Swedish PM Misses the Point...

According to media reports such as for example [1], the Swedish PM Reinfeldt seems annoyed with the EU budget proposal voting by the MEPs from Sweden.

The PMs main gripes seems to be that the the parties in Sweden has another line in the Swedish Riksdag, and that this would somehow be confusing. The PM then misses the main idea about having two chambers in the EU lawmaking process. There is ONE chamber representing the states, and therefore the parliaments and governments of the states, this is known as the Council of Ministers. Then, there is a directly elected chamber called the European Parliament, whose purpose is to do the best job they can for Europe, without being shackled by national politics.

The Swedish PM did not seem to be confused when municipal council members in the surrounding municipalities of Stockholm where against congestion charges and the main party voted for these in the parliament.

It should be added that it is a ridiculous amount of energy being put into the debate about the EUs long term budget, the initial proposal from the commission was to raise the budget with roughly 3%, a budget that is only 1% of the total GDP of the member states. We can all multiply, and 0.03 * 0.01 = 0.0003, so the fight is really about 3 hundreds of a percent of the GDP (0.03%). This is really a piss in the Nile in the greater picture. It seems that the main reason for cutting the EU budget is simply to cut in the EU budget.