Wednesday, November 21, 2012

House of Commons Undercuts Cameron on E.U. Budget

In 2012, David Cameron of Britain “suffered his first major House of Commons defeat” in governing  “when some in his party failed to back his position on the budget negotiations and urged him to secure deeper cuts” in the pending 1 trillion euros E.U. budget for 2014-2020.  Although Cameron had stated he would veto the European Commission’s proposal to increase the overall E.U. budget by 5% annually for the seven-year period, he did not support cutting the federal budget. Because the vote in his state legislature for cuts in the federal budget was non-binding, the governor was free to ignore it in the European Council, where the state governments are represented. The European system of public governance suffered from at least two major weaknesses here.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.

 David Cameron representing his state at the E.U.  (AFP/Getty)