Cogito Ergo Non Serviam

Polish MEP Saves EFDD Status, UKIP's Election Funds

Friday, the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group within the European Parliament lost a member from Latvia that threatened its official recognition within the union's legislature. Under the rules, a group must have 25 members from 7 different countries to be recognized. The departure of Latvia's Iveta Grigule left it with plenty of members but from only 6 nations. Poland's Robert Iwaszkiewicz has just signed up with EFDD, and that means it's still a recognized grouping. Oddly, the person happiest about this is UKIP leader Nigel Farage, whose party would like to leave the EU altogether.

Mr. Iwaszkiewicz is a member of the Polish Congress of the New Right, led by Janusz Korwin-Mikke. Board of Deputies of British Jews vice-president Jonathan Arkush said: "The board is gravely concerned by reports that UKIP may sit in the same parliamentary grouping as a far-right Polish MEP in a bid to save its funding. Robert Iwaszkiewicz belongs to an extremist party whose leader has a history of Holocaust denial, racist remarks and misogynistic comments." Shadow Cabinet Office minister Michael Dugher said: "This shows once again that UKIP do not share the values of decent working people in Britain."

But Mr Farage said: "I have found nothing in this guy's background to suggest that he is a political extremist at all. He has joined our group to save us."

An official grouping gets extra financial support from the European Parliament's budget to carry on operations compared to a lone wolf MEP. Such a loner (known as "NI" in Brussels-speak) can expect about €43,000 per year to run his or her office. That is about half of what a member of a recognized group receives on average. Chris Morris of the BBC explained, "According to one source in the European Parliament, the EFDD group was due to get just over 4m euros (£3.2m; $5m) in funding in 2015 - more than 80,000 euros per MEP in the group."

In addition to these financial benefits, a member of a recognized group has other privileges. For instance, NI MEPs cannot table group amendments or motions for resolutions at full EP sessions. Only MEPs who belong to a recognized group can be head or deputy head of a delegation or committee.

For UKIP, however, the issue really is the money. With 24 of the EFDD's 48 members, it stands to gain about half of the money that the EFDD is to receive. Mr. Morris notes "that's more than 2m euros of revenue hanging in the balance. Half of it usually goes to the communications budget - a valuable resource in an election year."

Under the 2010 Fixed Term Parliaments Act, the next British general election is set for May 7, 2015. There are also local elections that day in England, except for London, while none are scheduled then for the other parts of the UK. This means that UKIP would have lost a couple of million euro, much of which could have gone to electioneering back home, since there is no rule against MEPs spending it in such a way. Moreover, UKIP is largely an English party, indeed, a little Englander party. This election should give it a great opportunity locally as well as nationally (if by nationally, one only means England).

UKIP seems to be enjoying an upswing in popularity. The most recent YouGov poll has UKIP third at 16%, and the party recently won its first by-election. Another poll, that may well be an outlier, from early in October gave the party 25%. That would mean 128 MPs according to those who know how to crunch those numbers.

What the party desperately needs now is money to keep its momentum going. While British politics are not quite the commercial enterprise the American variety has become, that only means that a small amount of cash is a big damn deal. Two million euro clearly could be the difference between being a force in Commons after May 7 and being another squabbling faction on the Eurosceptic right.

© Copyright 2014 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.



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