At last week’s Congress of the European Liberal Democrats, the umbrella grouping of liberal parties across the continent, Graham Watson, our list MEP in South West England (and Gibraltar), was elected to the position of President. Here are his thoughts on the task ahead…
Last week I had the honour of being elected the new President of ELDR, the European political party federation to which the Liberal Democrats belong, at its annual congress in sunny Palermo, Italy.
I was unopposed as a candidate, so the result was not quite the surprise as it might otherwise have been. I’m not sure whether the fact that no one else came forward was a sign of our outgoing President, Annemie Neyts-Uyttebroeck MEP, having set the bar so high, or the fact that I was the only one foolish enough to take on the job! But I am glad nonetheless that I received near unanimous support from the party delegates.
Our three key building blocks for a Liberal Europe are, in my view, efficient capital markets, openness to new ideas and upholding the rule of law. We must regulate financial markets but not strangle them, as some socialists would. We must welcome new ideas not resist progress in science, as the Greens often do.
And we must insist on the rule of law, not turning a blind eye to illegality, like the European People’s Party.
The EPP (to whom the Tories used to belong until they became too extremist for them!) cynically support the likes of Berlusconi, Basescu and Boyko Borissov – the cowboys of democracy. The President of the EPP should step down out of shame. They have not just remained silent at the transgressions of Berlusconi in Italy and Viktor Orban in Hungary – when Orban came to the European Parliament they gave him a standing ovation!
Liberals support European integration despite its challenges and inconveniences, not because we want to centralise everything but because integration is the most effective lever we have for regaining control over our destinies. Population growth, climate change, organised crime: all these are supranational challenges requiring supranational responses. These are challenges with which EU countries, alone, cannot cope. Liberals are at the forefront of this.
If our European party is to help achieve all this we need three reforms.
First, we need to re-engage people with our parties. We need to better distil our message and to better communicate it. We can learn from Obama’s campaign, and some fresh thinking about how liberals communicate would be useful.
Second, we must seize the supranational stage. In the jigsaw that is European construction, supranational parties are the missing piece. Rather than 27 national elections for the European Parliament we need a truly European election. We must push for the election of at least some MEPs from supranational, pan-European lists. Our citizens must know their vote has an impact on the formation of the EU’s ‘government’, so we should link it to the choice of the President of the European Commission.
Third, we must open our doors to embrace new member parties. Some of them may not be able to call themselves ‘Liberal’ in countries where the name has become a dirty word. They may be campaigners against corruption, like our friends in Italy in Italia dei Valori or in Vece Verejna in the Czech Republic. They may be radicals, in the Transnational Radical Party or in Palikot in Poland. Or they may style themselves democrats or republicans, like our friends in France. But they are all allied to our great Liberal tradition. We sit with some on the Committee of the Regions, the Council of Europe and in the European Parliament.
We must ally with them on the issues which matter most – just as the Liberals and the SDP joined forces back in 1988.
I will strain every sinew to leave to my successor a stronger party than the one I have been elected to serve. But I have no illusions about the scale of the challenge.
In seven of the 27 EU countries we have no ELDR member party.
Where five years ago we had eight Liberal prime ministers around the Council table we now have only two, and just 10% of MEPs. In many countries where we govern – like here in the UK – the opinion polls hardly look good.
It won’t be easy. The going will be tough. But let’s pluck up courage and be prepared to live a little dangerously. If we do not, we risk not living at all.
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3 Comments
Err… Congratulations on your success after a hard fought campaign!
But seriously, more information on living “a little dangerously” ?
Oh dear, where to start.
“We must regulate financial markets but not strangle them, as some socialists would.”
How much regulation; a French amount that will see the city of London decamp to the far-east along with its £50 in tax revenue, or a British amount that will preserve our markets? In short, are you to advance the British interest or primarily seeking compromise regardless of the mandate of your electorate?
“The EPP (to whom the Tories used to belong until they became too extremist for them!) cynically support ”
The tories were a euro-sceptic party that existed within a federalist block, it was entirely appropriate for them to leave, regardless of whether it required a right-wing party leaving the bien-pensant approved right-wing bloc.
“Second, we must seize the supranational stage. In the jigsaw that is European construction, supranational parties are the missing piece.”
……………… except that that is of little interest to the electorate of any EU country, and practically zero interest in this country. Attempting to invent a post nation-state identity is an interesting sociological experiment, but it has little bearing on reality.
The EU parliaments lack of legitimacy stems from the impossibility of being both representative and accountable to a europe which has no common Demos, i.e. a people who have a shared social and cultural history.
The crucial feature of indirect democracy is the perception of representation, the collective trust in shared aims and expectations that allows the people to put their destiny in the hands of another, safe in the knowledge that even if ‘their’ man doesn’t get the job then the other guy will still be looking after their best interests.
The manner in which this trust is built is the knowledge that you and ‘he’ have a history of cooperation, and that your respective families likewise have a shared social and cultural history of cooperation, all of which allows you to trust that when adversity strikes ‘he’ will act in a predictable and acceptable way.
A nation-state is effectively a collective agreement that a people are a family, who have sufficient trust in each other to accept indirect governance from representatives of the prevailing will of a majority, it is also a collective agreement to work together for the benefit of the whole rather than the individual. In short it is a marriage which results in a transfer union.
The EU does not have this, therefore it cannot be both representative and accountable, thus it has no legitimacy.
“In many countries where we govern – like here in the UK – the opinion polls hardly look good.”
Without wanting to project the problems of UK liberals onto their continental brethren, the above situation in britain is most certainly related to the Lib-Dem’s inability to seek a broad representative mandate due to its allergic reaction to anything that smacks of a popular position.
Congratulations to Graham on his election. As Confucious might have said, he takes on the job in “interesting times” so a few comments are in order.
Upholding the rule of law. Well yes, it would be nice. As in respecting the votes of smaller countries like Ireland and Denmark that have had the temerity to vote against treaty changes and been asked to vote again to get the “right” answer. Or supporting a promised UK referendum on the new
constitutiontreaty. Or in resisting the current vogue for appointing “technocrats” (read agents for the banking interests) to run countries and force through austerity against all calims of natural justice – which would suggest that badly run (and too often corrupt) businesses should fail.European integration … for regaining control over our destinies. Given the democratic deficit this just doesn’t happen. What we are actually achieving is handing control to bureaucrats and insiders which is not the same thing at all yet the response from the EU establishment is to push on regardless. As for liberals being at the forefront [of responding to various challenges] my local MEP at the last election stayed mainly with local government issues; does the Lib Dem group really have nothing interesting or useful to say on Europe?
We can learn from Obama’s campaign Err, would that be to glibly promise change but once safely elected ignore the popular will and serve only the corporate paymasters despite the fact that many are clearly guilty of epic fraud?
We must push for the election of at least some MEPs from supranational, pan-European lists. This is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard. Even with lists drawn up at regional level, the election is determined by the party establishment to an unhealthy degree. Count me out.
The CAP. The post is strangely silent on this. How about a campaign to end the arrangement whereby poor people are taxed to pay subsidies to large landowers. With the establishment in a bit of bother right now this could be the perfect time to demand that responsibility for and funding of agriculatural support is repatriated for countries to handle as they wish. With the free market in place ongoing support could not in practice take the form of price subsidies (or it would suck in imports seeking to benefit from it). Other arrangements would be so much more transparent – like per capita payments.
I wonder why the opinion polls hardly look good.