Rumpuy Pumpy is EU's numpty

A rather predictable newspaper welcome for the new EU President this morning.

The prime minister of Belgium, a virtual nonentity on the world stage, was confirmed in the hugely powerful new job in a unanimous stitch-up by 27 national leaders over dinner in Brussels,

says the Express adding

Herman Van Rompuy's massive pay package, revealed yesterday in leaked EU documents, will make him the highest paid leader in the Western world, earning more than US President Barack Obama.

The EU stitch-up: Low-profile Labour crony made foreign minister so fanatical Belgian federalist can be President says the Mail

The Sun has a classic headline Rumpuy Pumpy is EU's numpty

EUROPE'S obscure new President Herman Van Rompuy was celebrating his £320,000-a-year job last night - together with Baroness Ashton, the equally little-known British peer named as EU foreign minister.

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2738610/Herman-Van-Rompuy-is-first-President-of-EU.html#ixzz0XNYFnqKL

But even the more European leaning newspapers are not happy.The Gaurdian shares a headline with the Mail calling it a stich up

and the Independent is cool to the idea

Following a trade-off that managed to juggle the competing demands from Europe's left and right political blocs, from the region's big and small states and from those calling for a gender-balanced ticket, the victorious couple were formally anointed at a dinner of the European Union's 27 leaders.

The Times quite simply begins by saying

A Belgian federalist and a former chairwoman of Hertfordshire Health Authority were ushered into Europe’s two grandest jobs last night as it stumbled on to the world stage.

Loving the right wing press' front pages this morning

According to the Express

BRITAIN was last night frogmarched into a miserable new era of meddling Brussels rule after the final remaining resistance to the hated Lisbon Treaty collapsed.

Whilst the Sun says that

THE last hope of blocking a new European constitution was snuffed out last night - the final kick in the teeth after Labour's betrayal of Britain

Read more:

Some reasons why the media is not interested in Europe

Today if you are not already aware is the European election.

I shall at some point be dragging myself off to vote but it is interesting that apart from its impact on the Brown government and the BNP contribution,the media has generally ignored it.

Over at the Director's blog there is a a guest blogger who tries to interpret just why the media is not interested.

Dr Bart Cammarts first notes that

Having checked several media in other European countries, such as Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Spain, the campaigns there are in full swing with extra space in newspapers dedicated to the EU elections, a special banner on the front page of the websites ofhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif public broadcasters and newspapers, special daily election shows on television with features and live debates between leaders of the different parties, etc

but not in the UK

And the reasons? Wel partly due to the fact that we are distracted by the expenses scandal and the survival of Gordon Brown but also it seems that to focus on the smaller parties is not seen to be the responsibility of mainstream media.

As Dr Cammarts writes,

Apart from the Greens, many of these smaller parties are, to put it mildly, not very popular amongst many media. On the one hand the focus on the dogfight between New Labour and the Tories, with the LibDems as the third dog in the kennel, does not leave much room or space for smaller parties and alternative ideas in mainstream media. But on the other hand, a debate on Europe and European issues with parties such as the BNP and UKip inevitably invokes the ugly combination of populism and nationalism which if we are honest does not sit well in British mainstream (media) culture either.

Fr me though the main reason is that as a nation we are Euro sceptics and as a result the media would be taking a great risk in providing too much space for the hustings.

500 European newspapers to choose

Via Journalism .co.uk

A site that I haven't come across before,the European Journalism Aggregator site that now has over 500 newspapers from across Europe feeding onto its site.

From the Bristol Evening News to the Westmorland Gazette in the UK and from Der Standard in Austria to Upsala Nya Tidning in Sweden

The site is updated every 20 minutes

Papers line up over the Euro Debate

Nothing divides the National press more than the European Union and thsi morning is no exception as Parliament votes not to have a referendum on the European treaty.

The usual suspects line up on both sides.

The Mail with a front page headline

A shaming day for democracy

The British people were finally denied a say on the EU constitution last night after a momentous day in the Commons.
MPs voted against holding a referendum on the biggest shift of power to Brussels for at least a decade.
This was despite pledges from both Labour and the Liberal Democrats that voters would have the chance to decide the issue.

Its leader describing the Day that Democracy died

The Sun says the Eu referendum is Brown bread

The “listening PM” ignored the demands of nine out of ten British voters and denied them the say he promised.
Mr Brown broke Labour’s 2005 general election pledge as he ordered his foot soldiers to reject a referendum.
However, 29 of his MPs rebelled and voted for a national poll.
Mealy-mouthed Lib Dems also broke their pledge to give the nation a say on the Lisbon Treaty.

And its editorial describes

it was cowardice that made Gordon Brown break his word over the EU Treaty referendum.
He reneged on his promise to hold one because he was scared of losing.
As a result, Mr Brown demeaned himself and damaged democracy

The Telegraph hasn't given up hope

Referendum campaigners admitted they had suffered a setback. But they refused to give up and said they were pinning their hopes on the House of Lords taking on the Commons and backing a referendum.
William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said after the vote that he hoped peers in the Upper House would reverse the Commons vote and ensure Labour and the Lib Dems honoured their election promises to hold a referendum.

Whilst affiriming in its leading article that

In an unworthy display of political cynicism, the Government ordered its own MPs to vote against one of the manifesto pledges on which they were all elected.

The Mirror supports the Prime Minister describing how Gordon Brown wins historic victory on EU treaty

The PM told the Tories: "When will you wake up to the fact that 3.5 million jobs are dependent on our membership of the EU, that 700,000 companies are trading with Europe, that 60 per cent of our trade is with Europe?"

Its editorial telling us that

Eurosceptics last night suffered a devastating defeat from which they will never recover.
By rejecting a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon by 63 votes, the House of Commons passed a point of no return

The Independent describes

Victory for the Government in last night's vote on whether there ought to be a national referendum on the Lisbon treaty was the right result adding that

it should be quite clear to the objective observer that this treaty does not represent a shift in Britain's relationship with the European Union worthy of a referendum, no matter what the die-hard Eurosceptic lobby maintains.

Outbreak of EU Xmas cheer at the Mail

A remarkable occurrence in the papers this morning.I had to look twice but the Mail is actually praising some EC legislation.

Yes

Shoppers get £1bn Christmas present after EU tells Mastercard to scrap illegal fees says the paper

Credit card companies have been told to slash the fees they charge shops for authorising sales.
The EU ruling should mean a fall in prices of up to £1billion a year in the UK.
Tesco alone pays £100million a year to the banks for processing credit and debit cards.
Brussels Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said she was delivering "an early Christmas present to consumers".

And not once but twice as its leader column praises the proposed rules on health care

You can bet your bottom euro that UK taxpayers will end up out of pocket, paying for British patients' treatment abroad while foreigners take advantage of "free" care on the NHS.
But couldn't there also be a positive side?
For the first time, NHS patients would be able to shop around for health care all over Europe. A competitive market would start dictating the cost of different treatments

.


It must be the spirit of Xmas because the Times also has a positive EU story

Luxury car prices to soar as EU cracks down on exhaust fumes

With several commissioners dissenting, the European Commission set a four-year phase-in period from 2012 for fines on manufacturers whose fleets exceed an average of 120 g/km of the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

Express Watch

The Express leaves us in doubt about what it feels about the Lisbon treaty and its feelings for Gordon Brown

GRINNING Gordon Brown sold Britain out to Europe last night by agreeing to a massive expansion of Brussels power.
Despite having promised the British people a referendum, the Prime Minister put his signature to a new EU treaty without seeking the consent of the public.

Anti Europe-the usual suspects

With Gordon Brown belatedly travelling to Lisbon to sign the EU treaty,the anti European press are gunning agaisnt him this morning.

The Sun has a picture of the PM waving a white flag under the headline

Brown gives up on migrant control

GORDON Brown signs the hated EU treaty TODAY — despite an eleventh-hour bombshell that it means surrendering control of Britain’s immigration policy.
The warning was issued to the PM last night as he prepared to wave the white flag over our right to make our own laws.
Just hours before Mr Brown flew to Lisbon to hand over huge chunks of Britain’s power for good, it emerged tens of thousands of foreigners facing the boot from the UK will be winners

.

The Mail takes the same position

Brown signs EU Treaty as experts warn Britain will surrender control of immigration

Thousands of failed asylum seekers will now be able to take their cases to the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg where the final say will be handed to unselected bureaucrats in Brussels.

Not just about the square banana

One of the few occassions when the British Press covers hard news from abroad aopart from famine,disasters and war is in its covergae of the EU.

That was the opening gambit of our international journalism lecture this morning.

Why is this the case.Well the press can point to the economic argument whereby there is a market for it.People are anti EU and thus want to hear about the sleaze and the beaurocracy.Certainly some of it is business led,no more so that Murdoch who feels threatened by the organisations zeal for the free market.

The stories also exhibit some of the dominant news values such as negativity,sleaze and scandal.

Should we care?Possibly we should.Whatever we think about the EU ,it does have an enormous influence over our lives.Employment law and agriculture are tow such areas that influence the way we live.

Theefore the press surely have a responsibilty to report and accurately reflect what is going on in the cooridors of Brussels.People are entitled to this information on the basis of the democratic process

Kelner stands by his decision

So how Independent is the Independent?

Earlier in the week it carried a front page lead giving 10 myths about the EU treaty.In a earlier post on Eu coverage,I said that the Indpendent had on that day bucked the trend on EU coverage

I was wrong as it turns out that the 10 points were lifted from a government document as disclosed in the Spectator on Thursday

Helen O'Brien writes that

They looked curiously familiar to me. And then I figured out why. The piece is an almost word-for-word reprint of a Foreign Office briefing note – but without any attribution that that is the source.

adding

Times are hard at the Indie, but this is ridiculous. For an “internationalist” paper they have made some other rather odd decisions in recent times – like not having a full time Brussels correspondent anymore. The paper seems to have decided that it loves the EU, but wouldn’t want to spoil the romance by finding out anything nasty about it.

I see that Simon Kelner is defending his decision,speaking to Media Guardian he says

I am completely unapologetic about our attempt to explode the myths that have been allowed to develop in what has been an extremely one-sided debate
What we printed was a collection of facts, which our political editor independently verified.The source doesn't really make a material difference. What matters is whether those facts are accurate or not. And no one, as far as I can see, is doubting the truth of what we printed.

Back to Europe bashing

The anti Europe firmly attached their colours to the flagpole this morning.

No more so than the Telegraph which carries a leader on its front page

The Prime Minister is ready to defy the British people by refusing them a vote on the EU Reform Treaty despite a new poll for The Daily Telegraph showing almost seven out of ten want a referendum.an exclusive YouGov poll shows that 69 per cent of voters want a say. When the same question was put by YouGov two weeks ago, 64 per cent wanted a referendum. In a further blow to the Prime Minister's authority, the survey shows 57 per cent of Labour supporters want a vote.

.

Whilst the Sun tells us of

BRITAIN'S £6B OIL GIVEWAY TO THE EU

BRITAIN will be forced to surrender its oil stocks to the EU under the new treaty – costing taxpayers £6BILLION.
European Commission chiefs will be able to order the UK to increase its oil reserves in case of emergencies in OTHER nations.
It would mean Britain would have to hand over stocks to EU states suffering an energy crisis.

Its leader declaring

MORE than 600 roaring, foam-flecked MPs yesterday gave two fingers to Parliamentary democracy.




Gordon Brown is set to fly out for the great European Union cave in says the Mail

And just to remind us of the evils of Europe,the paper runs the story that

One in four Germans think Nazi rule was not all bad, poll reveals

Only the pro European Independent takes a stand in the other camp,its front page giving us 10 MYTHS ABOUT THE EU TREATY

Its leader adding

The case for the Reform Treaty is unimpeachable. Structural change was necessitated by enlargement – a policy that Britain enthusiastically embraced. The treaty itself enshrines nothing that threatens this country's autonomy of action at home or abroad. Its chief effect should be to help the EU to function better, with more accountability. There is nothing wrong with that.

The Sun says

With all the other papers looking towards a possible general election the Sun wears its heart on its sleeve this morning with its front page demand for a referendum on the Eu Constitution.

It was probably only a matter of time before Mr Murdoch nailed his colours to the mask.I wander whether this issue alone may now delay an election until 2009.

Here's a taster of the Churchillian issue

Wake up Britain! Our proud nation faces the greatest threat as an independent sovereign state since the dark days of World War II.
We won that titanic struggle against the roaring guns of Nazi Germany.
But we risk losing an equally crucial battle without a shot fired or a voice raised.
Unless we start that fight today, Gordon Brown will sign and ratify the EU Constitution — the blueprint for a United States of Europe — within weeks.
We will no longer have control over relations with other countries, the defence of our nation or the right to run our own police and law courts.

With the media already at full frenzy over an anarchic and lawless Britian,this wasn't the week for details of the ruling on the killer of Philip Lawrence.

The press have gone to town on the ruling focusing initially on the comments of the headteachers widow,and then opening up the debate about the country's signing up to the European convention on human rights.

The Sun in its leader today perhaps reflecting the views of the silent majority when it says

BRITISH justice is kinder to a murdering Italian thug than it is to his victim’s widow.
Frances Lawrence has seen Learco Chindamo, who killed her husband Philip, win a Human Rights battle to stay in Britain.
She had to hear the bombshell news on her car radio because nobody took the trouble to tell her.

Of all the papers though it is only the Independent which asks whether there is a case for redemption on its front page

But should Learco Chindamo be given a second chance in British society?

Prison reports show that the 26-year-old Londoner has made excellent progress and in many ways has become a model example ofcustodial rehabilitation. Those who have worked with him during his sentence regard him as a model prisoner who is very unlikely to re-offend.
His solicitor, Nigel Leskin, said last night: "He is a genuinely reformed person and one of the best prisoners the prison has had. He knows he made a terrible mistake and regrets it very much."

Not wishing to sound like the preverbial lefty liberal,the media I believe needs to re examine some of its coverage.Indeed the reason cited by the boy's solicitor for the hearing to have been heard in private was that when on day release last year,he was persued by the media.

For those that remember,the stabbing of Philip Lawrence,a headteacher intervening in a case of bullying, was an awful crime and the courts at that time set the perameters for his sentance.

If the boy has been rehabilitated during his prison term,why should he be deported to a country of which he has little or no ties and doesnt speak the language?

I qusetin whether this is directed at European human rights rather than the individual concerned

Still "up yours Delors"?

It would not be unfair to say that the National Press' relationship with the EU has not been the best over the past 50 years.Nobody will forget the famous Sun headline of "Up yours Delors"or the many stories about straight Banana's and cucumbers that have littered the pages.

On the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome,an event that Harold McMillian thought beneath the dignity of the British public,how are our nationals treating that institution.

Middle England still has many concerns.

The Express is running the results of a survey that says

HALF OF EU HATE EURO

The survey of 17,000 people for British think-tank Open Europe show­ed 49 per cent of people in the 13 euro countries want to get rid of it.Majorities in just six countries want to continue with the currency.And the poll said that in 11 states without the euro, people were against it.

50 years of surrender to the EU says the Mail

It's article refers to the extravagent cost of the celebrations in Berlin this evening

But

For years now, most of the economies of the EU, burdened by an ever greater weight of regulations from Brussels, have been performing significantly worse than those of their main competitors across the rest of the world, notably the U.S., China and India.

In many of the areas which are now subject to centralised EU control, from fishing and agriculture to international trade, it is scarcely a well-kept secret that the EU's record, characterised by massive bureaucratic overregulation, has been dismal.

They have the sense that they are now ruled by a 'political class', made up of bureaucrats and politicians who are no longer in any way democratically accountable; a vast, shadowy apparatus of government over which we no longer have any say.
The result is that, not just in Britain but all over the EU, people feel alienated from those who rule over them, in a way which, in countries which still like to think of themselves as democracies, is quite unprecedented.

Fair and reasoned argument? Yes quite possibly

To the Telegraph that reports on the Berlin summit,

Tony Blair will join Europe's leaders today to declare, amid great pomp and ceremony, that "we the citizens" are ready for an EU Constitution Mark II within two years.
A "Berlin declaration" is the centrepiece of a weekend of grand and lavish celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the EU's original Treaty of Rome.

Charles Moore writes

Happy birthday to EU, happy . . .? where he lists a weeks worth of bearocracy including

A British farmer is forced to destroy his £500,000 herd of cattle under EU rules because of irregularities between their passports and their ear-tags.

But remembering

The original Six have become 27, and, although most people are not thrilled by membership, the queue to join has always been bigger than the number determined to stay out. As for a queue to leave, there isn't one.
All the member states are democratic, all are at least reasonably prosperous, and all, within their borders, are at peace. We critics get our tone wrong if we make comparison with the Soviet Union, the Third Reich or even the brief empire of Napoleon. There is, behind it all, some goodwill, some public consent, and therefore some legitimacy. We are not confronting enemies, but misguided friends.
They - the Euro-enthusiasts - have failed to get the masses to sing the Ode to Joy, but we, the British Euro-sceptics, have not galvanised our own nation with our devotion to a sovereign Parliament. Most British people agree that this country would do better to retain and recover its own powers, but not very hotly.

The Indy was launched on a pro European platform and has deviated litle over its 20 year life.A front page fom earlier in the week listed 50 good things that have come out of European membership.Indeed its fornt page lead looks at a joint European role to tackle the Darfur issue.

Like the Telegraph it straight reports the summit

Berlin Declaration marks EU's birthday

Though the text has been shorn of some of its most controversial elements, Ms Merkel set alarm bells ringing among Eurosceptics with an interview in the German newspaper Bild Zeitung in which she burnished her credentials as a supporter of European integration. She said: "Within the EU itself, we will have to move closer to establishing a common European army. The EU Commission will become better able to act on the basis of clearly regulated responsibilities.

In the comment pages though Dominic Lawson asks

Is 50 years of the European Union cause for celebration or regret? and discusses

There is the other side of Europe, the one that seeks to run our lives rather than set us free.

The Guardian runs a feature by Ian Traynor asking

Prosperity, peace and unity - and a midlife crisis painting a picture of A Europe with the advantages of 50 years of integration set against the past

"I'm a beneficiary of the EU," says Jaroslaw Janczak, a young Polish political scientist in Slubice, working at a university in Frankfurt an der Oder. "But when I told my grandmother I was going to work in Germany, she thought I was in danger, I was being punished for something. They went through the war, and for that older generation, Germany is still the embodiment of evil."

The Times reports from Berlin

EU looks to the next 50 years – and an army?

Angela Merkel got Europe’s 50th birthday weekend off to a controversial start yesterday when she said that the creation of a European army should be a key goal in its next 50 years.
The German Chancellor added hastily that she did not want to steer Europe towards a federal superstate. But her words ignited a simmering row about the relationship between Nato and the growing number of small EU military missions.
Mrs Merkel said that peace could not be taken for granted despite Western Europe’s longest period without internal conflict and suggested that a common army could help to bind countries closer together. Her suggestion was shot down immediately by Britain, which strongly opposes the creation of a rival organisation to Nato, although it does support the limited EU joint rapid reaction units sent to help out in crisis areas such as Aceh, hit by the 2005 tsunami.

So have we got past the Delors reporting.It is quite noticeable that neither the Sun nor the Mirror pay much attention to the celebrations in Berlin.Taking out the Express,the papers generally have given a balanced discusion.

Recognising the positives that Europe offers but wary of further integration