By Ray Fleming
THE President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, made his annual state of the Union speech to the European Parliament on Wednesday.
While acknowledging that the EU was facing the biggest challenge in its history in the economic crisis, Barroso spoke for the most part on the assumption that the crisis would be solved despite his criticism of the performance of the ministers most involved. Among the business as usual
proposals he made was one for an EU tax on financial transactions (sometimes called the Tobin tax) which is favoured by France and Germany but strongly opposed by Britain.
Since Mr Barroso was elected to a second term of office he has not been heard of a great deal but on Wednesday he drew applause from MEPs for his robust restatement of EU principles, accompanied by broad arm gestures and much banging of his desk. He asserted that the independent authority of the Commission he leads acts as a guarantor of fairness within the Union and prevents a tendency to what he called Intergovernentalism by which powerful member states reach agreement among themselves without regard to the interests of other less weighty members. There was an air of unreality in Mr Barroso's focus on such issues at this particular time but the majority of Members of the European Parliament appeared to approve of what he had to say.