It’s making cushy jobs for politicians who are found to be useless by their national electorate. Pity that the hot air produced by these self-serving groups can’t be put to good use keeping vulnerable people warm in winter.
Katharine Eyre
1 year ago
The moment I found myself participating in a meeting at one of these many bodies was a key moment in my loss of faith in the EU. It was the very definition of a talking shop. Nothing got done or decided…and yet 30 people from all across Europe were flown into London for that momentous event of…achieving nothing. A massive carbon footprint for no gain. And that was one meeting, for one quite small subject area, concerning two or three paragraphs of one draft directive. Imagine the scale of the waste and the mismatch between input and output on a continental level. It is mind boggling.
I’ve had a similar experience. I was mildly pro-EU until I attended a meeting and became dismayed at the level of naive arrogance I was confronted with. I very quickly came to the conclusion that despite the fact many of them seemed to have very limited life experience, they were very eager to manage and direct others.
That day (back in autumn 2014…feels like a lifetime now) I also discovered that other clichés about the EU are strongly rooted in reality: about 30 people were sitting around that table (reps from Switzerland & Liechtenstein also attended)…all of them were able to contribute. And yet it was Germany who was doing all of the work – they were the only ones on top of the brief and pushing forward. France threw in the occasional useful sentence. The British had more objections than constructive ideas. And the bloke from Belgium talked at length without actually saying anything of note…which is about as good an allegory of Belgium as any I’m likely to come across. (I got stuck in a corner with him at the buffet afterwards and he was so unbearably DULL, my brain hurt.)
Everyone else sat there looking bored, contented for others to do the work for them. Like those little fish that stick on the side of sharks and feed off them. It was a bizarre experience, and I guess replicated in more or less the same form thousands of times per year (although maybe by video conference in the post-lockdown world).
Talk about the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea. But less funny and more expensive.
Still- it’s only the little people’s money – plenty more where that came from, eh?
Anna Bramwell
1 year ago
Only journos dont know the difference between the Council of Europe and the European Council
William Shaw
1 year ago
The EU is a cancer.
Cancer spreads.
Frank McCusker
1 year ago
“accusing the latter of violating European standards of liberal democracy.”
It’s more than an accusation mate – the British and Irish Law Societies both have issued statements detailing the systematic undermining of the rule of law in Poland.
It’s obvious what they’re up to.
Frank McCusker
1 year ago
Doesn’t this article rather make a nonsense of the Brexiter hysteria about a United States of Europe?
Well perhaps on a practical level but that won’t stop the push to achieve it from above. It will be achieved by tying the member states together in debt.
It’s making cushy jobs for politicians who are found to be useless by their national electorate. Pity that the hot air produced by these self-serving groups can’t be put to good use keeping vulnerable people warm in winter.
The moment I found myself participating in a meeting at one of these many bodies was a key moment in my loss of faith in the EU. It was the very definition of a talking shop. Nothing got done or decided…and yet 30 people from all across Europe were flown into London for that momentous event of…achieving nothing. A massive carbon footprint for no gain. And that was one meeting, for one quite small subject area, concerning two or three paragraphs of one draft directive. Imagine the scale of the waste and the mismatch between input and output on a continental level. It is mind boggling.
I’ve had a similar experience. I was mildly pro-EU until I attended a meeting and became dismayed at the level of naive arrogance I was confronted with. I very quickly came to the conclusion that despite the fact many of them seemed to have very limited life experience, they were very eager to manage and direct others.
That day (back in autumn 2014…feels like a lifetime now) I also discovered that other clichés about the EU are strongly rooted in reality: about 30 people were sitting around that table (reps from Switzerland & Liechtenstein also attended)…all of them were able to contribute. And yet it was Germany who was doing all of the work – they were the only ones on top of the brief and pushing forward. France threw in the occasional useful sentence. The British had more objections than constructive ideas. And the bloke from Belgium talked at length without actually saying anything of note…which is about as good an allegory of Belgium as any I’m likely to come across. (I got stuck in a corner with him at the buffet afterwards and he was so unbearably DULL, my brain hurt.)
Everyone else sat there looking bored, contented for others to do the work for them. Like those little fish that stick on the side of sharks and feed off them. It was a bizarre experience, and I guess replicated in more or less the same form thousands of times per year (although maybe by video conference in the post-lockdown world).
Belgian waffle?
Use Zoom or Teams
Talk about the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea. But less funny and more expensive.
Still- it’s only the little people’s money – plenty more where that came from, eh?
Only journos dont know the difference between the Council of Europe and the European Council
The EU is a cancer.
Cancer spreads.
“accusing the latter of violating European standards of liberal democracy.”
It’s more than an accusation mate – the British and Irish Law Societies both have issued statements detailing the systematic undermining of the rule of law in Poland.
It’s obvious what they’re up to.
Doesn’t this article rather make a nonsense of the Brexiter hysteria about a United States of Europe?
Well perhaps on a practical level but that won’t stop the push to achieve it from above. It will be achieved by tying the member states together in debt.