German socialist is European Parliament's new president

GERMAN MEP Martin Schultz, of the Socialist and Democrat group, was elected president of the European Parliament yesterday with a comfortable majority of 387 votes out of 670 cast. He replaces outgoing president and Polish MEP Jerzy Buzek and will hold the position until July 2014.

Addressing the parliament after the vote, he warned that “for the first time since it was founded, the failure of the European Union is a realistic possibility. For months now the union has been stumbling from one crisis summit to another. Decisions which affect us all are being taken by heads of government behind closed doors. To my mind, this is a reversion to a form of European politics which I thought had been consigned to history books.”

It was, he said, “reminiscent of the era of the Congress of Vienna, when Europe’s leaders were ruthless in their defence of national interests and democratic scrutiny was simply unheard of”.

The “plethora of summits, the growing fixation with meetings of the heads of state and government...” meant that “the representatives of the peoples of Europe have essentially been reduced to the role of rubberstamping agreements reached between governments in backrooms in Brussels”, he said.

The European Parliament would not “stand idly by and watch this process continue”, he said. “I see my role as president of the European Parliament . . . as one of countering this fixation with summits, this ongoing trend towards the renationalisation of policy making,” he said.

“I will not be an amenable president. I will be a president who, if necessary, fights to ensure that the executive shows parliament the respect it deserves . . . who will do everything in his power to win back lost public trust in the European integration process and restore public enthusiasm for Europe”.

Welcoming Mr Schultz’s election, Ireland East Labour MEP Nessa Childers, who also belongs to the socialist group, said he had been instrumental during the euro zone crisis on behalf of “the ordinary citizens of Europe”.

However, Dublin Socialist MEP Paul Murphy, of the parliament’s United Left Alliance, dismissed Mr Schultz’s election as “a foregone conclusion given the deal between the so-called Socialists and Democrats, which he described as “a coalition for austerity”.

He said “unfortunately, the European United Left group, which I am a member of, opted not to field a candidate. I therefore submitted a blank vote to register my opposition to Martin Schultz.”