EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
Europe is preparing for a new five-year cycle in which it must deal with many internal and external challenges. On the one hand, the US and China are huge economic competitors to the EU due to their greater business freedom (US) and resources (China), and on the other hand, Russian military power and strategic interests are also not to be underestimated.
The EU's serious internal problems are related to over-indebted countries, the increasing regulatory burden, the aging population, and the lack of consensus on key geostrategic issues.
This means that the EU needs new individuals with proven leadership qualities and the necessary capacity to offer bold and effective solutions.
We have seen that the long bargaining in the European Council did not yield a good result. [1] The new EU leaders were chosen by people with scandalous reputations and poor results in their previous portfolios. Let's take a look at their achievements so far:
1. Ursula von der Leyen - nominated for President of the European Commission
- She is a doctor by education, but it was for her doctoral dissertation that she was accused of plagiarism. According to the German platform VroniPlag wiki, which exposes cases of plagiarism in Germany, 27 out of 62 pages (43%) of the dissertation contained plagiarism , and 23 places used quotes from sources that did not contain the specified information. After a commission was appointed to conduct an investigation, it was found that there were only 3 "serious errors" and smaller ones in 20% of her work. Doubts remain about the impartiality of the commission, because von der Leyen personally knows the head of the commission from their joint activities in the past.
- She has been a minister in Merkel's governments since 2005. Since 2014, she has been Germany's defense minister. A Bundestag report from this year clearly states that the German army suffers from material shortages and understaffing. Germany also falls short of the desired 2% of GDP for defense, like its NATO partners (the United States, Poland, etc.). Currently, her ministry is under investigation for concluding consulting contracts worth millions without public procurement. Another failure of von der Leyen is that the renovation of the Gorch Fock warship turned out to be 10 times more expensive than planned. To top it all off, there is also the misunderstanding with the senior generals in the army and the admission of radicalized soldiers into the ranks of the Bundeswehr.
2. Christine Lagarde – nominated for President of the European Central Bank (ECB)
- Found guilty of negligence for approving the payment of €404 million in taxpayers' money to the controversial French businessman Bernard Tapie. In 2007, as France's finance minister, she ordered arbitration in the Tapie case. The French state lost, and Lagarde decided not to appeal. The civil courts subsequently overturned the unusually generous award, declared the arbitration process and the deal fraudulent, and ordered Mr. Tapie to return the money. However, Lagarde was spared the one-year prison sentence that French law requires in such cases. According to the Guardian: "Detectives have spent years trying to establish whether the award was given to Tapi on the orders of Capcosi in exchange for business support for his successful presidential campaign in 2007."
- Lagarde's qualifications for the ECB president are also very questionable, because she is not an economist, does not have a doctorate in economics, and has never been a central banker, and these are unwritten rules when electing the head of the ECB, the Fed, etc.
3. Josep Borrell – proposed as EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
- The EU's number 1 diplomat must be capable of tact, good manners and truthful advocacy of European interests. But Borrell is known for his intemperate behavior, such as his angry behavior and stopping in the middle of an interview with Deutsche Welle when pressed about human rights violations in Catalonia, and his lack of diplomacy towards the US when he said they had no history and only massacred Indians.
- In 2018, Borel was fined 30 thousand euros for insider trading after selling shares of the company Abengoa just before it went bankrupt.
4. Charles Michel – elected President of the European Council
- He resigned as Prime Minister of Belgium and is now temporarily leading a caretaker government. Michel has shown an inability to deal with his coalition partners on the controversial UN migration pact. It will hardly be easier for him to lead discussions between 27/28 countries if he cannot deal with the three ethno-cultural areas in small Belgium.
EU citizens expected quality leaders who, through their experience and merit, would rise to important positions and lead the EU. But the EU is actually being used as a dumping ground for failed national ministers. Moreover, these individuals are not new – each of them has been in politics for 15-20 years, and their parents have also held high positions. This political plutocracy can only be a prerequisite for even greater polarization of European societies and deepening the lack of trust in the original idea of Europe – free trade, individual freedom and peace.
[1] We must add that according to the EU Treaties (Art. 17(7) TEU), the election of a new EC President is an exclusive prerogative of the European Council, and the results of the EP elections should only be taken into account. The much-vaunted process of leading candidates "Spitzenkandidaten" is not spelled out anywhere in EU law. Since the EU is not yet a state or a federal structure, the European Parliament for now only approves in practice the proposed candidate, although the term used is "elects". "Election" would imply more than one candidate subject(!) to selection by the EP.
