Leo Brincat 1, European Parliament 0

And what an exciting match it turned out to be, too. Right down to the final whistle, for a truly nail-biting finish...

For let’s face it: practically everything until that point had pointed towards Brincat’s early elimination from the contest. In open play, the European Parliament mounted wave after wave of searching attacks that left Leo’s defences in tatters. Surely, many of us thought, there could be no coming back after such an overwhelming majority vote against Malta’ candidate for the European Court of Auditors...

But then again, European politics is a strange sport. It features a ‘parliament’ that doesn’t actually have the executive power to block a nomination to even the most humble and unassuming of Europe’s institutional posts. That’s almost the equivalent of a football team that is not allowed to score any goals. It can take as many shots on goal as it likes, naturally... but if the ball ever actually crosses the goal-line, the game is automatically called off. 

And Leo Brincat is hardly the only example of a player awarded victory in this way, after technically being pulverised on the playing field. 

In fact, one can almost talk of a healthy tradition whereby the rest of the EU simply ignores any resolutions or recommendations emanating from the EP, as if the parliament did not exist at all. And interestingly, the only entity that seems to be consistently surprised by this state of affairs is the EP itself. Strange, you’d think they’d have gotten used to it by now...

A few examples. In 2013, the European Parliament had likewise opposed the nomination of Neven Mates from Croatia for the same ECA post. Unlike the case with Leo Brincat – where the controversy surrounded his support for Konrad Mizzi, and not his own qualities or competences - MEPs argued that Mates was ‘unfit’ for the job.

But as we all saw last month, the actual decision does not lie with the EP, nor even with the European Commission. It lies with the European Council of Ministers... and needless to add, the EP was not particularly thrilled when the Council called its shots in favour of Mates and against its own recommendations. 

In the words of German Liberal Michael Theurer, the head of budgetary control committee at the time: "The decision of the Council is difficult to understand … [and] shows disrespect to the European Parliament."  

Got that, folks? ‘Disrespect to the European Parliament’.

Well, that was in 2013. Three years later (last April, to be precise), the exact same scenario unfolded again. This time the candidate roundly rejected for the ECA was Polish - Janusz Wojciechowski – and once again the official reason was that “he [did] not have the qualities for the job.’

In this case, the EP even flagged a conflict of interest. Igor Soltes, the permanent rapporteur for European Court of Auditors (ECA) nominations, pointed out that Wojciechowski "was responsible for deciding on the very budgets he will now be expected to audit." 

Soltes also said: “It is welcome that MEPs have today followed the recommendation of parliament's budgetary control committee to this end in voting to oppose the Polish candidate [...] “We now expect the Polish candidate, Mr Wojciechowski, to live up to the commitment made in his declaration and withdraw his candidacy”.

Anyone care to guess what happened next? Yep, that’s right. ‘Withdraw candidacy’, my Polish sausage! The Council of Ministers ignored the EP’s red card, and appointed Mr Unpronounceable from Poland to the ECA regardless. After, please note, it had already been accused of ‘disrespecting the European Parliament’ by doing precisely the same thing in the case of Croatia’s Mates. 

One can only conclude that the Council of Ministers does indeed ‘disrespect the EP’. And it seems to delight in repeatedly expressing that disrespect at every opportunity, too.

How else are we to explain that the same Council went on to appoint Brincat just a few months later, after he had been similarly turned down by a sizeable EP majority? To ‘disrespect’ a Parliament once can always be argued away as an accidental circumstance. To do so twice starts looking suspicious. But three times in as many years? And twice in the space of just a few months?

That’s making a statement. It is the equivalent of putting one’s foot down and setting the record straight once and for all: “Let’s not forget who’s really in charge here. We’re the ones who take decisions, remember? Your job is just to give the whole political set-up a blanket (but ultimately meaningless) veneer of ‘democracy’...”

And that, of course, is only as far as nominees to the European Court of Auditors are concerned. A full list of all the issues on which the EP has been disrespectfully overruled would be too long for this article. Suffice it to say that on the hugely controversial TTIP  (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), currently being negotiated between the EU and USA, the European Parliament’s objections and concerns have been routinely ignored for years.

“It is deeply disappointing that the Commission has not taken the European Parliament's concerns into account regarding TTIP, after three and a half years of negotiations,” another EP rapporteur - Green/EFA MEP Bart Staes – complained last July. “It is now crystal clear that these talks have gone in the complete wrong direction...”

That is to say, these talks have gone in completely the opposite direction to the one proposed by the European Parliament... because, as should be painstakingly clear by now, the Commission (in this case) and the Council of Ministers (in the other case) don’t actually give a toss about what the EP thinks or says. Honestly, this simple point couldn’t be made any clearer if it were driven home with a sledgehammer...

But just to make it slightly clearer, consider this other recent example. Anyone out there remember the hullaballoo that erupted in the EP around two years ago, over Malta’s sale of EU passports? If not, this EP press release dated January 2014 shoudl refresh your memory: 

“EU citizenship must not have a ‘price tag’ attached to it, says the European Parliament in a resolution voted on Thursday. MEPs are concerned about schemes established by various EU member states and in particular Malta, which result in the sale of national, and hence EU, citizenship. Parliament calls on the Commission to state clearly whether these schemes respect the letter and spirit of the EU treaties and EU rules on non-discrimination.”

That resolution was passed by an astonishing majority of 560 votes in favour, 22 against, and 44 abstentions... making even Malta’s historic 12-1 drubbing by Spain in 1981 seem like an entirely respectable result...

And that, of course, is how the news was presented in the country so roundly and publicly shamed. ‘All of Europe’, we were told, had condemned the government of Malta through that vote... as if the European Parliament had somehow put a lid on the entire issue, by delivering a collective verdict against which it was futile to argue. 

That perception didn’t last too long, did it? This time it fell to another higher European power – the Commission – to promptly give the EP the answer it demanded. Within a few weeks, the Commission issued a terse statement explaining that it had looked into Malta’s IPP scheme, and saw nothing that actually violated European law. 

Malta was therefore left to continue selling EU passports like pastizzi... and the European Parliament, for the umpteenth time, was left looking rather foolish on the sidelines.

But never mind all that. The only thing you are all expected to know about the European Parliament is that it needs your support to keep up all the good work. That is why, in just a few months’ time, you’ll be getting a tsunami of leaflets under your door, all urging you to vote for this or that MEP candidate, representing this or that party... ‘to make sure your voice is heard in Europe.’

And it’s perfectly true: your voice will indeed be heard in Europe, if you actually bother voting next time. What they don’t tell you, of course, is that your voice will also be ignored, over and over and over again. But perhaps that’s only because it has now become too bloody obvious to even bother mentioning any more...