Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-17-Speech-4-123"
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"en.20010517.5.4-123"2
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".
The Nice Treaty, which makes provision for a method to fund European political parties, has not yet been ratified by the Member States and therefore entered into force, and yet the Council and the parliamentary committee responsible have rushed to put a report on the statute and funding of European political parties to the vote in plenary. The pretext for the hurry is the EU's alleged concern at the increasingly poor turnout at elections. There is not a grain of truth in this argument, as is clear from the huge turnout at the recent elections in Italy and all the relevant studies, which talk of the disappointment and apathy of voters (due to the contradiction between what the bourgeois parties do and say) as regards the machinations going on in Brussels and Strasbourg. This alienation will increase even more when European parties with even looser ties to their voters are set up.
Mainly using economic incentives as bait, legislation is being passed on what are, to all intents and purposes, binding rules governing the constitution and
of European parties. These strict binding rules concern both their statute and the electoral power which parties must have in order to qualify as ‘European’ and obtain the relevant funding. These parties must have clear European objectives, such as European integration, even if they appear to take the opposite approach. The word ‘appear’ is highly suspicious. Will a party such as the Communist Party of Greece, which not only appears but is, in fact, clearly opposed to European integration be approved? Further on it says that a political party cannot qualify as European if it preaches intransigence. In other words, is it prohibited to preach intransigence against fascism or, more importantly, against class enemies and the exploitation of the working classes?
As far as electoral power is concerned, the proposal is that the party must either have elected representatives in the European Parliament or in the national parliaments in at least 5 Member States (either in one third of the Member States or in one quarter according to today's resolution) or must have gained at least 5% in at least 5 Member States at the last European elections (either in one third or in one quarter of the Member States). This is direct interference in the electoral system of each country, because higher electoral quotas are being introduced which, in practice, will exclude the voices opposed to the so-called ‘European ideal’, that is, the imperialist nature of the ΕU.
Finally, provision is made for contributions to be published for the sake of transparency. However, as there is no limit on contributions, we must assume that even the names of the members and friends of a party who pay a subscription will be recorded. The report considers the ban on donations to a party by public corporations to be something of an achievement in the transparency stakes. Woe betide that it should say the opposite! However, the problem lies in donations from the highly powerful private sector, on which it remains as quiet as the grave.
The attempt here to introduce compulsory European parties is tantamount to serious interference in the political system of each country, the aim being to weaken the role of the national parties, especially those which oppose the ΕU. The parties are institutions set up to express the free will of their members, as regards both their programmes and their
. By setting up European political parties as described above, they are trying to get the people to accept the imperialist integration of the EU as a one-way street, as destiny and as the only course available, to hit out at and – if they can – exclude any dissenting voices from the European Parliament and to distance the workers even more from the centres which take the decisions which directly affect them."@en1
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