State of the Union address

As was widely reported in the press, last week in Strasbourg, my fellow MEPs and I had the dubious pleasure of attending European Commission president Josè Barroso’s grandly titled “State of the Union” speech, followed by a debate. The idea was clearly based on the State of the Union speeches made by the US President each year to a joint congressional meeting.

Now keep in mind that the EU has no elected president like the US. Unlike President Barack Obama, Mr Barroso is not the president of the EU. Rather, he is one of at least three presidents. Is Herman Van Rompuy, as president of the European Council, the real EU President, or is it Jerzy Buzek, the president of the European Parliament, the only EU institution directly elected by EU citizens? What about the president of the Eurogroup, Jean-Claude Juncker? Or does the real power in Europe still lie with the leaders of the biggest EU member states: the likes of Angela Merkel, David Cameron and Nikolas Sarkozy?

So the question “Who does America call in Europe”, famously posed by Henry Kissinger, still has not been answered. Furthermore, it highlights one of the problems that continues to exist despite the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty.

This is not to say that the European Parliament should not have a state of the union address. Today, more than ever, one needs such a debate to allow the EP to take stock of where the EU lies now and where it wants to go. One could say that it is immaterial who gives the speech. True, but words uttered by the real captain of a ship carry more weight than by one who is not. For one thing, Mr Barroso is no Mr Obama.

That being said, Mr Barroso had a tough job. Now is not a great time to be giving speeches with grand rhetorical flourishes. The EU‘s self-confidence is at a low ebb. Europe’s economies are stagnant, unemployment is high and likely to rise further and the sovereign debt crisis in Greece and other countries has shaken the eurozone and its political leaders to their core.

We are also still picking up the pieces from the financial crisis and revising the regulatory framework for the financial sector so that we can avoid future crises.

But the speech was too obvious in trying to give something to everyone. As the leader of my Socialist and Democrat group, Martin Schultz, said, it was conservative, socialist, liberal and green. There was a little bit for everyone. One minute Mr Barroso was talking about the need for austerity budgets and cutting spending, the next about reducing unemployment, together revealing a worrying lack of depth.

Perhaps this is why Mr Barroso’s speech was a statement of intent rather than a reflection on “the state of the Union”. But this, in itself, is a shame. The EU’s politicians would benefit from such a debate because the truth is that the credibility of the EU has taken a severe knock in the past few years, from the years of institutional wrangling over the Constitution and then the Lisbon Treaty, to its response to the financial crisis and, now, this year’s sovereign debt crisis.

It would have been the perfect opportunity for the Commission to discuss with Parliament the mistakes that have been made and how together we can work to learn from them. Instead, what we got was a list of platitudes which everyone agrees with but few concrete proposals on how they can be obtained. This applies to the removal of red-tape to help SMEs, reducing unemployment, cutting deficits and debt and creating green jobs.

One main concrete proposal which I liked was the Commission‘s intention to set out a comprehensive Single Market Act in order to deepen the single market and make it easier for European businesses to engage in cross-border trade.

Mr Barroso’s assertion that only eight per cent of Europe’s 20 million small businesses were actually engaged in cross-border trade is indeed shocking. We certainly need to proceed on this front if we are to generate economic growth and more jobs in the EU.

With regard to the financial field, Mr Barroso stated that the Commission would be making legislative proposals to ban forms of short-selling and to tackle credit default swaps, both of which were causal factors in the sovereign debt crisis. He also promised further proposals on a financial transaction tax, derivatives and credit rating agencies. Personally speaking, that translates into one more busy year for us in the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.

I do hope that for the future we can have a “state of the Union” debate that highlights what the EU has done wrong, where it has worked well and what it should do in the future. Unfortunately, we did not get that last week. Statements of intent are all well and good but until we all recognise that the EU’s credibility in the world is at stake and has been called into question, we will not move forward.

Prof. Scicluna is a Labour member of the European Parliament.