On Wednesday 24 October, the members of the European Parliament roundly criticised the inaction of the European Council, which failed, in Brussels on Wednesday 17 and Thursday 18 October (see EUROPE 12119, 12120) to reach agreement on the orderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, the reform of the European asylum system or on the deepening of Economic and Monetary Union.
Although the failure to reach a deal with London is not solely the fault of the Twenty-Seven and is largely linked to British “contradictions”, the Twenty-Seven have “no excuses about the other subjects”, said Belgium's Philippe Lamberts, co-chair of the Greens/EFA group. The European Council is the political body that moves things forward, but adopted a “pompous 'leaders' Agenda'” in 2016, he said ironically.
The EPP group and its deputy-chair, Françoise Grossetête, consider that the results of this Council are somewhat scant and political will seems to be in doubt. The European leaders “meet, but do not decide”. They make “promises” and declarations of “good intentions” and “then comes the blockage”. The French MEP referred to the example of migration, a dossier on which “everybody knows the solutions”. Although there is consensus on the external plank, when it comes to the “internal dimension and the organisation of solidarity, no lasting solution seems to be taking shape”. “When political will is there, no obstacle is insurmountable”, she observed.
German Socialist Udo Bullmann (S&D) also struggled to find any positive points. In response to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, who had earlier noted progress on migration and bolstering the external borders, he asked what he was talking about and criticised the scandalous lack of response to the deaths in the Mediterranean. He once again called for safe corridors for migrants.
The debate is reported, for its part, to have been a classic stock-taking European Council, although the atmosphere was not improved by the comments of Syed Kamal of the UK, leader of the ECR group, who most unfortunately likened Socialism to Nazism.
In illustration of the fact that the MEPs had little to say about this summit, the stand-off between him and Bullmann, in which others participated as well, including the President of the EP, Antonia Tajani, lasted nearly a quarter of an hour. The British MEP was responding to comments by the S&D leader suggesting that nationalism and right-wing extremism are undermining the EU, to which Kamal replied that “when you talk about right-wing populists we have to remember that Nazis were national socialists. It is a strain of Socialism”. He was forced to apologise.
Guy Verhofstadt, the chair of the ALDE group, said that it was a summit of nothingness. “Ten years post-crisis, the Eurozone still has no governance”, he regretted, amongst other things. He advised Tusk to change his method and “shut the leaders in a room” until they decide on something.
On Brexit, he said that he was still “optimistic”, but referred ironically to the percentages quoted by the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, who said that 95% of the withdrawal agreement had been concluded (see EUROPE 11122). “90 or 95, for the EP it will always be 0% if there is no backstop for Northern Ireland or respect for the Good Friday Agreement”.
Tusk said that he could understand the MEPs' disappointment, as the global approach of the European Council to migration basically provides for the external borders of the EU to be sealed off, “rather than obligatory quotas” to distribute asylum seekers within the EU, contrary to the EP's position.
The President of the European Council went on to lay the blame for a possible return to a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland at the door of the Brexiteers. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)