Sir, – For all the talk about whether Bono’s speech to the European People’s Party (EPP) delegate conference in Dublin last week was patronising or inspiring, or why a group of people who are meant to be serious political activists couldn’t stop themselves wilting in the presence of a singer, as usual the Irish media got distracted by something shiny and missed the real purpose of the conference and its outcome.
The purpose of the conference was to choose the EPP candidate for president of the new European Commission that will take office later this year and set the agenda for the EU for the next five years or more. An agenda that should involve tackling chronic EU youth unemployment, falling health standards and the gaping lack of democratic legitimacy, transparency and accountability at every level of the EU decision-making process.
So did the EPP pick a dynamic, youngish person, perhaps a woman, with real-life experience outside the political bubble who offers new policies and a new mentality to that of those who have been at the heart of EU decision-making over the last decade?
No, of course not. The EPP picked Jean-Claude Juncker, a 60-year-old man, who was prime minister of Luxembourg for 20 years until forced to resign in December 2013 after losing a general election caused by his failure to deal with corruption within the country’s spy service. He was also the president of the Eurogroup, the gathering of euro zone finance ministers that meets in secret, or “in camera” as it likes to say, before the formal meeting the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (Ecofin) meetings of the EU, which includes all the other finance ministers of the EU, from 2005 to 2013.
In other words, he is the man who headed the group of politicians that oversaw the application of the policy of “light touch” regulation all across the euro zone’s financial sector, and which was involved in agreeing the policy that saw the ECB force an Irish government to choose between accepting all private sector banking debt in return for access to funding when we were excluded from the markets, or no access to lending and having to balance our budget at the stroke of pen.
How can the personification of the out-of-touch, elitist EU insider possibly be able to implement the scale of reform needed by the EU so it can tackle the issues it will face in the coming decade? – Yours, etc,
DESMOND FitzGERALD,
Canary Wharf,
London.