God bless Liz Truss! As confusing as this may sound – after all, she just resigned last week – her short and inglorious reign in Downing Street has offered salutary lessons to the rest of Europe.
There is no question here of rejoicing at her failure or that of her government. There is nothing for the EU to gloat over in the decline of a great country with which it is so closely linked.
So, what are the lessons to be learned from the Truss experiment?
The first is a rather trite observation but one worth remembering: Policies impact citizens’ lives. How many times have journalists and politicians heard people say: “I don’t vote; it’s useless” or “it won’t change anything”?
Truss is the latest example of how political mismanagement affects people’s lives.
The second lesson is particularly relevant at a time when the crisis of the liberal state and the uncertainties of war, energy, and rising prices are bringing populist leaders to the helm of various member states.
Italy is the latest example, a founding member of the EU, where Giorgia Meloni came to power on the back of promises and an election campaign that was consistently populist and sometimes Eurosceptic.
But Meloni seems to have understood the risks of managing the state while living up to her electoral promises. She is clearly straying from some of her pledges and has appointed mainstream figures to key positions, to the point of becoming, in the opinion of some, ‘more Draghian than Mario Draghi’.
Perhaps this transformation is overplayed, but the change between Meloni the candidate and Meloni the prime minister is stark.
In other words, she is doing everything to avoid a ‘Liz Truss scenario’ especially as her allies are set to demand maximum benefits in return for holding the government together. The question is how well she will stand up to them – which, by all accounts, she is now doing.
What about France? The fate of the Truss government should put the French on alert, or even worry them, unless they are being their usual self-centred and navel-gazing selves.
Because in France too, populist and unworkable programmes are flourishing. Marine Le Pen’s manifesto tops the list, and she is well on her way to running again in the 2027 presidential election, on a platform that may appeal but is not really fit for governing.
Just look at the European part of her programme: In addition to reducing France’s participation in the EU budget by €5 billion, she wants to restrict the social rights of European citizens in France and reinstate national border controls.
All these measures would put France in breach of its obligations and expose it to multiple infringement procedures – and the sanctions that go with them, not to mention the political isolation.
Frexit may have disappeared from her 2022 programme but the only alternative is not to maintain her promises.
And for her, difficulties are all the greater because, unlike Truss, Le Pen is far from having the management team she would need to run the country.
Moving on, Germany’s recent energy decisions also highlight the limits of simplism and demagoguery in politics.
The recent psychodrama over German nuclear power offers ample proof of this, as does Germany’s consequent dependence on Russian gas, a fact that has been highlighted since the war started.
It’s a risk that France narrowly escaped, with the left proposing a rapid exit from nuclear power.
Perhaps next time… But probably not, if politicians are paying attention to the “Liz Truss case” and take away valuable lessons about keeping, or not keeping, political promises, and above all, not making unreasonable ones in the first place.
The Roundup
The European Parliament’s co-rapporteurs of the AI Act have proposed expanding the European Commission’s revision powers to extend the list of high-risk systems and prohibited practices at a later stage.
As EU countries struggle to agree on energy performance targets for buildings, Paris and Berlin are now counting on the European Parliament’s backing to introduce more ambition into the EU’s green buildings law.
Eighty per cent of European Roma live at risk of poverty, with member states far from reaching the Roma equality targets set for 2030, according to a survey by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) published on Tuesday.
The EU is ‘fully committed’ to moving ahead with the stalling Mercosur free-trade deal with the South American bloc and should do so before “other actors intervene,” EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell said on Monday.
The French government has survived two no-confidence motions tabled by the left and right on Monday following a bid to pass the budget bill without a vote, instead relying on a clause in the constitution.
Last but not least, check out our weekly Transport Brief about Euro 7 rules.
Look out for…
- Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides delivers keynote speech to European Environmental Bureau event on Perspectives for a sustainable Food Systems Law.
- Enlargement Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi on mission in Türkiye, Wednesday-Friday.
- Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on official visit to Skopje.
- Commission Vice President Vĕra Jourová speaks via video conference at European Platform for Roma Inclusion conference.
Views are the author’s.
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Benjamin Fox]
Further Reading
Source: euractiv.com
