In an exclusive article for our website, Richard Corbett comments on the British coverage of the last European Council .
It was instructive to see at last week’s European Council how, yet again, the bulk of the British media seem to carry a different story from everybody else at such events – even the supposedly unbiased BBC.
Most serious newspapers on the continent covered the actual deliberations of the European Council: Libya, Syria, Schengen, migration, economic governance, another loan to Greece, appointment of a new Governor of the Central Bank, Croatian accession to the EU, and so on.
The British media (virtually alone) produced screaming headlines about the cost of a new European Council building (or, rather, extension): the construction of which was decided in 2004, is well underway, and was not on the agenda of this European Council, other than (under “Any Other Business”) to give it a name – the politically uncontroversial “Europa” building.
Of course, any construction work during the crisis is apparently taboo (except, presumably, the new NATO building down the road, which costing four times as much). Presumably it should be cancelled, half built, thereby saving perhaps 20% of the costs – and totally wasting some 80% that has been spent already.
But no-one at the meeting sought to reverse the previous (unanimous) decision of the European Council that new premisis are needed. The old building, constructed when the EU had only 12 member States, is too small to cope: for instance, all other meetings in the old building are currently suspended for 3 days whenever there is a European Council meeting.
And as to it being ” Van Rompuy’s Palace”: – it was decided years before he was President, it will essentially be for his successors – and for the literally hundreds of other ministerial meetings that take place every year the Council.
But why let facts get in the way of another story designed to discredit Europe?
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Richard Corbett is a former Labour MEP and currently a member of President Van Rompuy’s cabinet at the European Council. He writes in a personal capacity. |
This man is cheap and pathetic, just a euro-bureaucrat defending his own -and his peers- privilege.
Why doesn’t he recognise that a mistake has been made (even if now it’s too late to go back)?
Because in doing so, he would be forced to recognise that the future EU budget can be cut. It can and it must be cut. Let’s cut euro-bureaucrats (can’t they find a proper job in their country?). Let’s cut euro-privileges (why do I have to pay higher pensions for the euro-bureaucrats?).
Let’s Europe, not Britain, pay the price for the crisis!
Did you read the article at all? Corbett dealt with why the building was necessary for an enlarged EU. It can and it must be cut you say – this is not so easily done once ground has been broken and contracts have been signed – the savings made from any potential cuts would be minimal and the loses in infrastructure very large.
I presume given your indignant atitude to the EU you must be livid at the costs of NATO’s building as dealt with in the article- but you haven’t mentioned that- you chose instead to go on about pensions that aren’t even mentioned here.
Richard Corbett gives us yet an other demonstration of the chronic distortion of european news by part of tne British press . Over the last 20 years , the Murdoch media have created in the british (and irish) public a pavlovian anti-european syndrome that is also exploited by other media (ie. BBC) for demagogic purposes.
What remains a mystery is why Mr. Murdoch has, in the first instance and of all possible targets, choosen the EU as its best ennemy and its main bait for its credulous public. It could have been the UN, the Pope, the Greens, the Italians, the French, etc…What is also surprising is that no exhaustive and documented enquiry has yet been conducted on the anti-european bias of the Murdoch press.
We now hear that Murdoch has in fact brought himself into disrepute – not because of its chronic violation of all jounalistic deontology – but because of illegal investigation methods. Let’s hope that the Murdoch press – if it survives that episode – will give up shooting at scape goats and leave EU reporting to other more responsible and competent british media.