http://blogs. telegraph. co.uk/politics/ danielhannan/ jan08/despotismi nparliament. htm
Despotism in the European Parliament
Posted by Daniel Hannan on 25 Jan 2008 at 13:45

I thought that, after eight years in the European Parliament, nothing could
shock me any more. I was wrong.

Yesterday, the President of the Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, asked for, and
was granted, arbitrary powers to suspend the rules of the institution in order
to disadvantage the tiny number of MEPs who want a referendum on the European
Constitution Lisbon Treaty.

I have come to expect hypersensitivity to criticism, flouting of rules,
intolerance of dissent, authoritarianism. But nothing had prepared me for such
blatancy.

Hans-Gert openly admitted that the behaviour of his Euro-sceptic opponents was
within the rules. And he wasn’t asking to change those rules – a procedure that
would take time. No, he simply wanted permission to disregard them. Permission
was duly granted, by 20 committee votes to 3.

Hans-Gert’s letter is worth quoting in full:

Dear Mr Leinen, [Jo Leinen, a German Socialist, is Chairman of the
Constitutional Affairs Committee]

In the course of the current part session, Parliament was confronted on
several occasions with procedural requests which were formally based on and
fulfilled the requirements of a provision of the Rules of Procedure, but which
according to the full conviction of myself and of other Members of the House
were moved with the intention of obstructing the procedures of the House.

I take the view that my overall responsibility for the implementation of the
Rules of Procedure and the powers conferred on me by Rule 19 include the power
not to allow such practices.

I should therefore be grateful if, pursuant to Rule 201(1), you could submit
to the Committee on Constitutional Affairs the following question for urgent
consideration:

‘Can Rule 19(1) be interpreted as meaning that the powers conferred by this
Rule include the power to call an end to excessive use of motions such as points
of order, procedural motions, explanations of vote and excessive, indiscriminate
requests for separate, split or roll call votes where these appear to the
President to be aimed at deliberately disrupting the procedures of the House or
the rights of other Members.’

I would appreciate it if I could have your Committee’s interpretation before
the opening of the next part session.

I haven’t made this up: you can see a copy of the original letter over at
England Expects.

Re-read the letter slowly. Hans-Gert accepts that our demands for electronic
votes and for the right to explain how we voted were perfectly legal. But he
does not ask for the rules to be changed. He asks for the right to ignore them
at his own discretion – that is, to ignore such requests when they come from
Euro-sceptics.

His fig-leaf – more of a strawberry-leaf, really – is Rule 19 (1). This, too, is
worth quoting:

“The President shall direct all the activities of the Parliament and its bodies
under the conditions laid down in these Rules. He shall enjoy all the powers
necessary to preside over the proceedings of Parliament and to ensure that they
are properly conducted.” (Emphasis added)

In other words, the President is bound by Rule 19 to uphold the Rules of
Procedure, not allowed to set them aside as he pleases.

The whole business is outrageous. I am almost tempted to compare it to the Nazi
Ermächtigungsgesetz – the Enabling Act of 1933 which allowed Hitler to override
parliament and the constitution. But I won’t because a) it would be
disproportionate and b) it would be terrifically rude to Hans-Gert, who lost his
father in the war and who, for all that he is behaving appallingly on this
occasion, is a decent man and a democrat. Which is why I am so disappointed in
him. He, of all people, should be alive to the dangers of assuming discretionary
powers in order to bulldozer the law.

Let me instead quote the grand-daddy of British resistance against
Euro-totalitarianis m, Edmund Burke. What most bothered him about the French
Revolution, more than its republicanism, its atheism, its threat to the peace of
Europe, was that it owned itself bound by no law.

“They must be worse than blind who cannot see with what undeviating regularity
of system, in this case and in all cases, they pursue their scheme for the
destruction of every independent power,” he wrote in his Letters on a Regicide
Peace. “Their will is the law, not only at home, but as to the concerns of every
nation. They have swept aside the very constitutions under which Legislatures
acted and the Laws were made.”

Eerily prescient, no? And what has driven the European Parliament to these
lengths? What has provoked them to tear up their own rules? A massive filibuster
that was preventing them from passing any Bills? Hardly.

As loyal readers of this blog will know, the President of the European
Parliament already enjoys considerable discretionary powers. But MEPs have two
rights that even he cannot override: we can demand that votes be counted
electronically rather than by a show-of-hands (a slightly slower procedure, but
a more accurate one, and one that allows everyone to see how their MEPs voted);
and we can ask for the right to explain, in not more than one minute, why we
voted as we did.

A handful of pro-referendum MEPs – souverainistes from Poland and France,
Scandinavian Left-wingers, UKIP and Conservatives from Britain, along with Jim
Allister from Northern Ireland, the most honest man in Unionist politics –
decided to make full use of both procedures in order to protest about the
cancellation of the promised referendums and the implementation of large parts
of the constitution in anticipation of formal ratification. I have been ending
every speech, in a playful echo of Cato’s “Delenda Est Carthago", with “Pacto
Olisipiensis Censenda Est” – The Lisbon Treaty must be Put to the Vote.

Two dozen MEPs making a series of one minute speeches hardly constitutes a
filibuster. At worst, we would have kept MEPs from their lunch for half an hour
and perhaps delayed the start of the afternoon session. But even this is
intolerable to the parliamentary authorities. Blinded by their resentment of
“anti-Europeans”, which is in turn a surrogate for the fear and contempt they
feel for their own electorates, they have abandoned any pretence at legality in
order to prevent us making our point in the chamber. The very sound of someone
calling for a referendum is offensive to their guilty ears. The sight of even so
moderate and respectable an MEP as Kathy Sinnot, an Irish disability rights
campaigner, wearing a tee-shirt with the word “REFERENDUM” has led to her being
summoned for disciplinary action.

What they really hate, my federalist colleagues, is being reminded of the fact
that they all supported referendums until it became clear they would lose them.
We are their bad consciences, the ghosts at their feast.

To prolong the Macbeth reference a little, the shocking thing about their
behaviour is not that they are trying to silence their critics, nor even that
they are breaking the rules – after all, they are doing so on a much grander
scale by reviving the constitution following two “No” votes. No, the
breath-taking aspect of the whole business is that they haven’t troubled to hide
the illegality of what they’re doing. They’ve happily put it all on paper. As
Lady Macbeth puts it:

“What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?”

But there comes a point when the arrogance of power, the sense that there is one
rule for the elites and one for everyone else, becomes intolerable. A point
where Birnam Wood starts advancing on Dunsinane. By behaving as they have, MEPs
have brought forward that moment.

It is now clear that the constitution has no legitimacy. It is becoming clear,
too that the European Parliament has lost whatever shreds of legitimacy it might
once have had. So let me close with another prescient quotation from Burke:

“Who that admires, and from the heart is attached, to true national parliaments,
but must turn in horror and disgust from such a profane burlesque and parody of
that sacred institution.”

Democracy banned in European Parliament

Wednesday, 12 December 2007

Gerard Batten MEP The European Parliament decided to censor its own television coverage to avoid showing a serious protest in the debating chamber in Strasbourg on Tuesday.   A group of about 80 Eurosceptic MEPs protested loudly as the Charter of Fundamental Rights was signed, with the result that a huge section of UK sovereignty has been swallowed up by the EU. As the demonstration started, TV cameras immediately killed all sound so that none of the protest could be heard and the cameras stayed away resolutely from the large block of protesters. At one stage, The President of the Parliament, Hans Gert Pottering, asked them to leave the chamber. They refused. The protest continued during speech by Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. However as he talked of "greater democracy for Europe" the TV pictures told a different story. Mr Pottering shouted at the protesters accusing them of being "anti-democratic because they will not let our guests speak." He was met with cries of "Let the people speak." UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, one of the prime movers of the protest, said: "This is the new EU in action, showing the world a united face as they steamroll towards their own superstate while totally refusing to allow anyone to see a different point of view." Furious at the protests, some MEPs resorted to rough tactics and one member of the European People's Party dragged a female observer from the Independence and Democracy Group out of the chamber and demanded her camera, which showed footage of the protest. "The high point of this hypocrisy surely came at the end, when MEPs were invited to stand to listen to 'The European Anthem'," said Mr Farage. "This, of course, is the anthem which is supposed to have disappeared. To their everlasting shame, British MEPs from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties stood ramrod-straight to grant this piece of music national anthem status." Mr Farage added: "Fortunately, cameras from the BBC and ITV were there, so at least there is a chance that people in Britain can actually see for themselves how this European Union stifles debate and refuses to allow legitimate political protest."

http://www.euractiv .com/en/future- eu/meps-question s-commission- filtered/ article-174062
MEPs' questions to Commission to be filtered
Published: Wednesday 9 July 2008

The European Parliament adopted a report on 8 July introducing new rules for
tabling written questions, aimed at easing the burden on the Commission or the
Council in answering irrelevant, aggressive or even silly questions.

Over 2,000 written questions have already been put to the Commission by members
of the 785-strong European Parliament since the beginning of 2008. For 2007,
they numbered over 6,000 in total.

The author of the report, which will set out rules governing the tabling of
questions, is British MEP Richard Corbett (PES). Speaking to EurActiv, he
recently admitted that his initiative was prompted by his compatriot's
inquisitiveness.

http://www.eubusine ss.com/news- eu/1215613022. 93
EU parliament moves to squeeze out radical and non EU compatible parties
09 July 2008, 22:31 CET

(STRASBOURG) - The European Parliament on Wednesday tightened the rules on
forming political groups in the assembly in order to limit radical lawmakers'
access to funds.

Members voted to raise the minimum number of deputies needed to form a political
group from 20 members representing six different countries, to at least 25
representing seven.

The move was approved by 481 lawmakers, with a further 203 voting against and 26
abstaining from the vote.

Currently, there are seven political groups at the parliament and 30
unaffiliated lawmakers.

The smallest is the eurosceptic Independence/ Democracy group, which currently
has only 22 lawmakers from nine countries, while the Union for Europe of Nations
group has 43 deputies from six countries.

On the left, the communist European United Left party, has 41 lawmakers from 14
countries, while the Greens have 43 legislators from 14 countries.

The three biggest parties in the parliament are the conservative European
People's Party with 288 deputies from all 27 EU countries; the Socialists with
217 from 25 countries; and the liberals with 100 from 22 states.