EU's environmental failures expose its structural flaws

EUobserver reports today yet another high profile failure in the EU's grand-style, centralised policy-making, adding to a list that includes, most notably, the huge waste and imbalances of the Common Agricultural Policy, the depleted fish stocks of the Common Fisheries Policy and the euro austerity crisis.

Around 75 'green' NGOs are calling jointly for the EU to scrap its flagship environmental scheme for trading carbon emissions - the ETS - accusing the scheme of actually increasing carbon emissions instead of reducing them.

According to the EU, the ETS scheme is "a cornerstone of the European Union's policy to combat climate change and its key tool for reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions cost-effectively." It covers more than 11,000 power stations and industrial plants in 31 countries, as well as airlines.

But environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth and Carbon Trade Watch, say that by distracting from the task of reducing consumption and dependency on fossil fuels, the scheme has caused emissions to rise.

They also highlight how the EU-ETS facility to import cheaper emissions permits from abroad in return for the polluter supporting 'offset' projects in developing countries has provoked land-grabs, human rights violations and related environmental damage in poverty-stricken regions.

'Life support'

In recent months the EU-ETS has been described as being on "life-support" due to a collapse in the price of its carbon permits - the opposite of the scheme's intention. The EU hoped that higher carbon permit prices would incentivise businesses to cut emissions or invest in clean technologies.

Companies have blamed government handouts of too many free permits in order to limit the initial impact of the scheme on the highest polluters and are supporting a European Commission proposal to suspend future permit auctions, hoping that consumption of credits in the interim will prop up prices. MEPs on the European Parliament's environment committee are due to vote tomorrow on the Commission's proposed reform.

The scheme's faults mirror the EU's similarly ill-judged rush to promote biofuels through dramatic targets and offering generous subsidies to grow fuel crops. The result has been large-scale deforestation in developing countries as land was cleared for growing these newly lucrative crops, together with a dramatic rise in food prices as farmers cashed in by switching millions of acres from food production.

Faulty structure

There are huge questions here, of course, about the merits or otherwise of biofuels and about how best to manage and preserve our natural environment.

But the far more fundamental question these failures should provoke is about whether the EU represents the best structure for effective decision-making on the now wide range of policy areas affecting our lives over which it has control.

The course of the EU's development has now demonstrated repeatedly through the increasing number of 'grands projets' emerging from its structure that over-centralised decisions, made by institutions too far removed from democratic accountability, are much more likely to be of poor quality and detrimental to Europe's security and prosperity.

Break down the elements of EU decision-making and its easy to see how this comes about.

First policy ideas are boiled down to the lowest common denominator in order to secure majority support in the Council of Ministers, often involving persuasion based not on the merits of the policy in question but on horse-trading over the benefits a country or countries could gain from a completely separate forthcoming EU decision. 

Second, the counter-balancing and constructive pressure of having to answer to voters on pain of losing their jobs, perks and privileges is not something felt by the vast majority involved in make EU decisions. Not even large numbers of MEPs who, thanks to the list system the European Parliament employs, enjoy safe seats by virtue of being near the top of their party's slate of candidates.

Third, majority voting on most policy areas in the Council of Ministers prevents those countries that disagree with an EU policy or strategy (perhaps rightly) opting out of its effects, resulting in these poor quality decisions and the resulting damage being imposed uniformly on a pan-continental scale.

Finally, when policies go wrong, the cumbersome structure and huge turning circle of the EU means that changing course and limiting the damage takes years. Despite EU biofuels policy having being roundly criticised now for several years, no change is expected before 2020. Even then, the EU's inherent faults mean new decisions are unlikely to be better constructed.

EU unfit

The growing evidence of failed policies confirms the view of many that the EU's structure simply isn't fit to make decisions of the quality required in the huge areas of policy with which it is today entrusted.

Its activities on the environment have shown vividly the damage its poor decisions can cause, but this is likely to be the tip of the iceberg relative to the effect of EU decisions in the many other policy areas in which it governs with longer or more obscure feedback cycles. 

Damage to the environment is bad enough. The detrimental impact of intrinsicly poor EU decision-making on a wide range of policies imposed over an entire continent should give far greater cause for worry with respect to Europe's future prospects.

The best solution would be for the accountable leaders of the EU's member governments to open their eyes and take steps to reinvent fundamentally the EU's structure to become more flexible, dynamic, accountable and attuned to Europe's 21st century needs rather than those of the 1950s.

Since the multiplicity of interests propping up the existing structure makes this highly unlikely, it is Britain's relationship with the EU that must in fact be rebuilt from first principles - those of trade, co-operation and cultural exchange, rejecting outdated and flawed centralisation.

DM letter: Pryce so wrong on the EU

The DM has a letter in today's Evening Standard in response to a comment piece published yesterday by the economist Vicky Pryce.

In her article, Pryce repeated a number of claims and myths about the impact of the EU, some so detached from reality it's hard to imagine from where they can possibly have emerged, beyond simply someone's fevered imagination.

The full version of the DM's response is reproduced below:

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Dear Sir,

No wonder Vicky Pryce thinks this is no time to seek a new deal with the EU (Comment, 14 January). Her understanding of the EU's impact is wrong in every key respect.

She says "85% percent of our budget contribution comes back to the UK", but Treasury figures for 2010-11 show the figure is just over 57% - a net cost of £8.8bn that year alone. Pryce also says "regulations are mostly national", despite a House of Commons Library study from October 2010 showing in fact just over half of new laws now have their origins in Brussels.

Her concern about the EU market becoming more difficult to access surely makes the highly unlikely assumption that Britain could not achieve a free trade agreement as part of any new relationship with the EU - a deal that our trade deficit with the EU shows would be in the interests of EU businesses far more than that of UK plc. 

Overcoming ignorance about the EU through a proper national debate on the basis of facts and giving us all the chance to make an informed decision about Britain's best path to prosperity in the 21st century is exactly why David Cameron must promise to hold an EU referendum.

Yours faithfully,

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Pryce's article comes on the back of a recent propaganda onslaught by political and business elites seeking not only to intimidate the Prime Minister from seeking any change in Britain's relationship with the EU to bring decisions back to Westminster, but also to deny the rest of us a real choice about Britain's future and how we are governed.

In his speech on Friday, David Cameron is expected to announce an intention to renegotiate aspects of the EU's powers and hold a referendum on the outcome sometime after the next general election (IF there is a new 'fiscal union' treaty, IF other countries agree to renegotiate, IF they agree to hand back EU powers, and IF he wins the 2015 election outright).

Despite the likely dependence of such a pledge on a range of improbable developments, the temperature of the EU debate is nevertheless rising. The last few weeks have seen the opening skirmishes of a referendum battle, which David Cameron's speech on Friday may well exacerbate over the coming months and years into full political war about the best course for Britain's democracy and future prosperity. 

Second EU attack on City looms

Hot on the heels of the recent EU financial services directive looms a second EU attack on the hedge fund industry - the vast majority of which is based in London.

And presumably our own government, past administrations having handed over their powers to the EU, will once again find themselves too enfeebled to protect this major contributor to much-needed tax revenues.

The Evening Standard reports today that the German and French leaders have teamed up to call for a German-style ban on the practice of short-selling to be extended across the EU.

The shock unilateral move by the German government last month to ban short-selling destabilised markets and sent the values of shares, and the investments that rely on them, plunging.

The move was criticised over the instability it provoked while only being capable of suppressing a reaction to the euro's structural difficulties, rather than resolving the EU project's underlying, fundamental problems.

In a bid to block more financial institutions from betting on the failure of the EU's financial support packages, euro policies and the creditworthiness of euro countries, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have written a letter to Jose Manuel Barroso asking the Commission to examine a proposal for an EU-wide shorting ban covering both shares and sovereign bonds.

The pair have evidently ruled out the alternative of making the EU's actions more convincing to the markets, presumably in tacit admission of what virtually everyone else already realises.

Namely, that nothing the EU can do can solve convincingly the financial problems of various of its members while they remain locked within the fixed-exchange euro system.

The key question for us is this. Perhaps smarting from recent events, is our government going to 'man up', live up to their title, be worthy of the votes that many people so recently bothered to cast, and do what it takes to block this looming new move?

Or will they just allow themselves to be over-ruled and humiliated by the EU yet again?

EU funds directive shows who governs

Only days into office, our new Con-Lib coalition government has been humbled by those who have actually long been in charge - the European Union.

It appears that the EU cannot be prevented from making a new financial services law that threatens to drive Britain's hedge funds industry offshore and cost us billions in tax revenue.

Quoted in Frankfurt's FAZ newspaper, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made clear the mirage of Britain's influence in Brussels and the state of democracy within the EU when she said: "Unfortunately we have to overrule the UK, but that is possible with a majority."

Given our government can be completely over-ruled by the EU, many would be forgiven for wondering why we bothered so recently to elect a government of any political colour.

It seems it was not to govern.

What election?

Once again we are shown that a majority of ministers from other European governments are in charge and all our new 'leaders' in Downing Street seem to be able to offer in response is shrugged shoulders and mutterings about battles they can't win.

Worse, their response shows no interest in actually seeking to change this anti-democratic EU situation and to regain the power to prevent severe damage being caused to a key British business sector.

How do our politicians hope to restore public faith in our democratic system if they continue to appear in this way to be little more than puppets, unable to control a Brussels regime making damaging laws that both business and government oppose?

Do David Cameron and George Osborne actually want to govern, or do they only want to posture - to occupy lofty positions, but only tinker on the margins while major decisions over how the country is run are made in Brussels by ministers in other governments that no-one here elected?

Media failure

While the response of our new leaders has so far been little more than pathetic and embarrassing, the issue at least reflects accurately the state of national democracy under the EU regime.

Yet, perversely, the EU remains largely unrecognised by the 'Westminster Village' - in which I include political journalists in the mainstream media - as a major contributor to today's lack of public faith in our political system.

Not once during the election campaign did we see or hear mention of how wriggling in the most blatant way out of a clear election promise to hold a referendum on the EU Constitution - when it returned repackaged as the Lisbon Treaty - undermines trust in election promises being made by Labour or the Liberal Democrats, in particular, this time around.

Not once during the election campaign, despite the amounts concerned overshadowing considerably other points of economic debate, and despite the waste of it being crystal clear, did we see or hear mention of the scale of cash Britain will hand over to the EU this coming financial year - £7.6bn (net).

No candidate was asked to justify this, while economic debate focussed on much lesser amounts.

Naturally, the politicians don't want to admit the extent to which they've marginalised themselves by handing ever more powers to the EU.

But, worse, the media seem complicit in their game that day-to-day government in this country has not become little more than a charade.

Critical cash

Has the print media, in particular, even considered that their falling revenues may to some extent be explained by the fact that political journalism appears to have drifted away from reality, occupying the same bubble as the politicians?

Sure, much news is now obtained online. The rise of the internet is undoubtedly also a factor.

But if it appears that the mainstream print media are failing to hold politicians to account - by failing to puncture their spin and to challenge them with the big questions about their credibility - why then should anyone bother buying a newspaper?

It seems a first step in putting greater pressure on our politicians to seek to govern again may be to pressure our media to burst the bubble of our leaders' increasing powerlessness.

It's a fair bet that for them to do so more robustly than at present may even be in the media's own best financial interest.

Reality check

What Nick Clegg and the rest of our new government must conclude from this early losing power clash with the EU is this.

Electoral reform without rebalancing the EU's powers back in favour of elected governments - as the pre-coalition Conservative manifesto pledged steps towards - would merely be rearranging the deckchairs while democracy, and public faith in our political system, carries on sinking.