Denigrating Europe. Affirmations and written declarations about EU funding for the “restaurants du cœur” (i.e. charitable organisations providing free hot meals to the deprived) sometimes beggar belief. What a good opportunity to badmouth Europe! It hasn't been missed and the badmouthing is often done with jubilation and demagogy. And yet, the situation is clear.
The EU is a comprehensive democratic entity in which the decision-making power is shared between the Council, Parliament and Commission. In the case in point, the two latter institutions have spoken out in favour of maintaining Community funding for the free distribution of food to the deprived. At the Council, a minority block is digging its heels in but a single vote would be enough to rectify the problem. A vote in favour may be on the cards at the Agriculture Council in October, November or December; but the EU summit (European Council) may reach a decision earlier because it is meeting on 17-18 October and a clear majority does exist; it only lacks one vote.
Why is this programme, which has existed for 25 years, being discussed again? Because previously, agricultural products distributed to the poor came from common agricultural policy (CAP) surpluses and so the CAP took charge of the management of this food distribution programme. The surpluses no longer exist because the CAP has rationalised its production and no longer produces a surplus: the products the charities distribute for meals therefore have to be purchased. They no longer depend on the CAP but, as the legal experts in all their wisdom explain, on social policy. The Commission came up with a provisional formula and the Parliament gave it its subsequent support. Six member states at the Council do not agree. This programme annually distributes 440,000 tonnes of food aid to 18,000,000 people. The budgetary, legal and humanitarian details are included in EUROPE 10456.
A battle that will be won. The battle to safeguard this programme is both timely and praiseworthy but its defence has sometimes taken on a questionable character due to ignorance, demagogy or mistrust. The third attitude is the most ignominious but there is a simple answer to it. All that is required is to: (a) point out that the EU is unique in this practice that it has been exercising for a quarter of a century; (b) emphasise that no member state has ever planned a similar programme at a national level. Those who are howling the loudest in France about this scandal are those who want their country to leave the EU. Have they never proposed a similar national project? They have simply seized the occasion to criticise EU activities, activities in which they do not want to participate. It is a pity that they have sometimes been followed by the rampant populism of those that have preferred to cast the EU in a bad light rather than attempt to find a compromise, which will, I am sure, be found.
In the meantime, the Commission has announced that in the financial perspectives for 2014-2020 it will be proposing funding of €2.5 billion under the cohesion policy for the “restaurants du cœur”.
Jacques Delors has his say. A portrait of Mr Delors? This will come on Friday 30 September on a French television programme (France 5 at 9.30pm) in which Mr Delors will be participating. There is a lot of talk and expectation regarding the content of this programme, which has already been recorded. He is, it must be said, the only top-flight politician who has become well known in his own country and in the world at large, largely because of his action at the European level. Interviewed about his last-minute refusal to present his candidacy in 1995 for the presidency of France, he replied that he felt “little able to be assimilated into French politics and more able to be assimilated into European politics”. He took his first communion to the strains of the Socialist International and he found that these two elements “went very well together” even if in later life his behaviour always also marked his independence with regard to the Socialist party, of which he was a member: “I was always a rebel with regard to party discipline”. He did in fact draw as much support from a Christian Democrat (Helmut Kohl) as from a Socialist (François Mitterrand) to push forward European construction. Jacques Delors managed to “forget what party and nation he was from”. His party is Europe.
When European construction is at stake, he knows what he wants. After having obtained the creation of the single currency, what battles he had to denounce the imbalance between the two legs of economic and monetary union (EMU), with the monetary leg well established, but without an effective and operational economic leg! In his opinion EMU is still limping and he asserts overall: “I only obtained 50% of what I would have liked to have done”. The new project he is advocating is the European energy union, which is indispensable in the face of the cacophony of egotistical national positions and the nonexistence or almost nonexistence of common positions.
When he is applauded, his response is: “a standing ovation is not for me, it's for Europe”. He says this because he still believes in it and we all need it too. (FR/transl.fl)