WORLD
José Manuel Barroso says that opponents of European integration want to go back to `isolation, wars and trenches`
Baku, September 12 (AZERTAC). José Manuel Durrão Barroso surpasses even Nick Clegg in his fondness for hackneyed phrases. His State of the Union Addresses are annual exercises in platitude. A couple of years ago, it was seriously proposed that MEPs should be made to forfeit their daily attendance allowances unless they sat through the speech in its entirety.
Phrases are strung more or less randomly together, as in some Bonnie Tyler ballad. We need a Europe for tomorrow, not for yesterday! The citizens demand that we do more, not less! The recovery is in sight! We must keep up our efforts! Let us work together! For Europe! With passion!
Eurocrats have been mouthing their official slogans for half a century. When the economy was growing, such sentiments accorded well enough with the temper of the age: prosperous Europeans smiled indulgently at the ambitions of Brussels officials.
Over the past five years, though, times have changed - changed utterly. The euro was supposed to do two things: to make countries get on better; and to make people richer. As Sarah Palin might ask, “How`s that workin` out for y`all?”
EU leaders are dimly aware that things are slipping away from them. Unemployed Europeans don`t take kindly to being told by Commisisoners in private jets that they need more austerity.
But bashing the Brits is more pleasant than pondering the wisdom of ever-closer union. One MEP, giggling at his own cleverness like Mr Toad in The Wind in the Willows, attacked Nigel Farage for not having moved any legislation: how, he demanded, could such an inactive MEP criticise the system? Nigel reasonably enough replied that the EU`s problem was too many laws, not too few.
The trouble is that accepting his analysis would mean questioning the role - and the salaries - of MEPs and Eurocrats. And no one is prepared to do that.