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outubro 28, 2004
MEPs hail win but everyone's a loser
[Fonte: The Times]
IN THE afterglow of their victory, MEPs argued that pretty much everyone, apart from Rocco Buttiglione himself, was a winner. In fact, for most it was a severe defeat. The Parliament portrayed itself as the poodle that roared. MEPs said that the Commission and national governments would now have to take it seriously. “This house has grown in stature. Our will was tested, and our will prevailed,” Graham Watson, the Parliament’s Liberal leader, said. MEPs also argued that purging the new Commission’s weaker elements would strengthen it. “We’ll have a stronger Commission with greater authority,” Gary Titley, the Labour Party leader, said. But the fact remains that José Manuel Durão Barroso is the first Commission President to fail to persuade the Parliament to approve his team. He must now go back to the European Union heads of government to sort out the mess. Those heads must be questioning his political judgment and wondering how, having fluffed this crisis, he will avoid the far more complex problems that he will face leading the EU. Almost everyone else has lost out. Signor Buttiglione is unlikely to remain as a Commissioner. His sponsor, Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, has suffered a serious setback that will overshadow his moment in the sun at tomorrow’s signing of Europe’s new constitution in Rome. Several other new commissioners will now be fearing for their jobs. The old ones, who have already packed up their offices and Brussels homes, must hang on longer. “The only silver lining is that I now have time to look properly for a home in Brussels. That, plus concentrating on my France language,” Peter Mandelson, Britain’s new Commissioner, said. Even the Parliament may end up losing. The public are likely to view this less as a victory for European democracy than a severe case of the “EU in crisis”, concluding that the institutions are incapable of managing themselves, let alone a complex continent.
Publicado por esta às outubro 28, 2004 04:31 PM