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Mathiasen

Listed below are comments made by Mathiasen between Thursday, 29th October 2009 and Saturday, 31st October 2009.

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A tough pitch for Blair 8:17pm on 31 Oct 2009 #84. and rg
You changed „a foreign policy” to “one foreign policy”. There is quite a difference.
The member states of the union insist on making the decisions concerning for instance taxes and foreign affairs, and it is easy to see how different the foreign policies of the member states in fact are. The Middle East policy is probably the premium example. However, the member states have slowly and reluctantly realised that in the latter they have more impact together than as individual states. I therefore called it a coordinated foreign policy.

It is impossible to say what the peoples of Europe are prepared for, but since it is a borderline crossing matter I believe that many in the centre of the Union actually think that a foreign policy in the EU is quite relevant, not least because some of us remember that the EU began as a peace project, and we have not had a war between France and Germany since WW2. The EU has also had a very positive impact on the democratic development in many European countries for instance by my friends in Spain.
Britons, who are dissatisfied with the British participation in this development, have the chance of their life by the general election next year.
A tough pitch for Blair 12:04pm on 31 Oct 2009 # 75
- and a foreign policy, if I may say it, but the member states are of course quite ambivalent towards this. Not the member states but the rest of the world is therefore the driving force behind a coordinated EU foreign policy.
That is clear to everybody except those, who prefer to close their eyes.
A tough pitch for Blair 8:04pm on 30 Oct 2009 Actually, some media are mentioning Mr. Miliband as a possible foreign minister of the EU. You will have to understand what the political play is, but I admit this is not a topic we can read much about here. Miliband goes well into the pattern: A conservative president from a smaller country in the centre of the union, and a social democrat from a large country.
A tough pitch for Blair 4:51pm on 30 Oct 2009 #43 Democracy Threat
#44 T1m0thy
The German constitution does not allow for referenda. Germany got some bad experiences with referenda during the Nazi period, and that is probably the reason why it is now not possible now, - but the citizens can demand a vote in concrete matters, and we have had such referenda in Berlin a few times.
A referendum is a conservative institution, people are likely to vote no. That is what Ireland, Norway, and Denmark have experienced twice, and France, Holland and perhaps also Sweden once. The problem for Denmark is that any change of the constitution itself must be approved through a referendum, and the politicians are afraid of this institution. The result has been a constitution that is not updated (contrary to Germany), and written in a language of the 19th century many people do not understand now.
It is not difficult to understand why politicians avoid referenda.
A tough pitch for Blair 08:02am on 30 Oct 2009 #16 and thebritisharefunny :
You have two points:
- in the long run, climate change is surely the issue that is far more important
and
- Climate change is about the future of the planet. It is an issue where isolated national action alone is pointless.

You are right about both, but I believe we will have to wait for Copenhagen to see what the decisions are.
Secondly: In mainland Europe the climate question is a key issue in the national discussions about EU politics. Is this not the case in the UK?
A tough pitch for Blair 04:54am on 30 Oct 2009 BBC is continuing its activity as an advertise bureau for the British government. It is surprising. It is also surprising that so many here accept it without a word.

Other media have been told by social democratic sources close to the matter in Bruxelles that the British PM is the only to really wanting Tony Blair as the EU president.
- It is about Blair’s position in the Iraq war, and also that he achieved very little in his period as chairman of the EU. Nothing happened, the source says.
The liberal Danish PM said: This is not the United States of Europe. We do not need a president like the American. It should be someone that can gather people.

In the meantime the social democrats have in reality left the decision to appoint a president to the conservative side. Instead they go the “foreign minister” appointment.
Finally, the sources say that Great Britain is opposing Jean-Claude Juncker. I think everybody can gather from BBC’s articles what it is the British government do not like about Juncker!
Blair and the non-presidential campaign 6:45pm on 29 Oct 2009 Some of the British media have made a mediocre job in the last couple of days. The summit in Bruxelles had hardly begun before it was clear that the support behind Tony Blair’s candidacy was very limited and mainly consisted of the British government.
Why British journalists were not able to find out about this, we will probably never know.
In a democracy media are supposed to scrutinise the government and not work as an advertising bureau for it. However, this is more or less what these media have done,. They did almost nothing to find out about alternative candidates and what the positions in the other EU governments in this question are.
It is somewhat surprising that media manage the most important capital they have - reliability - in this way.
Blair and the non-presidential campaign 4:09pm on 29 Oct 2009 With the evaluation that Blair has done nothing for, Europe German television channel one, ARD, has just said in the 17 news that Blair's candidacy is completely dead.
Blair and the non-presidential campaign 03:28am on 29 Oct 2009 Now that the new German government is in place, we begin to hear arguments from Berlin (see the article “German party cool on Blair for EU” here on BBC. The party is the liberal junior partner of the coalition, which is also the party of the new foreign minister, G. Westerwelle.)

Contrary to the tone used in the articles in this blog the German party seems to share Jean-Claude Juncker’s understanding, namely that the position of the so-called president should not go to one of the largest countries. In addition, I believe that the German government would like to have a person from the centre of the union, which would mean a person from a country that is using the Euro and is participating in the Schengen agreement.
Blair and the non-presidential campaign 03:16am on 29 Oct 2009 #45. democracythreat
Thank you for your thoughts. They actually support structures that go across the borders of the nation states, and that is a thing that we know many citizens in the union are less enthusiastic about.
Obviously the groups of the EP are organisations that can select candidates but before we reach such a thing they will have to consider the matter of language. It seems to me that a candidate will have to speak more languages if we imagine that the candidates were also campaigning in more countries. The big countries with many voters are of course the most attractive, and then everything begins to be a problem, but that will take us too far to go into.
For the moment I would prefer the EP to have a more important role in this.

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