Watson kicks off EU election campaign

BERLIN: Graham Watson MEP has vowed to break the left-right coalition that dominates – and paralyses – Europe’s political development.

In a rousing speech to the ELDR congress in Berlin, the leader of the ALDE group in the European parliament said the campaign for the 2009 elections should start now.

He said that the Liberal group was in better shape than ever before, with 10 of the 27 EU commissioners from his political group, including Olli Rehn and Siim Kallas, both of whom also attended the congress.

Watson said he hoped a successful election campaign would allow the ALDE group in parliament to play a more central role, breaking the powerful EPP-PSE duopoly.

He was particularly scornful of the socialists in the European parliament, likening them to “poodles” for their apparent willingness to follow the centre right wherever it went.

The British MEP also stressed that 2009 would see a new European commission and the election of a new EU high representative for foreign policy, and that the Liberals would have strong candidates in every post.

“The EPP and PS have both made it clear in the past that if they win the majority in the European parliament they also want the president of the European commission to be their preferred candidate,” Watson said.

“We should do the same. European citizens want to feel that they are voting for an individual, not just a political group or ideology.”

Watson also said he believed that the party was moving more closely towards the idea of pan-European campaigning – on the ELDR platform rather than on that of the national parties.

“I think people are ready for more EU-wide campaigning. Europe makes its decisions based on ideology, not nationality, and people understand that.”
 
“Even the national parties in countries such as the UK and France, which have traditionally spurned the idea of EU campaigns, are coming round to it.”

“You only have to look at the size of the British Liberal Democrat delegation at this conference to see that there is a growing interest in EU issues in the national party.”

Both the main UK Liberal Democrat leadership contenders, Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne, made passionate speeches about the need for greater involvement in the EU by Britain at the national party conference last month, underscoring this apparently resurgent interest in the EU.

But Watson stressed that it remained the smaller countries “who see more clearly what the EU can and does do for them” that led the calls for an EU-wide Liberal Democrat campaign.

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