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
José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, put on a suspiciously big-time press conference today to launch what were really no more than some modest proposals to standardise the European defence industry. On the podium with him at the Berlaymont, and you’d have to ask why, since they ended up looking like backing singers,
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
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
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
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
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
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
You know this levy on Cyprus bank deposits? It’s not a levy. A levy is a kind of tax, and what is happening to the people with bank deposits in Cyprus is no kind of tax, although today the European Commission spokesmen have been insisting it is. How can it be a tax when the
Before British coverage of the American debate on gun control goes any further, I have to hope the BBC and a lot of other Anglo-Saxons who really ought to be better informed try to find out what they are talking about. The chatter started up again last week after President Obama’s State of the Union
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.
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
This post by M.E. Synon is the first in a series about Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln. A counter-argument will be published tomorrow, followed by a comparison of screen and literary adaptations of the last months of Abraham Lincoln’s life. Last week in Dublin there was the European premiere of Spielberg’s film on Lincoln. Why Dublin? Because the star
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
