“The Commission didn’t play its role in the REACH directive, and left the talking to Parliament and the Council. But I think it was a lot more proactive on the climate question, and it deserves its share of the honour in making it law.”

5.33
Member states also got new leaders; Angela MERKEL, then Nicolas SARKOZY. Two clashing styles but the Franco-German axis relaunched Europe forwards.

5.42
Jean QUATREMER, Brussels Correspondent, Libération, in French:
“On her own MERKEL wouldn’t have lasted long; she needed a partner, but had to wait until 2007 when Nicolas SARKOZY arrived to see real change.”

5.52
Together they push the Lisbon Treaty through and lead the climate negotiations. Europe seems to reappear on the international scene.

6.00
Eneko LANDABURU, Director General for External Relations, European Commission, in French:
“The world sees us as providing a lead in the fight to reduce the damage caused by climate change. We are taken seriously because we been able to lead by example.”

6.15
The breathing space was short because last June Ireland rejected the Lisbon Treaty, and two months later Russian tanks rolled into Georgia. Then the financial crisis erupted. But now Europe was speaking with a single voice; the EU negotiated with Russia, and called the G20 together. The EU appears as a global force to be reckoned with, seen as a rampart against crisis.

6.36
Jean QUATREMER, Brussels Correspondent, Libération, in French:
“I think the 8 months we’ve just been through has allowed Europeans to realise that the EU could be powerful. They don’t have the levers of power yet, but they needed to be united.”

6.48
Pierre DEFRAIGNE, Executive Director, Madariaga Foundation, in French:
“Fire-fighting is one thing. Stopping the fire ever starting is Europe’s real mission, but we’re far from attaining that yet.”

6.57
To maintain its status as a global player must Europe continue to integrate? Just as in the past, two visions collide:

7.06
Geoff MEADE, Brussels Correspondent, Associated Press, in English:
“A club has to settle in a core of values. It doesn’t want to be constantly changed and all the European Commission needs to do is to be a solid basis for consolidation of the wishes of the club’s members.”

7.23
Eneko LANDABURU, Director General for External Relations, European Commission, in French:
“Europe is at a crucial moment for its future. Either it decides soon to become a political Europe to exist, influence, and best defend its interests, or it is going to fall back.”

7.38
Beyond the talk about identity the next legislature must get to grips with some big issues. The economic and financial crisis, ratifying the Lisbon Treaty, climate talks ahead of the Copenhagen summit, launching a real European energy policy. These are just some of the known challenges ahead.
 
7.57
Title

8.00
End

BRUSSELS – Just back from eastern Chad and the border area with Darfur and Sudan, actor George Clooney said in an interview with CNN that the European Union’s military mission in the country has achieved “a certain degree of success” in protecting refugees from the Darfur crisis because the mission had a stronger mandate than that what is usual for UN troops.

The mission, known as EUFOR Chad/RCA, is a bridging mission for the United Nations, which will fold EUFOR it into the MINURCAT mission in Chad and Darfur at the middle of March. EUFOR Chad includes about 3700 European troops, mostly from France, Poland, Ireland but also from Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands and several other EU member states.

Clooney travelled to Chad last month as a UN peacel ambassador to draw international attention to the plight of the refugees and internally displaced people here.

“I was in Darfur last a year ago,” Clooney told CNN in an interview dated March 5.

“This — about eight days ago, nine days ago I was right at the border of Darfur and Chad. And what you found was that the — the European forces, which are going to be changed over to MINURCAT, but the EUFOR forces in Chad have had a certain degree of success in being able to protect the refugees who’ve come over the border because they’ve had a chance to be — because they’ve had a much stronger mandate.

“The problem is across — over the border, the U.N. forces, the U.N. peacekeepers have been given such a watered-down mandate because the Security Council has given them such a watered-down mandate, that they’re not really able to do much. They can’t — they don’t have helicopters, you know, which they could really use, to get there. Their communications are not good. They’re still understaffed, and they’re not really able to react in time to bring safety. So you find that just across the border, it’s much more dangerous than it is in Chad.

“What’s interesting, you know, when you talk to people who’ve just come over the border, their reaction — anyone who gets to Chad, of course, immediately says “justice,” which is what the ICC indictments are, is they’re asking for justice, which in a normal world, of course, is the only answer. But unfortunately, in the world they live in, it’s not always normal.

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Dutch anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders will take part in the 2009 European elections. A person familiar with Wilders’ campaign said an announcement will be made later on Monday.

The elections will take place in June. Wilders has indicated earlier he plans to campaign with a call for a complete abolition of the European parliament.

More later…

By Raymond Frenken

BRUSSELS – The European Commission on Thursday had declined to answer questions from the European Ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros on allegations of fraud in the commission’s political studies program. The allegations target a program known as EIDHR, which stands for “European instrument for Democracy and Human Rights”.

“I am not in a position to force the Commission to answer by a certain date,” the ombudsman today in a letter to Professor David Lempert, a copy of which was made available to EUX.TV.

Lempert took the case to the ombudsman two years ago after he uncovered the fraud while reviewing spending for the political studies program as a conctracted specialist. The irregularities were not made part of the official report on the EIDHR program.

Letter Ombudsman to David Lempert

Lempert, who has been pushing fruitlessly to get the Commission to investigate the fraud, had asked the ombudsman to look into this case two years ago. The Ombudsman so far has been unable to extract an answer from the Commission and therefore has proven totally unable to investigate the case.

Lempert is not the first one to accuse the Ombudsman of being part of a conspiracy with the Commission. It’s the role of the ombudsman to investigate complaints about maladministration in the EU institutions. Dutch MEP Paul van Buitenen is among those whose calls for probes into irregularities with EU funds have not been investigated after a complaint to the Ombudsman.

“I cannot accept these accusations,” said the Ombudman in his letter to David Lempert. “Your complaint is handled in an objective and impartial way.”

According to a evaluation report on the EIDHR project, 2.1 million euro in EU funds has been given to this project since 2002, mostly to political studies institutes in countries like Bosnia, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldova, Russia and Macedonia.

Lempert is cited in the evaluation report as a contributor but says that the irregularities he uncovered are not included in the report, and that the commission is attempting to keep this fraud under the hat.

“The Ombudsman claims that his inaction for almost two years is exactly what he is supposed to do,” Lempert writes in an email. “He says he is doing a perfect job, which means that his inaction and the game playing with the EC is part of his job.”

So why is this story important? Not because of the amount involved in the EIDHR program, which is relatively insignificant.

It’s important because it highlights a ‘modus operandi’ at the EU institutions in Brussels in which irregularities are not properly investigated, even when the facts are on the table. This situation needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. The current system discourages whistle-blowers from raising the alarm. That’s just what the EC staffers in the Berlaymont want. So, let’s support David Lempert, and not ignore this case. We’ll be among those who keep you posted.

Filmed with a Flip camera at the launch of the European blogging competition, organized by the European Journalism Centre.

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.

We were told repeatedly an interview would be possible, but never were able to get a date.

Then, in October 2007, this interview with Margot appears on the Commission’s own YouTube channel. Jacki Davis is a tv pro, appears regularly on the BBC, but also happens to be a good friend of the Commissioner. She is head of communications at the European Policy Centre and editor of E! Sharp magazine. No doubt she knows about Europe, but she’s not in a position to throw tough questions at a European Commission Vice President.

The interview that is still up on EUtube has been heavily edited. Check for yourself. You’ll see a lot of giggles between two girls in several languages. (Girls, wake up, Europe’s troubles are nothing to giggle about!)

We at EUX.TV believe Europe needs to be challenged in order to be understood. National media do it with national politicians. European media (if they exist – but that is a different issue) should do it with European politicians.

It’s no surprise that so many people outside the Brussels bubble don’t understand what’s going on at an EU-level. And behaviour like in this interview suggests that the current people in power have no real desire to create a better understanding for the work they do.

Unless Commissioners and other EU leaders are able to face tough and uncensored questions that allow them to really explain themselves, they will not be understood. Never.

Or might it be that the ‘people in power’ like it this way? After all, when the masses do not really understand, it enables those in power to continue operating the EU in the undemocratic, uncheckable way. Yes of course, the Lisbon Treaty would make Europe more democratic. But seriously, when you take a good look, the EU will still not be a real democracy once that treaty gets into place. Lisbon simply is a marginal improvement. It’s not good enough to turn the EU into a real democracy. Now how about that, you giggly girls.

So, Margot, be serious about Europe, and give EUX.TV 30 minutes of your time in the Berlaymont’s basement studio. We’ll meet you anytime…