The EP elected in June 2009 contains a new group for European Freedom and Democracy (EFD) consisting of 31 members. This group follows in the footsteps of previous hard Eurosceptics, while being larger. It is led by Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party (UKIP) with 13 MEPs and the Lega Nord with 9 MEPs. Some of its members would have preferred to join the ECR group, about which I have written in previous postings.

How did the EFD do in the allocation of influential posts in the EP? The Group should have been able to appoint one of the EP’s five quaestors and a junior committee chairmanship, such as that of the Petitions Committee. The latter is not considered an important committee but does generate reports in response to citizens’ petitions or complaints, therefore offering a platform for campaign-oriented MEPs. The EFD group failed in its attempt to elect Francesco Speroni as a Quaestor and decided not to use its points within the EP’s consensual pecking order to gain the chairmanship of Petitions. Instead, the Lega Nord opted to take the first pick of a committee vice-chairmanship. Fiorello Provera was then elected as Vice-Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, a move that was criticised by the Socialist Group on account of his party’s xenophobia.

The really interesting battle for the EFD came with the nomination of Marta Andreasen as Vice-Chairman of the Budgetary Control Committee. Andreasen had been sacked as the European Commission’s chief accountant for whistle blowing on the vulnerabilities of the Commission’s accounting system. Deciding that the EU was unreformable, she opted to become a candidate and MEP with the ultra-sceptic UKIP. The Socialist and EPP groups combined to block her election to Vice-Chairman of Budgetary Control, a powerful committee which engineered the downfall of the Santer Commission in 1999 when it withheld ratification of the EU’s accounts. What explains her failure? Probably a combination of her born-again Euroscepticism and having been a whistle blower.