|
EU: Multinational Lobbyists have taken over |
The Foire aux Fromages et aux Vins in Coulommiers, an attractive town
on the undulating Brie plateau an hour east of Paris, is a fabulously
French affair: a monumental marquee, hordes of happy visitors and more
than 350 stalls laden with Gallic bounty.
Among the cheeses are
tomme from Savoie, crottins de chèvre from Aveyron, and great roundels
of brie from nearby Meaux, alongside case upon case of chablis,
Pouilly-Fumé, Nuits-Saint-Georges. And today, in amiable conversation
with a local cheesemaker, there is Aymeric Chauprade, academic, author,
consultant, and leading candidate in the
European elections for Marine Le Pen's freshly fumigated Front National.
Here's
the problem, explains an immaculately suited Chauprade, who besides
degrees in maths and international law has a doctorate in political
science from the Sorbonne: all this – he gestures around him as the
throng prods, nibbles, squeezes, swills and swallows – is at risk.
"American farmers and 'big food' will rule; our regulations and
standards will count for nothing," Chauprade continues. "This is an EU
that has no respect for national specificities; it's an EU of
bureaucrats, of ever greater normalisation, in the service of big banks
and corporations. It is not the EU we want."
Understandably, this message plays well here. But not only here.
Across
the EU, insurgent parties from right and left are poised to cause major
upset, finishing at or near the top of their respective national votes.
As a result, rejectionist parties look set to send their largest
contingent of anti-European MEPs ever to the European parliament:
perhaps 25% of the assembly's 751 members. (Down from 766 in the current
parliament.)
Disillusion with the EU, certainly, is at
record highs across the continent.
The surveys are unequivocal: 60% of Europeans "tend not to trust" the
EU now, against 32% in 2007; in 20 of the 28 member states a clear
majority feels the EU is going "in the wrong direction"; for the first
time, Eurosceptics outnumber supporters by 43% to 40%.
"In our
analysis, the real turning point came in the late 1980s, when the big
industrialists started laying down the plans for the future of Europe,"
says Dennis de Jong, a leading MEP from the impeccably leftwing but
fiercely Euro-critical Dutch Socialist party. "Until that moment, the EU
seemed like a logical post-war development. But industry, not ordinary
people, has driven much of what's happened since, from opening internal
borders to the euro.
This EU – the EU of multinationals, of
harmonisation – makes people uneasy. People like difference. They like
identity."
Read more: The enemy invasion: Brussels braced for influx of Eurosceptics in EU polls | World news | The Guardian