Merkel allies launch fresh EU critical campaign

Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), are pushing for Berlin to join efforts to prune back EU regulations and reclaim national competences from Brussels.

At their winter retreat today in the Bavarian alps, CSU officials will debate a strategy paper for May’s European elections said to be the most EU-critical in years.

Driving the campaign is CSU leader Horst Seehofer, whose demand to "kick out" so-called welfare cheats from Romania and Bulgaria has shaken awake the German political establishment.

Today, Mr Seehofer will use a speech in the CSU mountain base of Wildbad Kreuth to let fly at the EU, calling for a new "competence court" to mediate in disputes over whether the European Commission has overstepped its mark into areas of national responsibility.

'Intoxicated by regulation'
"We need a form of withdrawal therapy for commissioners intoxicated by regulation," writes the CSU in a position paper, proposing that member states should propose judges and legal experts to serve in the new subsidiarity court.

“The CSU . . . demands that the EU concentrates on what’s important and doesn’t bother citizens with petty matters,” it adds, citing an “often well-intentioned but exorbitant consumer protection”. It calls for the EU to grant a “considerably greater value” to the subsidiarity principle whereby Brussels can only be active in an area when member states’ actions are insufficient.

The paper also renews CSU demands for a return of referendums on EU affairs and for a smaller EU commission. It’s doubtful whether the party will get anywhere in Berlin with its demands.

However, its call for a return of competences to member states and “reform of an “over-regulated single market” dovetails with a growing debate on subsidiarity in several member states.

CSU general secretary Andreas Scheuer told Die Welt daily his party was determined to drive on the EU debate in Germany as "rational Europeans". "We say yes to Europe but fight against the abundance of bureaucracy," he said. "It's definitely not going to be an anti-Europe election campaign . . . but we are warning against developments that could come crashing in on Germany later. The CSU is an early warning system."

Bavarian attack
Attacking Brussels has a long tradition in the Bavarian party, in part because the federal state has only limited practical influence over EU affairs. In the new year, however, there is an element of domestic positioning in the CSU's strategy. It sees a need to boost its political profile – and volume – after securing only three lesser portfolios at Dr Merkel's new grand coalition cabinet table.

The CSU performed well in state and federal elections last year, but local elections in March and European elections two months later will see renewed competition. "The CSU is preparing itself for the next election by presenting itself as particularly Eurosceptic before the election, but there could be something more serious behind it," said Dr Reinhardt Rummel, political scientist at Ludwig Maximilian University.

Though its is only a junior partner, some see the Bavarian party and its revived anti-EU enthusiasm as having potential to influence the wider German political debate in the coming months.

Der Spiegel magazine has sounded the alarm, saying the CSU's populist tone on migrants and the EU could have "easily combustible consequences".