A Angleter
4 Jan 2020, 02:46

Cllr Hrayr Cruthin stood to speak

Fellow Councillors will be surprised to learn that Angleter is every bit as opposed to this idea as it has been every other time it has been proposed.

It is our belief that the European Council should, and does, function as a representative body of the member states of the European Union. Each member state is entitled to one representative, and unless it decides otherwise according to its own internal processes, its government has the right to appoint that representative to speak and vote on its behalf.

That system, by and large, works. This chamber is a forum for our countries to get together and discuss issues. Our words and our votes are backed up by the real power of the states we represent.

But I know that there are some countries where the government has decided to make the European Councillor an independent office-holder, directly elected, who can and does disagree with their government.

This is not Angleter’s way of doing things, and we do not believe it is the best way of doing things, but by and large we have respected the right of other countries to operate that way.

But we cannot and will not tolerate our approach to selecting our Councillor being insulted any longer, and we certainly won’t accept our approach being the collateral damage of any other member state’s well-publicised internal disputes.

If an elected Councillor, who profoundly disagrees with their national government, wanted to secure their position and prevent that government from removing them or embracing the appointed Councillor approach, then, well, I have to say this bill would be a very smart move.

And would the national government of that member state have a voice or a vote? Of course not. Their only option if this bill were to pass would be to leave the European Union.

The remarkable lengths that this bill goes to in preventing national governments from restricting elected Councillors only goes to strengthen my suspicions about the motives behind this bill.

Could the government restrict ballot access to ensure at least some degree of harmony between their Councillor and themselves? No.

Could the government dismiss or withdraw its Councillor? Well, yes, but then there has to be a by-election, and the previous Councillor specifically has the right to stand in that election “with the same rights and privileges as all other Councillor candidates.” The author of this bill, for some reason, goes to great lengths to ensure that an elected Councillor’s rights are preserved in that scenario.

Could the government impose term limits on a particularly long-serving Councillor? No, they can’t do that either.

It seems to me that this bill was specifically designed for the interests of long-serving elected Councillors who are at odds with their national government and are insecure about that government potentially removing them or limiting their powers.

My government will not allow its voice to be a casualty of these games. We will not support this bill in any form. We will not be producing amendments as, quite simply, the underlying principles of the bill are the problem.

This chamber is the representative body of the member states. If it were to be transformed into something else, then a representative body of the member states would have to be created separately. I suspect we would end up transforming the European Assembly, an entity which has never been convened, into something that very closely resembles the European Council of today.

And if this chamber were transformed into a sort of pan-European parliament, Angleter would not accept the injustice of its 145 million citizens being represented by the same number of elected Councillors as a nation of, say, 10 million. That would be the most bizarrely unrepresentative elected legislature in the region. If Cllr Firoux wants to create a pan-European parliament, he should at least try going the whole hog with it.

So no, we will not be supporting this bill, no matter how it is amended.

What we are considering doing, however, is bringing forward a bill to prohibit the election of Councillors.

We have, as I said earlier, generally respected member states’ freedom to put their European Council seat up for direct election if they so wish, but today it’s clear that, as a direct consequence of that practice, national politics is being fought out here in this chamber, here in Europolis.

And what’s more, for too long, some national governments have been voiceless in this chamber.

We regret that it has come to this, and we mean no disrespect to the many diligent and responsible elected Councillors in this chamber. But this has gone too far.