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Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Dutch PM Rutte talking a lot of sense

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte talks a lot of sense in this interview with Dutch news site Nu.nl - and sets the scene for the inevitable bust-up with the European Parliament over the appointment of the next European Commission President. Rutte says:
The European Council has never committed itself to these candidates [the Spitzenkandidaten appointed by the various political families]. The whole election has been invented by European political groups.

The European Parliament does not nominate [the European Commission President], the Council does. The Parliament can then say 'yes' or 'no'. That will probably lead to fierce discussions between the Council and the Parliament, but we are not afraid of that.
Bring on the MEPs, then...

The Dutch Prime Minister used the same interview to reiterate how the next European Commission needs to get its priorities straight:
Why can't our architects still not work in Italy or France? [...] The [EU's] Services Directive is far from ideal [...] In the meantime, the EU is keeping itself busy with female quotas. Europe is even dealing with forest strategy and rules for websites. The EU shouldn't be touching this.
Making the case for an EU that focuses on facilitating trade and jobs, rather than meddling in all sorts of areas, in a concrete manner is key. Something we would like to hear more of, especially from UK Prime Minister David Cameron and British (and European) politicians.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The whole EU bandwagon is out of control.

What with censoring internet search engines and yet another example of them breaking their own "rules" - What is next?!

Where is the accountability?

More reasons why I will be voting for UKIP tomorrow.

Get us out.

Anonymous said...

> Making the case for an EU that focuses on facilitating trade and jobs, rather than meddling in all sorts of areas, in a concrete manner is key

In other words they'd be most helpful if they didn't exist.

This whole business about analyzing and reforming the EU is getting more and more pointless by the day.

Rik said...

Both these gentlemen are dead men walking.

Lindner is the unappealing leader of the FDP that is now so far down that it is very unlikley to get back in daily politics in Germany. Basically a zombie party.
Messed up the EP election as well.
FDP as said already years ago should have gone for a businessfriendly EU critical course and get rid of the idiots they appoint as leaders. Probably could have got 15% of the vote by now with huge upward potential. Merky looks more and more like Blair in his last term and no new leader in sight.
Anyway selfdestructing FDP goes even faster than I thought which is good news for the AfD (which will be the only remaining alternative over the right which really needs an alternative on top of it. Which makes the boring academic image a lot less problematic (providing they can put themselves on the map and keep there for a while).

Rutte is a liability for his party. As simple as that.
He got roughly 40 seats (of 150 total) for his party last time. 30+ structural and 10- tactic voting. And he has simply lost all the tactics and another 10- of his structural voters. And it is because of complete lack of trust, so very unlikely to recover from that as a person.
Problem his party has however, is twofold. Snap election means 20-23 seats and having no proper new leader available.

Cabinet might drop before this term ends. Very likely tbo. Dutch cabinets are relatively unstable and they now have less seats in polls than any of its two parties
in last eletion. Cabinets often fall over some non issue as well.

Well Rutte might be close to history. Very likely as I see it a new government will pick this up. Hard to see any government without the VVD and this is likley one of the issues that will be popular with the structural voterbase. So VVD will continue, ather step up than water it down.
Alternatives for a cabinet would be iso VVD: at least one of Wilders or SP Socialists which are anti-EU resp a lot more EU sceptic.

Good he puts it is writing again and attracks a lot of attention to it. You need that to make things concrete. If you bring it forward 10-20 times it is nearly impossible to back off again.

Idris Francis said...

So will I, and for the same reasons and many others.

Even if the EU were honest, democratic, competent and efficient I would not want to be part of it because I want to be governed by those I can help elect and remove.

That they are none of these things, that the EU is an economic disaster area with no end in sight, makes me even more determined to get out.

Denis Cooper said...

Few people in this country are even aware that the present MEPs have agreed that Barroso's successor must be one of the five MEPs who recently debated together, as shown on the BBC Parliament Channel and on TV in other countries, and who all said that this must be the case.

They may see mysterious unsolicited ads popping up on websites they visit telling them to support Schultz or the PES or the EPP, without having the faintest idea what it is about - and who is paying for those ads, by the way?

Personally I would support Verhofstadt as the President of the European Commission most likely to precipitate the exit of the UK from the EU:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Verhofstadt

but I expect that Cameron would oppose his appointment for the same reason.

As I said in my comment on the last article, if there is deadlock over the choice of the next President then that won't mean that there will be no Commission; EU leaders will just do what they did last time and allow the present Commissioners to continue in office illegally beyond the expiry of their terms.

Patrick Barron said...

When governments are unable to deal with issues within their mandate--such as free trade and free movement of labor--they revert to meddling in other areas, such as quotas for women on boards of directors, etc. Here in the US our foreign policy has been an abysmal failure for decades, so our government has turned on its people through an avalanche of red tape.

Anonymous said...

Does the EU support the free movement of politicians? Can we in the UK vote for Mr Rutte?

Better still can we export the EU's politicians to China to ruin them and even out the playing field for us?

SC

Rik said...

@Denis
Hard to see that anybody except their respective old mums would really support Schultz or Vanunwashedhairstad.

A PR disaster in the making but hard to see how any of these will 50% of the vote. Schultz need the complete left plus. Plus is a very difficult one to start with.
hard to see say Linke/SP/Labour all supporting him. Not going to happen.
Same for Vancouldusesomesoapstad. PR disaster and no support.

Juncker is is simply talking the talk (although the 2000 version not the 2014 one). Will move where the wind will take him.
And knows at least when to shut up unlike Schultz. Juncker could be borderline acceptable for Cameron the rest simply isnot. Juncker has that horsetrading look over him which might be a positive.

Hardly will matter for EPs legitimacy imho. It is and will remain rubbish. Way to indirectly chosen, unknown and (very)unappealing candidates, guys on which 90% of the electorate could not vote anyway. With views that are simply not acceptable anymore in 2014. Rubbish turn out.

Might well be another shot in its own foot. By simply first let this play up and subsequently ending up with still somebody else (probably as rubbish).
A proper orgnisation would look at the challenges first and pick somebody fitting in well with those. Not simply at being politically acceptable by basically governments (not even the people).

Will be fun to watch.