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Sceptic in Euro-sceptism
by Thanos Kalamidas
2010-03-04 08:34:47 |
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An odd provocation this week in the European Parliament from Nigel Farage, the leader of the UKIP group – the Euro-sceptics – is the reasons for some thoughts about the way the Members of the European Parliament work and are elected.
First of all and this is strictly personal opinion in respect of the semantics that have to do with the words, when somebody uses the word Euro-sceptic nowadays my mind instinctly goes to the use of the word socialist by the Nazis. Oddly the worst dictator in the modern history considered himself some kind of a socialist and he’s gone as far as to call his party the National Socialist Party. In my mind – and please remember that the word sceptic is Greek, therefore my mother tongue – indentifying a group as Euro-sceptic means that they accept the idea of a United Europe but they don’t agree with the way it works and that simplifying everything too much.
From the other side if you are against the existence of this union and you think that your country is losing by been a member in respect of the democratic practices you try to persuade the people with your arguments and for example you collect the necessary support to call for a referendum. And in the end the will of the people wins as for Example Norway and Sweden for different reasons have proved. The Norwegian government a few years ago would like nothing else than see the country joining the European nations club but in a referendum the people were totally negative and the government had to respect the will of the people. The same happened in Sweden when it came the time to decide of they wanted to join the Euro-zone.
So semantics or not and by definition the euro-sceptics are there active, participating even in the European Parliament elected from the people not to argue their will to depart from the Union but to improve and change the way the Union works. I think this introduction was necessary because there is a lot of misunderstanding in the role the Euro-sceptics play in the European Parliament and in extent the reason people vote for them to be there or the reasoning they use to be voted. And to make it more clear the majority of those members of candidate members of the European Parliament have flag their nationalistic often extreme nationalistic if not fascist ideas.
Nigel Farage is a populist with his roots in the extreme right part of the British Conservative Party and he has a full history of provocations during his period serving the European Parliament and before as member of the Conservative Party until he resigned to start the United Kingdom Independence Party; amazing again how all these extreme right leaders have their way with pompous words when they title their movements. It is fascinating also that Nigel Farage after his disagreement and resignation from the Conservative Party due to John Major’s agreement to sign the Maastricht Treaty and instead of moving to one of the traditional parties closer his ideas – with best the National Front – Nigel Farage becomes one of the founders of a new party UKIP and enters the national politics from the window. Again this reminds that …leader from the past.
Nigel Farage had tried five times in the past to be elected for the British Parliament failing badly every single time but now it seems that he is back. Independent of the weights a candidacy with the National Front could put on him and in distance with Cameron’s drifting Conservative Party. So what could work better for an early campaign start than a provocation in the European Parliament that would attract national television coverage and all the tabloids? Referring to the President of the European Council he said, “Charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low grade bank clerk” adding about the country Van Rompuy was PM, Belgium that it is a “non country” and “nobody in Europe knows who Rompuy is, not how he was elected.”
Reading that I suspect that Nigel was in bed with swain flu while the Euro-parliament was talking and agreeing with Rompuy’s appointment and he must have been ill for days since the talk lasted at least two weeks and he must been away when the leaders of the Euro-parties had their chance to lay their arguments in the European Parliament. If his party hadn’t had a representation during that period and the chance to express their objections that counts only as Nigel’s failure. But of course we all know that nothing like that happened, he had his chance and he probably just blew it but in his opportunistic mind the timing was not right then but it is now while people realize that Cameron’s Conservative Party is not going to beat Gordon Brown however sad that might sounds and his timing demands to do something now to attract the votes he needs.
And here come some of my thoughts with Nigel Farage as an example, do the people who are going to serve the European Parliament realize why they are going there or they just see it as a step before their election in the national politics? Most importantly, do the people of Britain or from any other European nation understand that by sending opportunists to the European Parliament they don’t serve their rights and interests? Looking at Nigel Farage’s path in the European politics you realize that every move was well calculated with one and only aim, to insure a seat in Westminster and perhaps in the future like many others in the past a title even a lordship.
Remember that I’m using Nigel Farage’s case as an example but I’m afraid he is not the exception. But then again how an institution like the European Parliament, the place where the future of this Union is built, can work right when people like Nigel Farage ruin any legitimacy of the place? Actually the existence of people like Nigel Farage excuses every scepticism about the European Parliament and how things work in this Union.
I have wrote it before and I’m going to write it again, one of the biggest problems the European Union has and nothing is going to change before the leadership understand it and do something about it is the ignorance of the European people of the role it plays even in our every day life. And as long they don’t do anything about it the bigger the gap between the people and the Union will become and the more Nigel Farages will appear endangering seriously the meaning of a Union.
Euro+sceptic Ovi+politics Thanos_Kalamidas Europe Ovi |
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