Greens take on the leaders: “The European Council believes in rules just like FIFA”

from our correspondent in Strasbourg – “The European Council believes in the law and rules, just like FIFA.” Jaume Asens Llodrà, a Spanish Green MEP, uses current events and irony to criticise the European Union and its member states, highlighting their double standards and contradictions. The plenary debate on the conclusions of the June European Council becomes an opportunity for part of the chamber to demand a seriousness that is nowhere to be seen; a seriousness whose absence puts the EU on the same level as Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president accused of lacking impartiality, and Donald Trump, the US president not exactly regarded as a model of rectitude. 

“Trump makes a phone call and overturns a red card, but we do worse: we ignore the rulings of international courts and UN resolutions calling for an end to genocide and for us to stop selling arms,” denounces the Green MEP. “We are doing the opposite” of what should be done, and from that it follows that “Trump is cynical, but we are hypocrites.” 

Asens Llodrà and the Greens, on the one hand, confirm that once again, Donald Trump and his approach have ended up bursting onto the European political scene, influencing proceedings and interventions, while on the other hand, they shine a spotlight on a European Union and its Member States that preach one set of values but practise another. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, which has never been enforced, and UN resolutions that formally support a peace plan remain, as things stand, a dead letter. At the EU level, no sanctions against the State of Israel have been adopted, with the Socialists once again calling for a change of course. 

The one‑minute intervention by the Spanish Green MEP is a pointed indictment of an integration project that has lost its way, along with all its ambitions for law and rights. “We are living in an age of impunity,” Asens Llodrà denounces. And today’s European Union bears joint responsibility for this.