German socialist Schulz elected EU Parliament chief
Martin Schulz - Photo EP
(STRASBOURG) - German Socialist Martin Schulz took over Tuesday as new head of the European Parliament, vowing to give EU lawmakers more say at a time of "closed doors" decision-making by government "diktat".
The fiery Schulz, 56, succeeded conservative former Polish premier Jerzy Buzek after beating two English candidates from the centre and the right of the pan-European Union assembly with a mandate to lead until July 2014.
With an eye on the next EU summit in Brussels on January 30, Schulz said a "growing fixation" with talks between heads of state and government was in danger of tearing the 27-state bloc apart.
Schulz told members that "for the first time since it was founded, the failure of the European Union is a realistic possibility".
He said the EU had spent months "stumbling from one crisis summit to another" with decisions "taken by heads of government behind closed doors" seen by citizens across Europe as "a series of diktats from Brussels".
He suggested that "anonymous ratings agencies in New York are more powerful than democratically elected governments and parliaments", and vowed that the legislature he leads "will not stand idly by and watch this process continue".
EU politics "is not a zero-sum game", he said. "Either we all lose -- or we all win."
Schulz secured 387 of 670 votes, including those of the parliament's biggest group, the European People's Party (EPP). The EPP had agreed to share at mid-term the five-year president's mandate with the group of Socialists and Democrats headed by Schulz.
His vote haul was lower than that when Buzek took office, with Nirj Deva of the eurosceptic conservative ECR group polling 142 votes, and Diana Wallis of the centrist Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) garnering 141.
Leading eurosceptic MEP Nigel Farage said Schulz was "snarling, angry, intolerant, contemptuous of free referendums".
He predicted "two-and-a-half years of political fanaticism" in the 736-seat assembly which has two homes, in Strasbourg and in Brussels.
The co-leader of the Green group, French-German lawmaker Daniel Cohn-Bendit, however told AFP that Schulz "is a staunch European".
Schulz has vowed to "fight" EU states to defend the powers of the parliament and reduce the union's "democratic deficit", Cohn-Bendit added.
A non-smoking teetotaller, Schulz is as quick to denounce "casino capitalism" as French-German domination of European policymaking.
A longtime politician who joined Germany's SPD at the age of 18, Schulz was elected to the European Parliament in 1994 before taking the helm of the Socialist group a decade later. Austria's Hannes Swoboda was elected to take his place.
Schulz shot to prominence in 2003 in a row at the assembly with Silvio Berlusconi.
The then Italian premier said Schulz, who had vexed Berlusconi in questions over his media empire, would be perfect in the film role of a "kapo", a prisoner who worked for the Nazis in concentration camps.
The incident triggered a diplomatic spat between Italy and Germany.
Martin Schulz: from Berlusconi foe to EU Parliament chief