This week the Liberal Democrats are playing host to the wider European Liberal family – the ALDE Party’s big annual congress, which is taking place in London on today, Friday and Saturday.
Over 900 Liberals from across the EU and beyond will gather in Canary Wharf to draw up the common manifesto for the 2014 European Parliament elections and consider nominees for the Liberal candidate for European Commission President.
The European Liberal family includes three current Prime Ministers: Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, Andris Ansip of Estonia and Alenka Bratušek of Slovenia, and they will soon be joined by Xavier Bettel in Luxembourg. At regional level, Artur Mas i Gavarró heads the powerful regional government of Catalonia in Spain. Over a quarter of European Commissioners are Liberals. Liberal parties are in government in 16 different European countries, as well as being the third largest political group in the European Parliament.
This week at the Congress in London, five of our eight Liberal Commissioners will be in attendance in addition to countless Liberal government ministers from Sweden, Finland, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria and of course the UK. They will all be leaving the placid civilities of government life behind and immersing themselves in party politics. Nick Clegg himself will be opening the Congress on today and delivering the keynote speech on Friday.
The Liberal family is a truly formidable network – and we benefit massively from being part of it. Through working with our Liberal allies in Europe, we have been able to bring about a broad range of significant reforms: an exemption for small businesses from EU accounting rules, a radical overhaul of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy and cutting mobile phone roaming charges in Europe to name but a few. Even the Daily Mail has had to admit that the Liberal Democrats are the hardest working British political party in the European Parliament.
The Tories, on the other hand, are completely isolated. Since 2009 when Cameron decided to pull them out of the powerful centre-right European People’s Party to create their own ‘odds and sods’ ECR group, they have had to resort to shouting from the sidelines. They have no European Commissioners, and one lonely Prime Minister – Cameron himself. And in order to piece the group together the Tories have had to associate with some pretty unsavoury characters – politicians that have been accused of everything from Nazi glorification to anti-Semitism. In fact, many of them are hardly any better than UKIP’s bedfellows – who are not just Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant but at times alleged to be xenophobic and downright racist.
As the party of IN, Liberal Democrats understand that the best way to stand up of for Britain in Brussels is to build alliances and work towards EU-wide reform. That is why this weekend in London, we will be debating a range of important issues with our Liberal colleagues including the EU-US free trade agreement, financial regulation and European cooperation in the fight against crime. So while the Tories look inward and try to mask their deep internal divisions over Europe, we are looking outward and forging partnerships abroad so that we can deliver jobs, prosperity and security for the UK and Europe as a whole.
* Sir Graham Watson was a MEP from 1994 to 2014. He led the EP's Liberal Democratic Group from 2002 to 2009 and presided the ALDE Party from 2011 to 2015. He is now a Member of the European Economic and Social Committee.
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9 Comments
Do ‘Liberal’ parties ever kicked out for being illiberal?
A very positive and well written piece by Graham Watson.
What a pity that Clegg has chosen this week to shackle the party to Cameron’s racist anti-immigrant scape-goating.
Or was it a deliberate spoiler by Clegg?
Perhaps Clegg is jealous of the widespread respect and admiration for Graham Watson’s intelligent and principled Liberal approach to politics.
I just hope every Congress attendee buys my e-book!
Here is your p.m. of Slovenia Alenka Bratusek (otherwise a red and a hard core socialist) together with minister Roman Jakic singing “Evviva il comunismo e la libertà” from Bandiera Rossa. Too bad liberals are losing credibility by accepting undercover communists just for the sake of votes and representation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifydoT0v3J8
This year Slovenia saw the increase of just about every tax in the country because p.m. Bratusek refuses to cut public sector. And your “liberal” Slovenian minster Gregor Virant at this very moment wants to ban companies from funding political parties and allow only state funding.
With such liberals…who needs reds, guys?
@Yorkshire Guidon: The Austrian Freedom Party was once a member of ELDR. Apparently it was originally a liberal party with a populist fringe, but the fringe took over under Jorg Haider’s leadership; it became a far-right party; the liberal-minded members left and the party was kicked out of ELDR.
@JohnTilley: So party policy is whatever Nick Clegg says?
When discussing the EU-US ‘free trade’ agreement please ensure that the absolutely outrageous ‘investor-state’ dispute resolution mechanism is not included in any shape or form. This is a system whereby a company that feels it has lost out due to regulations in the country it is investing into can appeal to a tribunal of three private attorneys sitting outside the host country legal system. Their judgements outrank those of any domestic court, even national constitutions. The result is a neoliberal wet dream enabling footloose international capital to make an end run around any regulations that impede their search for ever-fatter profits. How this works in practice is not fanciful as such provisions have been included in a number of recent ‘free trade’ trade treaties.
http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2013/10/investors-are-increasingly-challenging-states-constitutional-court-decisions-in-investor-state-tribu.html
For my money the Chevron-Ecuador case linked in this piece is particularly offensive but there are many others.
@GF: Absolutely, although it is wrong to call this sort of thing “neoliberal”. It is more accurately described as mercantilist, as it results in laws designed to favour large corporations, putting their interests over and above those of a well-functioning free market.
The original purpose of investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms was to prevent dictatorships from arbitrarily nationalising and confiscating foreign-owned assets. It has no place at all in agreements among democracies.
Tomaz,
I know Roman Jakic personally, as opposed to from a You Tube video, and I know him to be a thoroughly good liberal. Young Liberals across the decades have sung that song, myself included, knowing full well that it is a revolutionary tune – it hasn’t made us communists.
Your smear is uncalled for and I can only assume that you aren’t a friend of European liberalism.
@ Alex Macfie – Thanks for the support. I was beginning to think my comment would survive 24 hours without anyone picking up on it. Of course, it very nearly has without any ‘official’ response but that’s par for the course in Lib Dem circles when it comes to things European.
I understand “neoliberal” to mean precisely what you mean by “mercantilist”. Usage varies but this is, I think, now its usual meaning, it’s certainly a common one. The key to the shift in meaning created by the “neo” prefix is to ask “whose freedom?” Traditionally (and respectably) liberals understood that liberalism was about creating freedom for people – as individuals or as groups associating to achieve some common purpose. For neoliberals the freedom they espouse is that of capital, hence of the powerful and of corporations. For them it is freedom to do whatever they want and to ride roughshod over people. The most effective evil is always genetically connected to good just as Satan is traditionally understood as a fallen angel.