M.E. Synon

Here is a lesson from today’s European Commission midday press conference on how EU propaganda works, and works at all times and at every opportunity. Whenever a commissioner appears on the podium to make a statement, a specially-designed slide is projected onto the giant screen over his head. Today Commissioner Johannes Hahn (an Austrian, you’ve never heard of him) was on the podium to tell the press corps about his plans to make payments out of the EU disaster relief fund, known as the Solidarity Fund, faster and simpler. Fine. But what was more instructive than anything Hahn had to say was what was projected in giant letters behind him, over a picture of an unidentified town halfway under water: ‘EU Solidarity Fund: faster and simpler for disaster-hit regions.

Alas, now we know William Hague has joined the list – and it’s a long list – of British government ministers who do not understand how the European Union works. His idea that national parliaments should demand a ‘red card’ system so they can block unwanted EU legislation is muddled in several ways. First is that, if national parliaments are where EU laws should be vetoed, where does that leave the prime ministers who make up the European Council?  Prime ministers – and foreign ministers, and agricultural ministers, and the rest -- go to Brussels and put their vote or their veto (when they’ve got one) on the table when there is any EU legislation that has to be approved.

Yes, that law case the European Commission is taking against the UK is mission creep, or ‘a blatant land grab’ as Iain Duncan Smith has it. The eurocrats are trying to extend EU control over the benefits systems of member states, and they are going to the European Court of Justice to do it. But what the commission is after is more than just that. Jonathan Todd, a European Commission spokesman, spelled it out at yesterday’s midday briefing in one line, and in his perfectly English voice: ‘UK nationals automatically have the right to reside in the UK. EU nationals do not have that automatic right.

This morning two European Commission technocrats and a spokesman held an off-the-record press briefing to explain the EU’s economic ‘governance.’ (Governance is the word eurocrats use instead of the more precise word ‘government’, because that word panics the Anglo-Saxons.) They gave it an hour. That’s called optimism, but an hour is about the maximum level anyone in the press corps is going to give on this one, so an hour it was. Why an explanation had to be off the record I have no idea, but, okay, my lips are zipped.

I’ve just come from a briefing with a European Union official. He was asked whether Lord Lawson’s call for Britain to leave the EU was a ‘dinosaur argument.’ In response, the official paused. He smiled in an indulgent way. He tilted his head: ‘Mrs Thatcher’s finance minister, who is the father of such a good cookbook author – .’ Another pause, another smile, a gaze at the ceiling for a moment, then: ‘Of course it’s not a dinosaur argument, because it very much reflects debates in certain segments of British politics and as such is something we are constantly confronted with.’ Another pause. Perhaps that word ‘confronted’ was a bit too direct for a fonctionnaire.

Olli Rehn, the European Commissioner who is in charge of economic affairs, called in the Brussels press corps this afternoon to announce the conclusion of his ‘in-depth review of the macroeconomic imbalances in 13 member states.’ I sat through the launch, and the questions and answers, noting that at no time did Rehn or any of the reporters approach the fundamental question: what exactly is a macroeconomic imbalance and why do we think that Rehn – whose full title includes European Commissioner for the Euro – is the man anyone would trust with analysis of anything macroeconomic? And before you ask, the reason I didn’t ask is that I ration any questions that I know the spokesmen who run these press conferences will consider obnoxious.

To the European Commission headquarters this morning for a briefing with Michel Barnier, the Frenchman who is commissioner in charge of banking. The press pack wanted to talk about – what else? – Cyprus. But Barnier wanted to talk about his green paper on the long term financing of the European economy.  Which made for the usual pantomime: the journalists sat and scrolled through emails while Barnier read out his plans on how to finance the EU economy without depending so much on banking (good luck there, commissioner). When he finished, the reporters looked up and started the questions about the banks in Cyprus. Reuters asked how long capital restrictions would last in Cyprus.

The EU budget ‘victory’ cheers go on in the Commons, but the facts seem to have been lost in the Prime Minister’s ‘triumph’. What the cheering Tories can’t quite grasp is that all that came out of the European Council last week was an agreed position to make cuts in the EU’s long term budget. That’s all, an ‘agreed position'. It was not a deal. Under the Lisbon Treaty, there is no deal until the European Parliament agrees to one: and the Parliament is in no mood to agree any cuts in EU spending. And if the Council and the Parliament cannot reach an agreement? The Parliament would be delighted.

James Forsyth seems as happy as any Tory today, cheered by David Cameron's prowess in the EU Budget negotiations. Even better for Cameron, he says, is the idea that the European Parliament might veto the deal in a secret vote: this is ‘absurd,’ just a rumour. Even if it does happen, it will only point up how spendthrift the EU really is. All good for Cameron. Except from where I’m sitting in the European Council press room, it doesn’t look at all absurd that the parliament might veto Cameron's ‘victory’ budget deal. Martin Schulz, the unpleasant German socialist president of the European Parliament, is looking for a fight on this. And the new powers the Lisbon Treaty gives the parliament over the budget means Schulz can do just that.

Today’s midday press briefing at the European Commission was of course dominated by questions about the Cameron speech. This was despite efforts by Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, Barroso’s spokesman-in-chief. First she tried to downplay the implications of the speech by making an anodyne statement welcoming democratic debate in member states. Then she announced that questions on Cameron’s speech would be limited to three. A growl came up from the press corps that indicated she should think again. So she took more questions. She just didn’t much answer them. I asked Pia if she could describe for me any existing mechanism under present treaties by which Britain could claw back powers which have already been surrendered to the EU.