Notes on the huge downside to UKIP joining a pan European party

On the day Cameron returns from Brussels having agreed to a de facto EU Treasury crying triumph I have saved the UK £400mn although we still have to pay an extra £400 mn I reproduce below Tim Congdon's notes on UKIP's similar triumph bought by Bloom for a similar huge strategic give away.

Bloom and his boss Farage are quite happy to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage as it says in the Bible!

The funding of pan-European political parties

The following notes have been sent to me by Mr. Richard Teather, senior lecturer in tax law at Bournemouth University, to whom I am most grateful.

1) Pan-European political parties (or “Europarties”) are meant to be funded "from the general budget of the European Union", although funds are actually administered by the European Parliament.

2) Europarties are alliances of national political parties.  Although theoretically individuals could join a Europarty directly, they generally do not.

3) Europarties overlap with, but are different from, the "groups" within the European Parliament. (Thus, before 1999 the Conservative Party was not a member of the European People's Party as a Europarty, but it was a member of the EPP Group within the European Parliament.)

4) The party must meet various conditions to be approved as a “Europarty”, the main ones being:
  a) it must have political representation (at MEP, MP or regional assembly level) in at least a quarter of EU Member States [i.e., in seven states];
  b) it must "observe, in particular in its programme and in its activities, the principles on which the European Union is founded, namely the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law"; and
  c) it must "have participated in elections to the European Parliament, or have expressed the intention to do so".

5) Funding of 10.6 million euros per year* is available and to be shared between all the recognised Europarties.  Some funding (1.6 million euros) goes equally to each recognised Europarty, but the remaining 9 million euros is divided up according to the number of MEPs each Europarty has.  It is therefore very valuable for a Europarty to have MEP members. At a rough calculation, each MEP member must be worth almost 15,000 euros p.a. to the Europarty. (* The number relates to 2008 and is probably much higher in 2011.)

6) Restrictions are imposed on what a Europarty can do with its funds. In particular funds can only be used for pan-European campaigns, not for "direct or indirect funding of national political parties or candidates", and funds cannot be used "to finance referenda campaigns". 

7) Additional funding of 5 million euros (again, the figure relates to 2008) for European “foundations” where “foundations” are think-tanks linked to each Europarty.

8) A Europarty based on the current EFD group (which has 32 members) would get funding of almost 600,000 euros p.a. plus funding of around 250,000 euros for an associated "foundation". 

These notes make sense given what I have heard elsewhere about the funding of pan-European political parties, but raise further questions. In fact, the whole subject is puzzling.

On the face of it, the EFD group would pick up a little under one million euros a year if all its constituent parties – including the UK Independence Party – decided to form a Europarty. Frankly, this is chickenfeed relative to

i.         the larger issues raised by the UK’s membership of the European Union and

ii.       the sums of money routinely discussed in British political fund-raising.

I am astonished that anyone involved in the leadership of UKIP could want to convert the party into a Europarty for such a trivial amount.

True enough, the basis of allocation between the notional Europarties is such as to encourage “groups” to convert themselves into “Europarties”. The European Union imposes a limit on the total that can be spent on Europarties. In other words, the trough has only a finite amount of swill inside it. If one group in the European Parliament does not convert itself into a Europarty (such as the proposed “European Alliance”), the amount of swill available for the other groups (i.e., those which do convert themselves) is higher than would otherwise be the case. Hence, the two sentences in the Bonici e-mail (which I sent out yesterday), “The European Alliance will help parties dissiminate [sic – she meant ‘disseminate’] information by using European funds available to us, and if we don't apply the other Parties/Alliances such as the PES, EPP, Greens etc... will have the money which is allocated to us to share between them. Basically it is like giving ammunition to your enemy for free.”

Nevertheless, it remains unclear to me what advantage UKIP would get from belonging to a Europarty such as the proposed “European Alliance”. The 600,000 euros (plus or minus 250,000 euros) could not be used for a specifically British political purpose in this country, but must instead be part of a pan-European political programme of some sort. Since the UK Independence Party is the only significant political force in the European Parliament committed to its nation’s withdrawal from the EU, how could such a pan-European political programme be to UKIP’s benefit?

Interestingly, Europarty money cannot be used for the purposes of promoting referendums. Indeed, this seems to be specifically identified as an unacceptable destination of Europarty money. There is an obvious - indeed hilarious – discrepancy between item 6 in Richard Teather’s notes above, and item 4, with its assertion that the EU “is founded” on “the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law". Democracy? Oh, yes, the EU is founded on the principle of democracy, until Europe’s peoples vote against further European integration. When any of Europe’s peoples vote that way, the EU and its related “political class” ignores their democratic verdicts. Remember how the EU’s politicians and bureaucrats overrode referendum results in Ireland, France, the Netherlands, etc.

Since any money arising from Europarty status cannot be used to promote UKIP in the UK, I cannot see any purpose in seeking Europarty status. My view is that UKIP should have nothing to do with Europarties.

Tim Congdon

28^th October, 2010