The stunning slap delivered to Europe's ruling elite in weekend EU elections is a sobering wake-up call for the newly-enlarged bloc, just as it faces crunch decisions on its future, according to analysts.
Specifically, the results of the European Parliament elections, including a surge in anti-EU forces, will ring alarm bells for countries planning to hold referendums on a first-ever constitution which EU leaders hope to finally agree on later this week.
"This does now place a lot of pressure on a number of leaders," said Alasdair Murray of the Center for European Reform, noting that Britain and Poland in particular faced huge tasks to sell the constitution to their people.
"Certainly if they hadn't woken up [before], then they really need to now," he added.
The polls for the European Parliament, the EU's only directly-elected body, saw defeats for ruling parties across the union, while handing huge gains to euroskeptics.
They were also marked by record low turnout, in particular in the 10 mostly ex-communist EU member states which joined the 25-nation bloc on May 1.
Some commentators said the ballot results underlined a wider crisis in European integration, whose half-century progress towards "ever-greater union" has been seriously challenged of late, including by last year's Iraq crisis.
Skeptics argued that the Iraq war, which opened up a chasm-like fault line down the middle of Europe between pro- and anti-war camps, demonstrated that the EU was nearing the breaking point as it battled to keep its 25 states on the same line.
"The European project is stalling and will require great persuasive efforts in order to take hold," said an editorialist for the right-wing Spanish daily El Mundo.
But a key specific problem is that the vote snub -- described by European Parliament President Pat Cox as the worst in the EU assembly's history -- comes as the EU is struggling to write a new rule book to cope with its ballooning size.
Today EU leaders will gather in Brussels hoping finally to hammer out a constitution for the bloc, which they say is essential to avoid decision-making gridlock within its institutions.
That will be quite a task. They have been talking about it for over two years and a first attempt at striking a deal last December ended in a fiasco.
But even if EU leaders reach an agreement, the new historic text can only come into force once ratified by all 25 member states -- including a handful expected to hold referendums.
Concern among pro-EU forces centers in particular on Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair staged a dramatic U-turn in April and agreed that his countrymen should have "the final say" over the constitution.
Many said at the time that he was taking a huge gamble, given Britain's notoriously euroskeptic population. Commentators said this week that the EU polls, which saw the UK Independence Party surge to almost 17 percent of the vote, had revealed an even deeper anti-EU hostility than had been suspected.
EU Parliament head Cox was blunt about the significance of the weekend poll result.
"This is especially important as a wake-up call for those leaders in those states who propose to hold referendums on the constitutional treaty," said Cox immediately after the scale of the euroskeptic vote became apparent.
"The message is now clear. A minority offer a particular view and challenge the majority to come good on their convictions and to bring their convictions to a wider public," Cox said.
Murray agreed that the polls only underlined the scale of the task facing Blair and other leaders seeking to persuade euroskeptic populations to back them at the ballot box.
"Now they know its going be very tough," he said. "It's a major uphill struggle."
In a stark reminder of China’s persistent territorial overreach, Pema Wangjom Thongdok, a woman from Arunachal Pradesh holding an Indian passport, was detained for 18 hours at Shanghai Pudong Airport on Nov. 24 last year. Chinese immigration officials allegedly informed her that her passport was “invalid” because she was “Chinese,” refusing to recognize her Indian citizenship and claiming Arunachal Pradesh as part of South Tibet. Officials had insisted that Thongdok, an Indian-origin UK resident traveling for a conference, was not Indian despite her valid documents. India lodged a strong diplomatic protest, summoning the Chinese charge d’affaires in Delhi and demanding
With the Year of the Snake reaching its conclusion on Monday next week, now is an opportune moment to reflect on the past year — a year marked by institutional strain and national resilience. For Taiwan, the Year of the Snake was a composite of political friction, economic momentum, social unease and strategic consolidation. In the political sphere, it was defined less by legislative productivity and more by partisan confrontation. The mass recall movement sought to remove 31 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators following the passage of controversial bills that expanded legislative powers and imposed sweeping budget cuts. While the effort
When Hong Kong’s High Court sentenced newspaper owner Jimmy Lai (黎智英) to 20 years in prison this week, officials declared that his “heinous crimes” had long poisoned society and that his punishment represented justice restored. In their telling, Lai is the mastermind of Hong Kong’s unrest — the architect of a vast conspiracy that manipulated an otherwise contented population into defiance. They imply that removing him would lead to the return of stability. It is a politically convenient narrative — and a profoundly false one. Lai did not radicalize Hong Kong. He belonged to the same generation that fled from the Chinese
There is a story in India about a boy called Prahlad who was an ardent worshipper of Lord Narayana, whom his father considered an enemy. His son’s devotion vexed the father to the extent that he asked his sister, Holika, who could not be burned by fire, to sit with the boy in her lap and burn him to death. Prahlad knew about this evil plan, but sat in his aunt’s lap anyway. His faith won, as he remained unscathed by the fire, while his aunt was devoured by the flames. In some small way, Prahlad reminds me of Taiwan
RSS