The EU doesn’t know what it just threw away…

It was most likely a coincidence, but the day before Leo Brincat’s nomination for the European Court of Auditors was rejected by the European Parliament last Tuesday… the same Court of Auditors revealed that it had opposed the membership of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, because they were ‘not ready’ at the time.

That in itself seems entirely unrelated to Brincat’s nomination… until you notice the extraordinary resemblance between the wording of the ECA’s report, and Brincat’s own replies to MEPs’ questions the following day.

The ECA report quotes a certain Istvan Szabolcs Fazakas, who was part of the committee that had adjudicated Bulgaria and Romania’s readiness to join the EU in 2006. Fazakas says that “these countries needed more time to prepare for accession, so that European money could be absorbed in a correct way.”

But when he informed then Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn, the reply he received was: “Sorry, it’s too late, my hands are tied, the political decision for Bulgaria and Romania to join by 1 January [2007] has been taken by the member states, upon recommendation by the European Commission”.

Rehn even admitted he agreed with the ECA’s assessment (‘you may be right’), but reportedly told Fazakas that “his only task was to make sure that accession takes place on 1 January 2007 as planned”.

Now this, on the other hand, is how Leo Brincat’s grilling was reported locally: “Mr Brincat said that his hands had been tied during the vote of no confidence in Konrad Mizzi, given that the Prime Minister had not allowed a free vote. He went on to say that the British parliamentary system is used in Malta, ‘whereby anyone in breach of the party leadership can either be expelled or suspended from the parliamentary group. This shows I had no choice.’”

‘I had no choice’; ‘my hands were tied’. Hmm. Same sentiment exactly… and in both cases, the reasons given are eminently political, too. The European Commission ‘had no choice’ but to accept Bulgaria and Romania as EU members against expert advice, because it was a political decision already taken at Council of Ministers’ level. Moreover, Rehn even spelt out for us that his job is to pursue such political objectives at all costs…. regardless how unwise, ill-advised, or downright disastrous (as was the case with Greece) these policies may prove. 

Sort of makes you wonder why they even appoint institutions like the European Court of Auditors… if the Commission very evidently doesn’t give a toss about what its members think. I suppose it’s just one of those things on the bucket list – you have to have a ‘Court of Auditors’, because: a) it sounds good, and; b) it’s a prerequisite for transparency and accountability in any democratic system. 

So you create one just to nominally meet the necessary criteria: then go on to ignore all its reports and advice, and behave just as though it didn’t exist at all.

Now if, like me, you find that pattern awfully familiar… it’s probably because it’s the exact same scenario outlined by Leo Brincat in the European Parliament last Tuesday. 

Brincat claimed his ‘hands were tied’ by a political decision taken at a higher level (in his case, the Prime Minister who denied his MP’s a free vote). Like Rehn, he admitted that he found it hard to obey this political imposition because of personal misgivings. He even said he considered resigning: which is a sight more than Rehn ever did, when admitting guilt to the same sort of poor political judgment…. or, for that matter, Fazakas when confronted by the sheer pointlessness of his own institution’s existence. 

Just like Olli Rehn’s reply, Brincat’s frank revelations indirectly raise the question of why we even have individual MPs in the first place. If their job is merely to rubberstamp the Prime Minister’s every whim and decision, and suppress any original thought or contribution they themselves might individually make… well, we don’t need 69 MPs for that, do we? We could get by with only one, and just change our status from ‘democracy’ to ‘dictatorship’.

Ah, but that’s the sort of thing you can’t really expect to get away with these days: so instead, we create a fake Parliament just to meet all the necessary democratic criteria; and then pretend it doesn’t exist.  

But Leo’s statement tells us much more than that. It also confirms that he was actually perfectly suited to the job he has so unwisely been denied. If the Court of Auditors exists to simply be bypassed and ignored by a higher political power, for purely political reasons… well, what better candidate could you possibly want, than one who did exactly the same thing in the case of the confidence vote in Konrad Mizzi?

This however brings us to the overwhelming difference between the two scenarios. Incredibly, the European Parliament found Brincat’s defence unacceptable last Tuesday. For some strange reason, MEPs were unimpressed by Brincat’s candid admission that he tends to crumple like a paper bag when confronted by political pressure… even though that’s exactly what the job description requires of an ECA member anyway. 

Besides: the European Parliament never objected to the same behaviour when it came from European Commissioners and ECA members before… so how can ‘kow-towing to higher political authority’ be considered a liability only now? 

Ah, well, I guess the European Parliament will discover at its leisure the sheer value of what an asset they have so casually rejected. Like Othello’s “base Indian”, it may realise it “threw a pearl away richer than all its tribe.”

Where else do they think they’ll find a replacement with quite as much experience at sacrificing personal principles for the sake of tribal politics? That sort of person doesn’t grow on trees, you know… it takes years (decades, in Brincat’s case) of political grooming within the ranks of a local party. You have to have every trace of individuality bludgeoned out of you by a merciless, uncompromising political machine… and then survive the rat-race that is Maltese politics. 

Leo not only went through all that and more… but he even supplied graphic evidence of his unparalleled expertise in Tuesday’s hearing. At one point, he told MEP’s that he had aired his misgivings about Konrad Mizzi internally within the party, and externally in the press… and, well, we can all see with our own eyes what a fat lot of good that did.

Just think, then, what a spectacularly effective European auditor he would have been, given a chance. “Excuse me, Mr Commissioner, but I have my doubts as to whether…? “Really? Who gives a shit? You’re just there to keep up appearances, while we take all the political decisions, remember?” “Yes sir, of course sir, three bags full sir,” etc.

Oh well. Guess that makes us one hell of a lucky nation. We humbly offered up one of our prized possessions to occupy an entirely menial and pointless European position… and they sent him packing back home. So we get to benefit from Leo Brincat’s overwhelming expertise, while the EU is left to cast about for as adequate a replacement as it can.

Naturally, this has to be offset by a few minor losses of our own. Once again, we have been roundly dismissed as a nation of crooks and swindlers, which wouldn’t be quite so irksome if the people dissing us were all squeaky clean themselves.

As with the ECA experience, however, the same pattern extends to European governance. We seem to occasionally forget that the brief history of the European Union is already littered with corruption scandals, revolving door incidents, and cosy little relations between governments and corporate interests. In reinventing the EU to fit a purely local political narrative, we simply glossed over all the times European institutions have been caught with their pants down… like when the entire Santer Commission resigned en masse over corruption in 1999.

And we’ve even forgotten that many of the most questionable recent controversies were approved and rubberstamped by the self-same European parliament that made such a stink about Brincat’s ‘involvement’ in the Panama Papers.

The European People’s Party, for instance, was the most vociferous in its objections to Brincat. This is the same EPP that had nominated Jean-Claude Juncker for the post of Commission president… at a time when the former Luxembourg Prime Minister was engulfed by tax evasion scandals back home.

The ‘Lux-leaks’ scandals is worth revisiting today, so soon after the European Parliament voted against Brincat ‘on principle’. One has to enquire what ‘principle’ they were referring to, exactly. Was it the one they displayed when approving a Commission president accused of facilitating widespread tax evasion and money laundering, through precisely the same sort of legal/fiscal apparatus as revealed by the Panama Papers?

Bearing in mind that MEPs were not voting for or against Konrad Mizzi himself last Tuesday… but a Labour MP who was compelled by the same forces that had tied even the European Commission’s hands back in 2007… I find it extraordinary that MEPs would so suddenly cultivate a strong principled stand out of nothing, from one day to the next. Wish we could all do the same, would make life so much easier…

But in any case. Like I said, it’s ultimately the European Union’s loss and our gain. I expect they’ll be back at our door in no time at all, begging us for Leo with tears in their eyes. 

All I can to say that is: let ‘em cry. If they want our Leo back, they’ll have to prise him from our cold, dead hands...