STRASBOURG GOOSED
Daniel Hannan is surprised by
the powerlessness of the European Parliament
ONLY now, as the European Parliament settles down to some routine work, is the grisly truth beginning to sink in. It was easy enough to feel important during the ceremonial opening speeches. Discovering our office suites (complete with showers) and secretarial allowances (£6,743.44 a month) was undeniably good for our egos. And how we swelled with pride as we chid- ed the new Commissioners for failing to answer our questions properly. But, now that the excitement has passed and the cameras have withdrawn, it is impossible to fight off the realisation any longer. MEPs — there is no easy way to say this — have very little actual power.
To the outside observer, no doubt, the Strasbourg Parliament seems very grand. Its members receive a package of expenses which I am reluctant to set out in full for fear of being dragged into the elegant oval courtyard and given a good kicking. Our speeches are translated into nine lan- guages. Our committee work is written about in several in-house glossies. Last week we were issued with a laissez-passer which gives us diplomatic immunity, not just within the EU, but in the applicant states, too. Granting MEPs their full privi- leges is evidently a prerequisite of being allowed to join.
And our amour propre is further bol- stered by the many well-known politicians who have joined our number. The vote on the new Commission last week brought them out in force. There was Jacques San- ter, now. one of Luxembourg's six members, raising his croaky voice in favour of the new Commissioners. And here was Silvio Berlusconi, the television magnate and new member of the media committee, also lend- ing his support to Signor Prodi (who, back in Italy, was one of his bitterest rivals).
There, in the hemicycle, was Ian Paisley, his heavy eyelids fluttering as he tore into the appointment of Chris Patten. Outside the chamber, typically, he was less raucous, expressing gentle surprise at quite how far Mr Patten had gone to appease the IRA (`Sure, I've often had dinner with him, the same fella'). And there, wringing his hands over East Timor, was the octagenarian Mario Soares, whose disastrous decolonisa- tion programme contributed in no small measure to the problem.
Emma Bonino, who presided over the Common Fisheries Policy in the last Com- mission, has re-emerged as an MEP for the Italian Radical party. In perhaps the oddest development of the session, the pro-drugs and pro-abortion campaigner has been trying to link up with Jean-Marie Le Pen. One of the more corporatist aspects of the Parliament is that you're not allowed to do anything except as part of a registered transnational group. The idea is to force people to sit with foreigners, so building a sense of European conscious- ness. For most parties, this is straightfor- ward enough: socialists sit with other socialists, Greens with other Greens, and so on. But the far-Right parties refuse to form a single group because, amusingly enough, they regard each other as too extreme. Monsieur Le Pen was therefore delighted by Madame Bonino's offer, and Madame Bonino, who need not worry about her anti-fascist credentials, was happy to explain that the alliance would be of a wholly technical nature. But the rest of the MEPs were having none of it, and voted against allowing the new group on grounds of ideological incompatibility.
It is little wonder, with all these famous faces, that the Parliament is thought to be immensely significant. I myself had arrived expecting to find a quasi-federal legislature, busily engaged in seizing powers from the national parliaments. I had even come armed with what I thought would be a suit- able quotation from Burke: 'Who that admires and from the heart is attached to national representative assemblies, but must turn with horror and disgust from such a profane burlesque and abominable perver- `Spin! Spin! Spin again, Dick Whittington.' sion of that sacred institute?' But, although many MEPs would no doubt like one day to become Europe's legislators, their immedi- ate concern is with remoter matters. As well as a session on Fast Timor, last week saw statements on the military regime in Burma (MEPs were against it) and the recent earth- quake in Turkey (likewise).
True, there are some stormy debates. But these are rarely about matters which fall within the Parliament's remit. Sometimes, the Parliament will tell the Commission what it should be doing; more often it simply expresses its views. The conflicts between Left and Right in Strasbourg resemble the war between Lilliput and Blefuscu: vital to those directly involved, but having no real impact on the rest of the world.
This is not to say that the European Par- liament has no function. It has. The Maas- tricht and Amsterdam treaties have given it the right to block or amend several kinds of legislation. The trouble is that MEPs are reluctant to exercise this right for fear of holding up what they call 'the process of European construction'. Year after year, for example, the Court of Auditors refuses to endorse the EU budget, and, year after year, MEPs discharge it anyway. The most vivid illustration of the Parliament's pusillanimity was its failure to vote against the Commis- sion. No one tried to argue that the new Commissioners were the 20 most qualified people in Europe. Some of them had been members of the tainted Santer Commission, others stood accused of malpractice in their home countries, and others were simply not up to the job. But such was their terror of damaging the EU's public standing that sev- eral MEPs would have voted for Al Capone rather than provoke another crisis.
The British Conservatives were the only large group to vote against Mr Prodi and his team — although we were joined by some Germans, a handful of Eurosceptic parties and even one or two plucky Bel- gians. In past parliaments, the Tories have come in for a fair amount of stick over their readiness to go along with the majori- ty. But, so far this session, Margaret Thatcher would find it difficult to name an occasion when we have voted the wrong way.
With a few such exceptions, however, MEPs are loath to do anything that might arrest the political unification of Europe. And so, to fill the time, they pass wordy resolutions about whether the death penal- ty should be retained in Trinidad and Tobago. After a week of this kind of thing, MEPs spent the final session discussing their new £300-million building in Stras- bourg. One member complained about the colour of the staircases, another about the water pressure in the ladies' loo. It was a rare example of Europe's parliamentarians addressing themselves to matters which they might realistically hope to influence.
Daniel Hannan is Conservative MEP for South-East England.
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