Is video of MEPs slapping reporter being censored?

The plot is thickening.

On Tuesday Open Europe posted on its blog and YouTube account a video of  GeenStijl reporter @TomStaal being pushed about and slapped by MEPs after he confronts them for allegedly 'signing on and sodding off,' or for collecting a €300 daily allowance from the European Parliament without actually doing any work.

The video since went viral, getting thousands of views in only a few hours. But this morning, we were surprised to discover that the video had been blocked and removed. Reason? Copyright infringement claim.

Screenshot of our 'Sign In Sod off' video being blocked on YouTube for copyright reasons by R.T.I.

But the story gets stranger. It’s not GeenStijl that’s behind the removal – quite the contrary, in fact –  Geenstijl wants maximum exposure. Instead it's Italian mass media company R.T.I.

Tom Staal has confirmed to us that Geenstijl has absolutely no affiliation with R.T.I, and that they have no idea why their video is being blocked –  and Staal isn’t happy.

So what in the world is going on here? Well, we’re baffled, and plead for help from any savvy readers informed about copyright issues. But here’s a theory. R.T.I’s chief executive is Silvio Berlusconi's son, Pier Silvio.

The R.T.I  copyright claim happens at the precise moment where the face of Italian MEP Raffaele Baldassarre appears. And it also happens happens that Baldassarre is a member of Silvio Berlusconi's 'Il Popolo della Libertà' party.

Geenstijl has responded on its blog and it's not mincing its words:

Just precisely what is going on we don’t know...but that ***** of a Silvio Berlusconi has apparently succeeded in removing Tom Staal's report from Brussels from YouTube...Uploaders which have submitted a copy of the video on their channel are all suffering from bizarre vague copyright claims. There are even copies circulating where only the scene of the aggressive Raffaele Baldassarre is being blocked. That’s all very coincidental. Hey Silvio Berlusconi, stay clear off our internet! A very big vaffanculo! 

Coincidence? You decide.

Update 18.45: Tom Staal tells us that Martin Schulz, European Parliament President, may be launching an investigation against him and Daniel van der Stoep (@Dvanderstoep), the Dutch MEP who took him into the EP.

Update 19.50: From @BrunoBrussels :

'I'm not aware of investigation' into @tomstaal says @MartinSchulz who defends rights of camera crews to film in EP
— Bruno Waterfield (@BrunoBrussels) June 27, 2013

Update 10.00 (1 July): We contested R.T.I's copyright claim to the 'sign in, sod off' video on our YouTube account, on the basis that it is owned by Geenstijl who gave us permission to use it. The block on the video was subsequently removed.

Update 14.00 (1 July): Geenstijl has formally written to Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament to complain about the behaviour of the MEPs in question.

Commission's draft budget for 2014: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

While all eyes will be on George Osborne and Ed Balls this afternoon, the EU Commission has slipped out its draft annual budget for 2014. This is important as it the first budget to be drawn up using the reduced expenditure limits (or 'ceilings' in EU-speak) agreed by David Cameron and other EU leaders in February. However, the European Parliament so far refused to sign off on these, so they remain provisional for the moment (more on this later). Here is our breakdown of the content of the budget according to the good, the bad and the ugly, continuing an earlier OE tradition.

The Good

Compared with 2013, there's a cut to the 2014 EU budget. The headline figure is a cut in both commitments and payments from €151.6bn and €144.5bn down to €142bn and €135.9bn respectively. This is a 6% cut in commitments and a 5.8% cut in payments. This is clearly a win for David Cameron who was mandated by parliament to secure a real terms cut in spending, but is also not all what it seems to be (see below). Next year's savings would be even lower if not for the fact some spending - such as the new €6bn youth unemployment initiative - is being 'front loaded' onto this years' budget.

Some particularly wasteful spending has been cut, for example the commitments on 'Communication actions' defined as spending aimed at "increasing the interest, understanding and involvement of citizens in the EU integration and policy-making process" has been cut by 20%.

The Bad

Somewhat bizarrely, the above savings have only materialised because a lot of money has been added onto the 2013 annual budget via a number of 'amending budgets' (a favourite tool for the EP and Commission) - increasing the total from €132.8bn to €144.5bn. If not for this additional cash, we would have seen an overall increase in 2014. While some of this additional spending can be justified - for example to accommodate Croatia - many believe that the bulk has been requested by the Commission simply to use up all the available money left under the current long-term budget rather than because it corresponds to an actual need for funds.

The European Parliament has made payment in full of this amount a pre-condition for agreeing to the 2014-2020 budget, and so far most of it has been pledged by member states (although the UK was recently outvoted on committing an additional €7.3bn of the additional funds requested as annual budgets are decided by QMV, not unanimity). In total, €3.9bn remains outstanding, so taking this off the total means we only have a reduction of 3.2%.

The Ugly

The substance of the budget remains broadly unreformed with the bulk of the budget still going towards distorting farm subsidies and regional development subsidies for wealthier member states (although the proportion of the latter has been reduced). In fairness overall spending on the CAP has decreased by 2.3%, but the amount going on farm subsidies tied to land ownership or production levels (the new CAP rules allow some re-coupling) will go up by 0.3%.

Administrative spending is set to go up again by 1.5% overall. The table below gives the full breakdown:

• While the drop in spending on European Schools is welcome, many of the other headings see increases at a time when the EU should be busting a gut to cut down on administrative spending, as member states have been for the last couple of years.
• The Commission has made some cut backs but due to salary increases of 0.9% it sees a 0.1% increase (or 0.8% increase when including cost of Croatia's accession). 
• Spending on EU officials' pensions has also increased by 7.2% due to the number of staff retiring ahead of the entry into force of the new Staff Regulations. This highlights the need to make further and more urgent progress on making EU expenditure on former officials' pensions sustainable.
• While the Court of Auditors, an institution that often flags up EU waste and mismanagement, sees its budget cut by 4.2%, the European Parliament sees its budget go up by 1.7% despite the fact that it has not committed to reducing its headcount unlike other institutions. This news comes the day after we highlighted a video of two MEPs pushing and shoving a journalist who had the nerve to challenge them for allegedly signing in to claim to their daily allowance before 'sodding off' straight away.
• Spending on the EU's 'decentralised agencies' which form the bulk of the EU's 52 quangos are set to receive a 3.8% increase while the European and Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions see a 0.2% cut and a 0.3% increase respectively despite the fact that these organisations are outdated, with no evidence of their usefulness whatsoever.
• While expenditure on the EU's external policies (aid and development) sees a fairly substantial cut of 8.2%, for some reason the institution that manages this expenditure - Baroness Ashton's External Action Service - has been awarded a 3.2% increase. In contrast the FCO sees an 8% cut in todays spending review.

The deal all rests on the European Parliament agreeing to the 2014 - 2020 MFF otherwise the 2014 budget will revert to 2013 ceilings + 2% for inflation. While this would not be an awful result for the UK mainly because of the security guaranteed by the rebate (see here for details), it would nonetheless most probably not result in an actual cut, thereby undermining David Cameron's claim to have achieved a degree of EU reform by cutting the budget for the first time in EU history.

Meanwhile, MEPs' initial responses don't exactly inspire confidence...

The EU budget proposal of the Commission for 2014 is again supporting the recession and unemployment instead fighting it.
— Hannes Swoboda (@Hannes_Swoboda) June 26, 2013

'My reaction was excessive, but the journalist was rude': Italian MEP caught on camera responds

Italian MEP Renato Baldassarre has responded to the posting of the video in which he's seen pushing and slapping a Dutch journalist (or at least the journalist's microphone) after being caught on camera allegedly signing in for a day's work, and then sodding off.

We posted a cut down version of the video on our blog, and it has generated quite a bit of interest .

As we're always keen on a right to reply, we've now translated Mr Baldassarre's response below. Again, judge for yourself (and if you understand Italian, the full interview is available here).

"First of all, I’m really sorry about that episode and the relevance which was given to it. But the truth has to be re-established. I answered the questions that I understood in a very correct fashion, until the insistence – and I would also say the rudeness – of the interviewer has triggered a reaction, perhaps excessive, but also justified by the fact I was not exactly in the best of moods given that around that time I had received the news that a very close relative of mine had been hospitalised."

"That said, this is about the usual episodes aimed at highlighting waste and privileges allegedly involving the European Parliament...I have a very high attendance record, 90% in plenaries and 85-86% in the various Committees. On that specific day, I had just arrived and was going to my office where I stayed until 10pm. Therefore, I really believe the whole fabrication around this episode is frankly excessive."

It is also worth noting that this story has unfolded on the same day as the Parliament has told member states it will not accept the latest compromise proposal on the EU's long term budget. In other words, MEPs are still holding the budget cut negotiated by David Cameron and other EU leaders hostage. Not a great day for MEPs from a PR point of view...

Sign In, Sod Off... and Slap!

SISO? What could this mysterious four-letter acronym stand for? A complex and bureaucratic way in which MEPs claim expenses back from the European Parliament? Hardly. SISO stands for 'Sign in and Sod Off'.

MEPs receive various forms of allowances (and some expenses), one of which is the daily allowance, intended to cover expenditure on food and accommodation for every day that they are physically present in the European Parliament, be it in Brussels or Strasbourg.

The idea, of course, is that they do work. However 'SISO' involves MEPs rocking up at the EP - signing in - a pre-condition of claiming the €300 of daily allowance - before promptly sodding off without doing any actual work. That's not exactly how the daily allowance was intended to be used.

There have been cases of this practice being captured on film in the past, and while it always makes for hilarious viewing, it remains a PR disaster for a body already struggling with legitimacy.

We hadn't heard about any cases of SISO for some time, so we thought the practice might have stopped. Alas, that might not be the case. At his own peril (as he soon came to find) GeenStijl reporter @TomStaal, decided to take a trip to European Parliament to see for himself. But Staal got a lot more than he bargained for...

The video below shows Staal confronting two MEPs, Czech MEP Miroslav Ransdorf (from the EP's far left GUE group) and  Italian MEP Raffaele Baldassarre (of the European People's Party) after the two have allegedly signed in and left straight away.

Now, we must stress that we haven't seen the whole chain of events and since the MEPs in question aren't exactly keen to talk, we don't know their side of the story either. So we're NOT saying they are necessarily guilty of signing in and sodding off - the jury is still out on that.

But, regardless, the MEPs' reactions aren't exactly dignified. 

shortened version / credit to Geenstijl reporter Tom Staal

To clarify for those who are unfamiliar with Italian hand gesturing, two gestures feature in the video:

1. ‘Lei chi è? Cosa vuole?’ (Who are you? What do you want?): Fingers and thumb come together with hand shaken up and down repeatedly – the arm can also move and the speed varies depending on how angry you are.
   
   
2. ‘Calma, calma’ (Calm down, dear): Move your hand (or both of them) as you were pushing something invisible down, with the palm(s) directed towards your interlocutor. This is the gesture actually made by the other Italian guy - the one in the dark suit - not the MEP himself. 

There should be no doubt that when push comes to shove, MEPs aren't afraid to throw their weight around - literally. So is this a case of unfair and overly aggressive investigative journalism, or a slap on the face of European taxpayers? You decide.

If it's the former, then it's ironic that Baldassarre's most recent activity in the EP is listed as "decriminalising defamation"...