Labour finally wake up to the fact there is a European election next week

Do Ed Balls and Ed Miliband see eye-to-eye on the EU?

Anyone following Labour's election campaign up until now would be forgiven for thinking the party was fighting a general election as opposed to a European one - any references to Europe were hard to come by. However, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has emerged with a hard-hitting piece in yesterday's Evening Standard in which he argues that:

"Europe needs to work better to respond to public concerns, deliver better value for money for taxpayers and secure rising prosperity."

"First, we need the EU to be better focused on creating jobs and growth. An EU Commissioner focused on growth, and an independent audit of the impact of any new piece of EU legislation on growth, would be key to helping re-focusing the Union on this key task. And we need to drive forward the completion of the single market in digital, energy and services."

"Second, our reforms will help ensure that EU citizens seeking work here contribute to our economy and society. So we will extend the period of time that people from new member states have to wait before being able to come to the UK to look for work. We will work to stop the payment of benefits to those not resident in this country, consult on changing the rules on deporting someone who receives a custodial sentence shortly after arriving in the UK, and have called on the government to double the time that an EU migrant has to wait before being able to claim the basic Job Seekers Allowance."

 "And third, any agenda for change in Europe must also address people's concerns about how power is exercised at a European level. So we have called for national parliaments to have a greater role in EU decision making by being able to 'red-card' any new EU legislation before it comes into force; for serious reform of the EU Commission."

This commitment to reform is very welcome, even if this is merely a re-statement of existing Labour EU policy. It's worth noting that these reforms are not a million miles away from David Cameron's own priorities for EU reform - especially the further restrictions on EU migrants' access to benefits and the red card for national parliaments. Yet more evidence - as we've pointed out before - that tone and rhetoric aside, there is a surprising degree of consensus among the main parties when it comes to the substance of EU reform. 

As the New Statesman's George Eaton pointed out recently, there is a lot of frustration within Labour over how to deal with the EU question:

"Other shadow cabinet members complain of the party's failure to promote its commitment to reform the EU, which they regarded as a quid pro quo for Miliband's refusal to guarantee an in/out referendum under a Labour government."

It appears that Ed Balls is among the Labour heavy hitters keen to address this disparity.

UK government to Merkel: move to fiscal union or else...

Regular readers know what we think of the UK government's peculiar habit of lecturing the eurozone on the need to move to a full fiscal union (meaning eurozone governments completely running over their own electorates). Well, over the weekend, the Coalition moved from dropping hints to - it seems - issuing outright instructions.

Here's Nick Clegg in an interview with Der Spiegel (at least qualifying his remarks):

"You have to have something which creates a fiscal accompaniment to monetary union. Whilst I have a huge amount of sympathy with German taxpayers and German politicians who are reluctant, understandably because Germany is the paymaster of the European Union, to entertain these ideas, I fear that they are unavoidable. It is not sustainable to believe that the eurozone can thrive through fiscal discipline alone - it also has to, at some level, include an ability to either share debt or to deal with shocks in one part of the system or the other through fiscal transfers."

And here's George Osborne, writing in the Sunday Times,

"The eurozone needs to follow what I described a year ago as the 'remorseless logic' of monetary union towards greater fiscal integration and burden-sharing. I mentioned eurobonds as one possible mechanism, and there are others."

Meanwhile, David Cameron followed up last week's comments that the eurozone need to increase the bailout funds, move to"fiscal burden sharing" and the ECB starting to act as lender of last resort (quite a wish list), by saying that the forthcoming Greek elections have to become "a moment of clarity and decisiveness for the eurozone" noting that,

"We now have to send a very clear message to (the Greek) people - There is a choice, you can either vote to stay in the euro with all the commitments you have made, or, if you vote another way, you are effectively voting to leave."

To be fair, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls was quick on the lecturing too. While telling the BBC Today Programme that:

"I don't think David Cameron's posturing helps at all, I think it just makes it worse"

He did some posturing of is own, telling Sky News' Murnaghan Show, however:

"In the end... somebody has got to persuade Germany that this is a catastrophe for Britain, Europe and the world and that Germany has got to change course...The problem is, the German people went into the eurozone 10 years ago on the clear promise that they weren't going to bail out Italy and the central bank wasn't going to play this role. Both things have got to change." 

So how did the German commentators and politicians respond to his unusual show of cross-party consensus in the UK (minus London Mayor Boris Johnson, calling the UK government's stance on eurozone fiscal union "unbelievable"), in favour of more European integration? Barely a whimper. There were a lot of talk of Hollande, and one mention of Clegg's interview, but apart from that, the German press was deadly silent on this issue, although hinting at a Cameron U-turn, Süddeutsche's Nikolous Piper has this to say:

"Two years ago, at the summit of the G-20 leaders in Toronto, Merkel was able to enforce the requirement that developed countries should cut their budget deficits by 2013. She was supported by the then newly elected British Prime Minister David Cameron. In the meantime, Cameron’s austerity policies led Britain into a recession, with a corresponding loss of credibility."

We get it. British euro lecturing is for domestic consumption, but is this really where Cameron wants to be in Europe (the perception isn't exactly helpful)?