Broken and Busted Belgium set to hand EU Presidency to Half Hobbled Hungary.

Why, after the events of the past year, the EU is not the butt of comedians' crassest jokes across the world this New Year's eve is a mystery I really cannot understand. Who can understand  a block of supposedly mature countries and only recently still democracies, after the long machinations of getting the Lisbon Treaty passed, then appointing the joke figures of Van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton as its lead PR figures?

As Monsters and Critics points out this morning, linked here, the follies are about to be compounded by the group's rotating Presidency being taken over by Hungary in two days time. A quote from that article:

Van Rompuy chairs all EU summits, while the bloc's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, chairs meetings of foreign ministers. Hungary will therefore be responsible for running other meetings, most importantly those of finance and justice ministers.
But its credibility on both justice and finance are under attack. First, on December 20 the Hungarian parliament backed a law granting a state media control body sweeping new powers to crack down on independent outlets, and stacked it with members of the ruling party....

Then, on December 23, the Fitch agency cut Hungary's rating to one step above junk, arguing that its budget, passed the same day, was more likely to push the country into trouble than pull it out of it.

As if the farce of the past six months were not itself enough to make the EU an obvious nonsense, free speech has now been pre-removed in the nation set to hold  the EU presidency for the next six months! During that earlier period a country, Belgium, itself on the edge of fracture and unable to even form its own government and poised on the verge of bankruptcy supposedly presided over a group of 26 other nation's, the joint currency of 16 of which teetered against the hurricane winds of international incredulity at any prospect of its ongoing longevity! Sustained by the manipulations of a central bank with no authority to act as a lender of last resort Fitch's downgrade of Hungary's credit rating just before Christmas will at least retain the status quo for the ECB who may now continue to work with a rotating EU Presidency whose failure, at least for the present, is clearly even greater than its own.


EurActiv has more on the coming Hungarian farce, linked here.

Blair's Presidency Dreams Dashed!

Britons will be saddled with the huge economic costs of Tony Blair's EU Presidency ambitions for decades, the loss of democracy and sovereignty may never be recovered. My blogs have been warning of the consequences of this pathetic little charlatan's dreams and squalid manipulations for many years. I could link to scores of postings warning of the dangers to come if I so chose. As it now seems generally accepted that his ambitions will never now come to anything, Britain should start to count the cost. Perhaps the clear warning signs in Blair's Cardiff speech in 2002 should be carefully considered if they can now be fully unburied. I blogged on the contents of that speech and its strange disappearance from the worldwide web in early 2003 as follows on Ironies, linked here: Tony Blair's Keynote Cardiff Speech on Europe 28th November 2002 The above was an extremely significant landmark speech, notable not least for the fact that it was made outside of Parliament in a provincial capital. It was difficult to access in full even immediately after it was presented by the Prime Minister. Now several months later I could only trace it after much searching on Google at the British Embassy site from Berlin. I have therefore put a link here so that for the moment I can continue to use it as a reference source. As Blair's view of Europe has changed following the disagreements over Iraq I anticipate the speech might become practically invisible as the months go by. This would be a great shame as it is very well thought through and is in fact remarkably prescient in light of subsequent events. The killer passage and most significant portion, other than the clear aim of the PM in throwing his hat into the ring for the job of first European President, is this portion I quote below :- The basic ideology should be described in this way. Europe is the voluntary coming together of sovereign nations. Their will is to combine together in the institutions of Europe in order to further their common interests. In so far as it is necessary to achieve these interests, they therefore pool their sovereignty in Europe. There is no arbitrary or fixed limit as to what they do collectively; but whether they do it depends on their decision as a group of nations. So whilst the origin of European power is the will of sovereign nations, European power nonetheless exists and has its own authority and capability to act. The negation of any democracy comes at the end, the sting in the tail as it were:- It should be democratic; greater integration, rooted in the freely given decisions of the nations that make up Europe; with greater openness and transparency of decision-making; greater participation and interaction of National Parliaments; greater connection between the European Parliament and the decisions of Europe; and with the independence of the Commission guaranteeing that the interests of smaller nations do not weigh any less than the large. None of the items listed of course, do anything to give the people the power to periodically remove from power those who rule them, which is the only thing that democracy is really about! Speech posted by Martin at 5/01/2003 01:01:00 PM Now it cannot be found at all, but the quotes I chose set the tone - Totalitarianism!