The People’s Pledge is a campaign that brings you together with others in your constituency to demand your MP supports an EU referendum.
The team from Euronews visited our office as part of their “In or Out of the European Union” special news report. They focused on our campaign.
To see video click here
2012 will certainly be a demanding year for Italy and the European Union.
Monday 16th January
*House of Lords – debate on the EU-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (Grand Committee in the Moses Room, 5:30 PM)
Tuesday 17th January
*Foreign/Commonwealth Oral Questions (from 2:30 PM) – Tory MPs Anne Marie Morris & Mark Spencer have an Oral Question to press the Foreign Secretary on what implications he sees current economic conditions in the EU having on the Foreign Office
**Tory referendum rebel MP Stuart Andrew also has an Oral Question on promoting
the Commonwealth – comparisons to resources spent on growth-lacking EU
[partners] should feature here
*Third Delegated Legislation Committee (4:30 PM, Committee Room 9) – Debating the EU-South Korea Free Trade Agreement Read the rest of this entry »
As the EU seeks to centralise powers and stabilise the single currency, the British people should be given a say on where they want ultimate political power over them to lie.
We now know that there will be a referendum on Scotland’s relationship with the rest of Britain by the end of 2014. The three Westminster-based party leaders want to rule out a third, so-called “devo-max” option; believing that a straight ‘in or out’ question will deny Alex Salmond a face-saving result, given the current lack of support for total independence in the opinion polls. Whatever final form the ballot paper takes, a new dimension of debate is beginning to open up in north of the border as some Scots – including former Scottish National Party deputy leader Jim Sillars – argue that a referendum on the relationship with Westminster will also require a say on where Scotland stands concerning the European Union.
With the passing of the Lisbon treaty, it is clear that rightly or wrongly – depending on your point of view – the EU now accounts for a growing percentage of the legislation of the member states and restricts the capacity for action from locally elected politicians. For example, when the Scottish government announced it wanted to charge students from other parts of the United Kingdom full fees, the European Commission ruled it could not apply the same policy to students from other EU countries.
When will our political leaders realise that the action they take when dealing with the European Union will have a direct and significant effect on their success at the polls?
Looking at lists of the issues people prioritise when it comes to voting in general elections, concern about Britain’s relationship with the EU tends to linger some way behind the economy, schools, hospitals and crime.
But politicians make a huge mistake if they believe this means that people don’t care about the issue.
The most recent evidence that EU policy can have a critical impact on a party’s level of support is the bounce in the polls that the Conservatives appear to have enjoyed since David Cameron last month vetoed EU plans for a ‘fiscal union’ treaty.
An ICM survey for the Sunday Telegraph has given the Tories their highest rating since last year’s general election and a six-point lead over Labour, up from two points before the pre-Christmas summit.
The poll puts the Tories up two points since the start of December on 40%, with Labour support sliding by two points to 34%, opening up the widest margin between the two parties in 18 months.
Other polls have confirmed the trend, with a post-summit BBC report highlighting polls by Ipsos Mori and YouGov that also put the Conservatives ahead of Labour for the first time this year.
2011 has certainly been a fundamental and historic year for the European Union, with discussions of EU treaty changes (Brussels Summit, 9th December 2011) and proposals for an intergovernmental treaty to be agreed by 26 EU states by late March 2012.
A number of key events will have to be taken this January in order to tackle the financial crisis of 2012. Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy are demanding for a new summit (January 9th) to discuss EU government spending rules and economic measures for 2012.
The current situation in Greece obviously has massive political as well as economic implications for the whole of the EU. Greece is struggling with its austerity measures, claiming that it will be forced out of the Eurozone unless new bailout agreements are made. Talks regarding the delivery of the second bailout of €130bn, agreed last October are yet to be concluded. Reports by the European Commission and IMF officials assessing Greece’s progress in resolving its debt crisis are also to be carried out this month, risking the demand of further austerity measures.
The debt situation in Spain and Italy is also causing huge alarm. Spain’s budget deficit of 8% has resulted in demands from Brussels and Berlin that new austerity measures and labour market reforms be imposed by the new centre-right government in Madrid. The situation in the so-called PIIG economies is in stark contrast compared to the situation in Germany, still representing one of the strongest economies of the Europe and the main engine for the Eurozone.
Italy needs to raise a staggering €450bn in the next year in order to fulfill the ‘Save Italy’ package that prime minister Mario Monti has set out at the end of 2011 and further austerity measures are due in late January. An auction of short term bonds is going to be carried out later this month, accompanied by the selling of three and ten year bonds on January 30th, to regain market confidence.[1]
2012 is going to mark a fundamental year for the Euro as various member countries face up to the challenge of trying to restore their economies to economic health. In addition the Eurozone bloc will, with or without Britain and the other non-Euro members, push ahead with the new treaty paving the way for European economic governance.
[1] The Guardian, Wednesday 4th January, pg. 24-25
Few people thought that David Cameron would have used his veto on the night of the 8th December resulting in no changes being made to the existing treaties and a new intergovernmental treaty for deeper fiscal union.
The main points of the new treaty include:
The EU has this week been limbering up to reveal a last-ditch ‘masterplan’ to save the euro.
Over many months, a succession of summits have invented ever bigger sums of money the EU hopes to throw at the eurozone debt crisis with seemingly little idea of how to amass the money.
So far the EU’s only strategy appears to have been to try to intimidate the markets into submission rather than come up with a longer-term solution to euro debt crisis.
Clearly, and unsurprisingly, that hasn’t been working. Not only has the lack of detail behind every EU pronouncement failed to convince. The appearance of perpetual indecision on the substantive problems has also raised more fundamental questions about whether the EU as a decision-making structure is too rigid and incapable of acting with the dynamism required to secure Europe’s success and prosperity in a fast-moving 21st century world.
In this context, it’s hardly surprising that the ratings agencies have continued to criticise and downgrade the credit-worthiness of euro member countries.
Auto-sanctions
But this week, the EU has finally changed tack.
Talks led by the ‘Merkozy’ partnership of the French and German leaders have shifted from broadcasting hopeful funding plans to discussing ‘refounding’ the EU through treaty changes that will enforce ‘fiscal union’. The plans are being touted as what the eurozone needs to survive in its current form.
More details will emerge over the next few days, but one of the key measures already being floated is the idea of automatic sanctions against those countries that breach eurozone borrowing rules – particularly the rule that budget deficits should not exceed 3% of GDP.
Yet few seem to have noticed that 23 EU countries, including 14 eurozone members, are already in the EU’s ‘excessive deficit procedure’ as a result of breaching this 3% rule which, under the current Stability and Growth Pact, should already have provoked sanctions.
These countries are in the deficit ‘sin bin’ despite the fact that the rules of the original Pact were softened in 2005, with ‘exceptional circumstances’ being permitted for deficits above 3%, ‘other relevant factors’ allowed to be taken into account before a deficit is considered excessive, and longer deadlines for corrective action.
According to the EU Treaty, sanctions can include requiring euro countries to publish additional information before issuing bonds and securities; inviting the European Investment Bank to reconsider its lending policy towards the country; requiring the country concerned to give the EU a non-interest-bearing deposit until the excessive deficit has been resolved; or, finally, imposing fines of an “appropriate size”.
If auto-sanctions are approved in the looming negotiations, unless they are made retrospective against all fourteen euro countries already in the excessive deficit procedure, only Finland, Luxembourg and Estonia would potentially be subject to them.
This would render the proposal effectively meaningless towards having a short term impact on problem countries nor, in any case, will such sanctions be any solution to the underlying debt and growth problems of economies in difficulty.
Key questions
Now the mood has turned towards toughening up the Stability & Growth Pact again, this provokes a series of further questions for EU leaders.
Firstly, given sanctions for excessive deficits have been available to the EU since the euro launched, why exactly have none ever yet been applied under the current Stability & Growth Pact rules?
Secondly, will the 14 euro countries already suffering ‘excessive deficits’ be let off auto-sanctions until they get back on track and then fined only after future transgressions, and how is this effective in tackling the current problems?
More broadly, how will automatically imposing financial sanctions help countries get out of their debt and low growth problems that tend to provoke excess deficits in the first place? Won’t such sanctions simply make their economic problems worse, and is that why none have ever yet been applied?
Referendum unlocked?
Finally, this proposal also provokes a key political question for David Cameron on the question of a referendum, since what is being proposed, in respect of auto-sanctions at least, is basically a beefing up of the existing rules.
Despite not being in the euro, Britain is subject to the Stability Pact and committed to “endeavour to avoid an excessive government deficit”, although we are not bound by the penalty clauses should our endeavours fail. This treaty Protocol is a key element of our opt-out from euro membership. Britain is, however, one of the nine non-euro countries also as being in the excessive deficit procedure.
If the mooted treaty changes centre on amending the Stability Pact clauses, unless Britain’s negotiators ensure that our euro opt-out protocol is also amended to exclude Britain from the new measures, we may well be drawn into the new auto-sanctions.
In that eventuality, it will impossible for David Cameron to avoid holding a treaty referendum, since his ‘referendum lock’ will have been breached.
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EU Business in Parliament – Week of 28th November 2011
Monday 28th November
*Work & Pensions Oral Questions (from 2:40 PM) – Question down on what the cost would be of removing the habitual residency test for benefits entitlement (as the EU Commission have ordered & threatened legal action at the EU Court of Justice if the UK does not comply)
*House of Lords to debate a report from the Lords EU Select Committee which concludes that the EU Commission’s amending proposal on EU-wide scheme for distributing food to poor people does not comply with the subsidiarity principle (from 7:30 PM) Read the rest of this entry »
The Eurozone crisis has presented David Cameron with a huge opportunity to force Brussels to the negotiating table and get back key powers. If ever there was a chance to put a gun to the collective head of the Euro-elite and demand, ‘our money and our right to do X, Y and Z or your life’, this was it. Instead theTory leadership have rolled over and promised to support the EU’s new drive to establish European economic governance. Following next year’s treaty the Eurozone 17 will become enshrined as a majority-voting bloc and the UK will be even more vulnerable. Read the rest of this entry »
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