Is Van Rompuy attempting a 2nd coup d’etat

A second one, didn’t know he had achieved a first one I hear you say.

This from the Telegraph 20th Nov 2009:

Last year, six months before becoming prime minister, he abused his position as speaker of the Belgian parliament to cancel a politically inconvenient debate. To make doubly sure that MPs would be silenced, he had the locks on the plenary chamber’s doors changed so deputies could not get into their own parliament. The tactic was described by opposition MPs as a “coup d’etat”.

The Telegraph warned then that Van Rompuy is a sharp political operator who is not above using dirty tricks to stymie his opponents. That Europe’s leaders may find to their cost that the man they chose to chair their EU summits possesses dark arts that will be turned against anyone.

Now, Van Rompuy, in a press announcement following the meeting of the Task Force on Economic Governance 27th Sept 2010 said:

Whenever possible, decision-making rules on sanctions should be more automatic and based on a reverse majority rule, implying a Commission proposal is adopted unless rejected by the Council.

Erm, what? Assume the Commission has the power unless the Council votes no.

As Dan Hannan in the Telegraph today muses. So here is an innovation which would substantially shift power from the national capitals to the Commission, and which concerns an issue of major importance (levying fines), but which seems to have no legal basis.

Is the EU – yet again – making up the rules as it goes along?

In his quest for a Federal EU State (not forgetting that he has already tried in the UN) is Van Rompuy going for a 2nd ‘coup d’etat’? or is it his 3rd?

The old housewives saying of Beware of the Quiet Ones is spot on here. He is without doubt a very dangerous man. We should be more concerned about what Van Rompuy is up to rather than listening to the media swooning over our Provincial Governors parading in Birmingham this week.

h/t EnglandExpects

Whenever possible, decision-making rules on sanctions should be more automatic and based on a reverse majority rule, implying a Commission proposal is adopted unless rejected by the Council.