Liberal values

Liberal MEPs block Five Star Movement's bid for joining the liberal faction in the European parliament.

BY C.RÚMPELNIK (Politics)

Brussels. It was a bold and daring plan. Well crafted too. Pity it did not work out for Guy Verhofstadt who, after his unsuccessful campaign for head of the European Commission has set his eyes on a new goal: Getting himself elected President of the European Parliament.

Current President Martin Schulz (S&D) announced on November 24th that he would not be seeking reelection, voicing his plans to return to German national politics. Who is going to succeed him, is unclear, depending largely on outside factors, most pominently on who is going to head the European Council, if the Pole Donald Tusk, representing the European People's Party should not seek or obtain reconfirmation.

At the beginning of the legislature, the two dominating parliamentary groups, the center-left Socialist and Democrats (S&D) and the center-right European People's Party had formed a German-style grand coalition,  based - apart from other, more serious and laudable agreements on policy - on a shady backroom deal on sharing European institutions, specifically swapping the Presidency of the European Parliament halfway through the legislative period. In turn the EPP would accept an S&D nominee as President of the European council, once Tusk retired.

Honoring this agreement, Martin Schulz already stepped down, only to ignite fierce discussions among his fellow MEPs, if they too should honor the deal struck with the EPP, even though it is increasingly uncertain that Donald Tusk will, in fact, be reconfirmed. The metaphorical knife in his back is Witold Waszczykowski's. The Polish foreign minster carefully hinted that Poland would not be supporting its Former Prime Minster branding Tusk as the "icon of evil and stupidity"


Obviously though, the office is not quite feasible as it might seem from the outside. Or what else would explain S&D grandee Gianni Pittella throwing his hat into the ring, declaring his candidacy for President of the EP: A flagrant contradiction of the memorandum of understanding signed by S&D and EPP a few years ago. 

He is going to face the EPP candidate Antonio Tajani, also him Italian, and the ALDE frontman Guy Verhofstadt.

.@GuyVerhofstadt is running for the European Parliament presidency. Can you think of anyone better for the job at these challenging times? pic.twitter.com/YqYluMGIjx

— ALDE Group (@ALDEgroup) 6. Januar 2017

And it is Verhofstadt who has surprised observers with extraordinary proactivity and craftiness in securing himself the advantadge he is going to need for him to have a viable path towards the EP presidency. And this path, according to him, leads though Rome.

Over the course of the last few Verhofstadt and a Five Star Movement MEP fbelieved to the grey eminence of the movement, Davide Casaleggio, have forged a plan: Paving the way for the Five Star Movement to ascend to ALDE. A plan offering rewards for both groups. Verhofstadt would clinch to the 19 votes of the faction headed by Italian comedian Beppe Grillo. The Five Star Movement, curently in a joint parliamentary group with UKIP that is destined to dissolve once Brexit materializes, would secure the benefits accruing from membership in a large European faction, political and especially economic. In fact, Luigi Di Maio, member of the Five Star Movement's national directorium has called the 5SM's bid for ALDE membership more a technical than an ideological decision. 

The Italians were prepared to accept ideological rifts between them and the ALDE consensus, on trade, economic policy and the perks of European integration, particularly the common currency 5SM is hoping to abolish. Guy Verhoftadt obviously too, for the sake of getting elected President of the EP.

Who was not ready for throwing the bulk of their political convictions over board to score political points, were the ALDE MEPs themselves. The same MEPs who blocked the 5SM accession to ALDE in 2014 yesterday foiled Verhostadt's plans, expressing their wariness about the Five Star Movement, its policies and its politcal representatives. Particularly the French, German, Estonian and Scandinavian delegation are believed to have been at the forefront in averting a marriage of convenience who in the long run would have probably been damaging for both parts.

12 rather than 5 stars – Why I am against the Italian Five Star MEPs potentially joining the ALDE group https://t.co/Hkt1iXYG98

— Sylvie Goulard (@GoulardSylvie) 8. Januar 2017

In a nutshell: A good day for the integrity of a liberal, pro-European party, for liberal values and European integration. A bad day for Verhofstadt, Grillo and power politics. One day. We are looking forward to the next one that with all probability feature a return of Macchiavellianism to the European areicna. Otherwise it would not be politics.

Meeting up with destiny

Italy’s constitutional referendum has Europe holding its collective breath.

BY C.RÙMPELNIK

Rome. For Europe December 4th might well be an appointment with its own destiny. Presidential elections in Austria might vault Norbert Hofer, the congenial candidate of the country’s far-right movement, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) into the, at least in name, highest office of the state. Two weeks off the election, the race is in a dead heat, with Hofer’s opponent, Alexander Van der Bellen, representative of the Green Party, a clumsy intellectual, struggling to attract the centrist and Christian Democratic vote that, in all probability, is going to swing the election.

Albeit more moderate than his party’s mainstream – a Freedom Party legislator once called for deportations to be conducted with military planes so that the deportees could quote “shout and cry and urinate on themselves” without bothering anyone - Norbert Hofer is a staunch social conservative that boasts his populist and xenophobic credentials. Although he has flip-flopped on the issue of Austria’s continued EU membership, it is all too clear that he does not care to much about Jean-Claude Juncker, Martin Schulz and the other members of “Brussel’s aloof glitterati”. Instead, he is pushing for Austria to join the Visegrád-Four, a group of Eastern European nations (Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary) sceptical of further Pan-European integration.

With Norbert Hofer’s election looming ahead, it might seem implausible that December 4th might hold another, incomparably more significant threat to European unity. And yet it does. The real menace in fact lies on the other side of the Alps, in Italy, where Prime Minister Matteo Renzi faces defeat in a constitutional referendum turned plebiscite over his government’s policies and the Prime Minister himself.

What is so pivotal about this constitutional referendum? Frankly, the supranational importance of the proposed modifications is slim to none, the repercussions will be felt mostly on the national and regional level. The reform’s dimensions are limited and revolve around an overdue reform of Italy’s two-chamber system that in the context of a fragmented political environment, stifles the legislative process and makes pushing even middle-sized bills through parliament a daunting task.

Well, on a factual level the intitiative is far from flawless. Particularly in combination with a new electoral system, the “Italicum”, which awards the winning party a majority premium that allows it to govern without having to form coalitions, however small the margin of victory had been, constitutionalists like Gustavo Zagrebelsky, former president of Italy's constitutional court, argue, it concentrates too much power in the hands of a single person, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, and undermines the current system of checks and balances. Moreover, governors and regional leaders, especially in wealthier Northern Italy, fret that the reform will further centralize the decision-making process and weaken the already toothless regional governments. The same concern is shared by Ital’s linguistic minorities in Southern Tyrol (German) and the Aosta Valley (French) who the Prime Minister has tried to appease offering concession on regional autonomy.

                                                                Gustavo Zagrebelsky

Yet, these concerns, however valid they may be, are strictly constrained to Italy’s poltical arena and the balance of power between Italian institutions. They not even remotely involve the European Union and the process of European integration. And if the prime minister were to win December 4th’s referendum the repercussions would be irrelevant because inexistent.

Unfortunately, the prime minister is not going to win it. Even if we were to give him the benfit of the doubt, he would need one and a half miracle to turn this referendum. And that is, at least primarily, his own fault.

Constitutional reforms, albeit critical to the functioning of modern democracy and its institutions, are in nature a rather barren subject. Matteo Renzi who is, of course, no political ignoramous, was clearly aware of that when, last spring, a still very popular PM took the pivotal decision to "personalize" the vote, turning a referndum that most Italians were bound to find only borderline interesting, in a highly emotional plebiscite. He decided to resign should he fail to deliver and lose the referendum.

Half a year later Matteo Renzi's approval ratings have nosedived, as a result of both partisan meddling and unpopular reforms failing to deliver the promised economic alleviations for the average Italian citizen. With the result that the average Italian citizen is now ready to bring down his entire administration by voting "No" on December 4th.

Matteo Renzi's resignation, however, would deal another blow to an already labile European Union. The europhobic Five Star Movement, which is leading polls, already has announced once the vote is in, it will be pushing for legislative election, regardless on which electoral system they were to be based. In this quest the "grillini" are joined by the once secessionist "Lega Nord" whose leader Matteo Salvini is preceived as the voice of French right-winger Marine Le Pen South of the Alps.

Should the Lega Nord leave its traditional place on the right wing of the lose center-right alliance formed by Silvio Berlusconi's sklerotic Forza Italia and its other conservative to nationalist partners and join forces with the Five Star Movement following the next election, Italy would find itself run by clueless megolomaniacs way out of their lead in running a country, even if it were less fragile (both economically and politically) than Italy.

Rome is a case in point. The FSM took the city in a coup de main in June's municipal elections, after former mayor Ignazio Marino, an aloof leftist loathed even within its own party, had proven to be unfit in dealing with the city's wide range of problems, ranging from dysfunctional public transport and waste disposal system to endemic corruption.

The new FSM mayor Virginia Raggi, a likeable lawyer and former municipal deputy, however proved even more inept. First thing she didn't manage to alleviate the plight of citzens living in those lower class neighborhoods most affected by the city's failure to erect a functioning waste disposal system (In September, for instance, a video went viral that showed a bunch of rats roaming around piles of garbage in a Roman suburb). Most importantly though, she did not manage to put a stop to the corruption permeating almost every part of Rome's public sector. Nearly a dozen councillors had to resign in the first hundred days of Raggi's tenure, illustrating the Five Star Movement's abilities to fight off corruption, which coincidentally, is what they are primarily running on.

Were the Roman disaster to repeat itself on a national level, Italy would soon find itself on the brink of bankruptcy and national paralysis. And, alas, this would not be an all-Italian problem. French president Francois Hollande has already announced that he will not be seeking a second term, David Cameron has fallen prey to Brexit and Angela Merkel faces parliamentary elections that in the light of her controversial refugee policies might well pose a threat to her tenure. Italy teetering on the edge of economic and political crisis is hence the last thing the European Union needs in a moment of utmost instability. The EU could easily handle Norbert Hofer. Handle three of them, heading the most populous states of the Union, could prove tricky, though.