|
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY N-EU YEAR!
Christmas has arrived. We know this because of
the presence of a solitary Christmas tree on the
third floor of the European Parliament in Brussels.
Although our annual budget now exceeds one hundred
billion Euros a year, apparently we cannot stretch
to anything in excess of a lonely tree and a few
blue bobbles! Anyway, following the Buttiglione
crisis, at least we don't have to suffer the indignity
of a fairy perched on top of the tree, impaled
uncomfortably on a spiky branch!
But there is no doubt Christmas is here. The
new President of Parliament - the deeply unimpressive
socialist Josep Borrell - is sure to get into
the right party mood by inviting his great friend
Kilroy-Silk for mince pies and mulled wine. Having
been kicked out of UKIP, Kilroy now spends his
days baiting Borrell from the back benches, so
if the President is seen to crumble a tiny phial
of powder into the mulled wine, no-one should
be surprised! Meantime, the other resident trouble-maker
- Daniel Cohn-Bendit (Danny the Red,) will surely
be busy gift-wrapping the latest Harry Potter
book to send to his pal, the Dutch Prime Minister
- Jan Peter Balkenende - who Danny claims is the
spitting image of the children's hero.
In the true spirit of Christmas everyone has
been talking about Turkey. Even the Turkish Prime
Minister - Recep Tayyip Erdogan - entered into
the seasonal outpouring of goodwill to all men,
by visiting Brussels and announcing that adultery
will not, after all, become a criminal offence
in his country, despite his support for the policy.
This controversial proposal had been part of a
package of laws set for approval in the Turkish
Parliament and now shelved following protests
from the EU. The shelved package also included
plans to ban compulsory virginity tests, outlaw
honour killings, ban the forced marriage of a
female victim to her rapist and criminalise genocide
and people-trafficking. Reassuringly, all of these
things will, at least in the meantime, remain
legal in this aspiring Member State!
Elsewhere, there seems to be a strange lack of
the traditional Christmas spirit. Perhaps this
is because so few Christmas cards have been flying
around this year. It's hardly surprising. All
732 MEPs were asked, by the Parliament's services,
to choose a free bundle of cards from the usual
abysmal selection of hopelessly mediocre designs.
They were so awful that almost everyone plumped
for the least offensive design. The predictable
result has been abject chaos. The printers have
been unable to meet the unexpected demand and
most MEPs have found themselves card-less! Some
have even been forced to break with precedent
and purchase their own supply of cards!
There is a wide selection available. Amongst
the usual colourful images of cheerful sixteenth
century Belgian peasants by Pieter Brueghel the
elder, some of the sharper elected members may
have noticed a remarkable similarity between that
artist's striking picture of The Tower of Babel
and the tower of our own parliament in Strasbourg.
Surely the French architects didn't model the
European Parliament on Brueghel's painting? That
would be a cruel irony in a building which houses
732 MEPs and thousands of staff, representing
25 countries and 450 million EU citizens, working
in 20 different languages!
Never mind. The new Commission President - Jose
Manuel Barroso - will be donning his Santa outfit
and heading off to Portugal in search of the mystical
'Lisbon Agenda.' He has perplexed the parliament
on each occasion he has appeared by his constant
references to this numinous Portuguese fantasy.
We all know that Christmas is a time for fairytales
and pantomimes, but surely asking grown men and
women to believe that Europe can be the world's
leading knowledge-based economy by 2012 is going
too far! On the contrary, the majority of MEPs
prefer to indulge in their favourite pastime of
burdening the EU economy with enough red tape
to wrap a million Christmas parcels. Like the
universe, the notorious acquis communautaire continues
to expand. It now contains more than one hundred
thousand regulations, every one of which has to
be obeyed to the letter of the law, by everyone
except the French! It is thanks to these endless
regulations and barrow-loads of red tape that
the sclerotic European economy resembles more
the Ouagadougou agenda rather than the Lisbon
agenda!
No doubt the battalions of Brussels bureaucrats
will scuttle back to their Euro-homes, breathless
with excitement at the pile of gifts scattered
around their regulation 2- metre, non GMO Christmas
trees. They will gasp in appreciation as they
tear open the recycled wrapping-paper to reveal
standardised EU rocking horses, non-vibrating
tractor seats, silent bagpipes and perhaps even
a straight banana or two! They will then tuck
into brimming dishes of salmon from Chile, turkey
from Israel, beef from Argentina, and lamb from
New Zealand, washed down with gallons (sorry,
litres) of wine from South Africa and Australia,
while chortling about the success of the Common
Agricultural Policy.
Meanwhile, standing outside in the chill darkness
of Brussels, will be the sad, dejected figure
of Marta Andreasen, a grubby cardboard placard
bearing the legend 'NO JOB, NO MONEY. PLEASE HELP'
dangling from her neck. Mrs Andreasen was the
accountant sacked by Neil Kinnock for daring to
suggest how the European Commission could tighten
up its fight against corruption. Commissioners
will curse her silently as they cross the snow-covered
boulevard to escape the shrill blast from her
whistle.
And as Europe's finest MEPs head off across the
icy vastness of the enlarged EU to enjoy Christmas
in the far flung corners of the Community, the
plaintiff voices of the European Commission's
choir will still be echoing around the empty corridors
of the Berlaymont building, as the last chords
of "Oh come all ye faithful" die away
to silence!
Struan Stevenson MEP
|
