THE HANDSTAND

JULY 2006


the european union - 2006
Mid-Year Analysis

BRUSSELS COMMISSION MAKES POWER GRAB FOR CONTROL OF CRIME AND JUSTICE:  On Wednesday last the Brussels Commission proposed that EU Member States  should scrap their national vetoes in the field of police and judicial cooperation and adopt EU laws in this area by qualified majority  voting.  This means that  crimes and criminal penalties could be decided at EU rather than national level, so that Member States  would no longer be able to decide or defend the fundamental rights  of their citizens.   If adopted, this proposal would mean a further huge extension of of EU power over our lives. It would give more power to the EU Commision, that body of unelected supranational officials which French President Charles de Gaulle once described as "a conclave of technocrats without a country responsible to nobody"  .  It would mean lifting a proposal from the EU Constitution which was rejected by French and Dutch voters last summer,  and trying to push it through on the sly, supposedly on the basis of the existing  EC/EU Treaties.
The Brussels Commission  asserts that to have more  EU control of justice and criminal law matters would make for "more effective" laws.  What else would one expect the Commission to say, as a highly self-interested party in the matter, for the adoption of this proposal  would greatly increase its  own powers?  The Commission's claim  is a totally unproven and disputable proposition, designed to pave the way for an EU federal police-force and Public Prosecutor, despite the radically different legal systems in the EU - trial by jury  and habeas corpus in Ireland and Britain, but  inquisitorial magistrates  and the presumption of guilt rather than innocence in most continental EU States. 

The Commission's proposal will come before EU Justice  Ministers in Helsinki in September.  Citizens should urge their TDs to tell the Government that it must on no account  accept it. Such extension of EU power should require a referendum in Ireland - unless the Government is ready to face a contemporary Raymond Crotty taking a case to the High Court and Supreme Court over this attempted EU takover of much of the crime and justice area.  Are the TDs and Senators of  "Fianna Fail - the Republican Party"  going to sit on their hands while the Government readies itself to accept this further body-blow to Irish democracy and  independence? 


*** TWO-THIRDS OF IRELAND'S LAWS NOW COME FROM BRUSSELS ... And Bertie Ahern, Enda Kenny, Mary Harney and Pat Rabbitte want this proportion to increase
  On 29 April 2005, the German Federal Ministry of Justice stated that between 1998 and 2004,  a six-year period, 23,167 legal acts were adopted in Germany, of which 18,917 -  or 80% -  were of EU origin. This was stated in a written answer in the German Bundestag to a question from CDU/CSU MP Johannes Singhammer. The same laws originating in  Brussels will have been applied in all Member States of the EU, but the number of laws of domestic origin  will vary from State to State. As Ireland is a unitary rather than a federal State like Germany, there should be a higher proportion of  domestically generated laws here, so the Irish figure for legal acts of EU origin should be two-thirds or so of all our laws. Laws are divided between primary legislation and statutory instruments implementing primary legislation. 
The proposed EU Constitution would expand the EU's law-making powers in over 60 policy areas, so that if it were to be  ratified the EU would make an even higher percentage of our laws.  Yet Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney on the one hand, and  "opposition" leaders Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte on the other, all support our ratifying the EU Constitution.    

 
*** "LOVING EUROPE THE WAY IT DESERVES" ... AMBASSADOR ANNE ANDERSEN 
"How do you help  people to love Europe the way it deserves to be loved?" This is an area of intense interest across the EU, according to Ms Anne Andersen, former head of Ireland's mission to the EU and newly appointed Irish ambassador to Paris, in an interview with Lara Marlowe of the Irish Times  on 10 March last. "Loving Europe in the way it deserves to be loved" are the words Ms Marlowe quotes the new ambassador as using.   They are surely revealing of how our senior Foreign Affairs people look at the EU.      
 
*** EU CONSTITUTION THROUGH THE BACKDOOR 
There was no agreement at the mid-June EU summit  EU summit on how to revive the EU Constitution which the French and Dutch peoples voted down last year. Germany, which holds the EU presidency in the first half of 2007, is to produce a report this time next year. There will be a new French President after May 2007. The Presidents and Prime Ministers will work on a grand rhetorical statement for next year's 50th anniversary of the signing of the Rome Treaty, which they hope may give a boost to the grand project. 

Two different strategies are at play on the Constitution. One is based on maintaining it without any changes, continuing with the national ratifications and then pressuring the French and Dutch to accept the whole thing, like the Irish and Danes were pressurised into changing their minds when they dared to vote No. This would be done by calling it something other than  a "Constitution", and  sugar-coating it in some undefined way  to make it more acceptable to the French and  Dutch.  The other strategy is based on the notion that the first strategy will fail. Therefore the goal is to adopt the Constitution in bits and pieces,  each one without national referendums.
  The Euro-elite expect the French voters to change their mind after the Presidential elections in May next year. However, the last French opinion poll indicates that 10% of last year's Yes-voters have regretted their votes whereas only 2 % of the No-sayers have done the same. The Dutch polls are even worse seen from the view of Constitution supporters. The Dutch Foreign Minister has stated that the Dutch will never ratify the same text again.
The existing European treaties require unanimity. Legally the proposed EU Constitution should therefore be regarded as dead until it may be formally amended. It is quite a serious matter that a cooperation based on law is in clear breach of the basic EU treaties. Continuing with the ratification process when the French and Dutch Governments have not indicated how they will ratify this treaty, or whether they will ever do that,  is outrageousy undemocratic.  How can EU Presidents, Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers expect other people to follow EU law when they don't respect the treaties themselves? This typifies the arrogance and contempt for democracy of the EU elite.  
 
*** BERTIE SAYS "WE HAVE AN OBLIGATION"  

"In regard to France, the Netherlands and several other countries, we have an obligation to pass the European Constitution here," said  Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in the Irish Times, 12 April 2005.


*** 1916 AND THE EU ... HAVE WE REALLY GOT AN INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC?  
  Back in 1985 Frenchman Jacques Delors, then President of the EU Commission and father of the euro-currency,  made a speech in which he said that by the end of the century - i.e. by 2000 -  70% of all laws made in the EU would come from Brussels and only 30% from national parliaments. The German figures quoted above show that his prophecy was right.
Commenting on Delors's remark at the time, historian Desmond Greaves, author of well-known biographies of James Connolly, Liam Mellows and Sean O'Casey, said: "Well, if Brussels  will be making 70% of all the laws for Ireland, Britain and the rest of the EU,  it must mean that the IRA  is waging its armed struggle and the Unionists are being  unionist, over who is going to exercise the remaining 30% !"

The Irish Republic which the men and women of 1916 set out to establish was a State that would embody "the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies", to quote the Easter Proclamation.  This is what people stood at the GPO to honour this Easter, as the Irish army marched  down O'Connell Street.  The essential prerequisite of a Republic that "would cherish all the children of the nation equally"  was that it would be one in which the Irish people possessed" the ownership of Ireland"  and were able to exercise "unfettered control of Irish destinies".   Republicans, including those in "Fianna Fail - the Republican Party"  say that they stand for such a State - viz. an independent, sovereign democracy in which the people make the laws through the representatives they elect to an independent parliament.

Such a Republic is clearly incompatible with having two-thirds or more  of its laws made in Brussels. Having to obey laws made by others means being ruled by others. It is the opposite of a country being independent, sovereign and democratic. What role do the Irish State and the Irish people actually have in making EU laws?

We have one member out of 25 on the EU Commission, the body of nominated, non-elected officials that has the monopoly of proposing all EU laws. That is 4% influence on the Brussels Commission.  We have one Minister out of 25 on the EU Council of Ministers, which makes EU laws on the basis of the Commission's proposals. That is another 4% influence there.  In practice, most EU laws are adopted by qualified majority vote on the Council of Ministers, where Ireland has 7 votes out of 345, that is 2% of a say, and in which it may be outvoted on most matters. In practice EU laws are mostly made by a form of "shadow voting". Ministers look around the table, count which countries are for or against a proposed law, in particular how the big States line up and  whether a blocking minority exists. They do not press things to a vote unless they feel very strongly about an issue. This is called  legislation by consensus, or showing the "community spirit". Formal votes are rarely taken, so countries can claim that they are rarely out-voted. It does not mean though that they are happy with the laws that are made.    

The European Parliament may propose amendments to draft laws of the EU Council of Ministers, but it cannot have these amendments adopted without the agreement of the Council and Commission, and it cannot itself initiate any law. The Irish State has 13 members out of 732 in the European Parliament - that is 2% of a say -  and the North has 3 MEPs.

When the whole of Ireland  was part of the United Kingdom from 1800 to 1921, it had 100 MPs out of 600 in the British Parliament, of which some 70 were  Nationalists. That gave nationalist Ireland 12% of a say at Westminster; yet the Irish  people were unhappy with majority rule from London then and aspired to a Parliament of their own in an independent Irish Republic.
As for"the right of the Irish people to the ownership of Ireland", how can Irish politicians pretend to exercise that right when under EU law it is illegal for an Irish Government to adopt any measure that would prevent the 450 million citizens of the other EU States from having the same rights of ownership and establishment in this country as Irish citizens, in relation to land-buying, fisheries, residence, employment or the conduct of any economic activity? 

In addition,  the Irish Government is regularly fined for breaking EU laws by the EU Court of Justice - something no sovereign State anywhere in the world is subject to.  Under the EU treaties it loses the right to sign trade treaties with other States, as this is done by the Brussels Commission acting for the EU as a as a whole. It is also legally obliged to work towards a common EU foreign and security policy and common rules in crime and justice matters. A judgement of the EU Court of Justice in September 2005 laid down that the EU can adopt supranational criminal sanctions such as fines, imprisonment or confiscation of assets for breaches of EU law by means of majority vote. This means that Ireland and its citizens may in future be subjected to such criminal sanctions even if they had voted against them, and for matters they do not necessarily regard as crimes.

Before Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, Article 15 of the Irish Constitution stated that "the sole and exclusive power of making laws for the State is hereby vested in the Oireachtas: no other legislative authority has power to make laws for the State."  That is what a State being sovereign means. The Irish State was constitutionally sovereign then in a way it clearly is no longer.    

As a member of the euro-zone Ireland has surrendered control of both the rate of interest on money and its currency exchange rate, which are classical economic tools of all independent governments that seek to advance their people's welfare. 

People may be happy or unhappy with having most of our laws made in Brussels, but it is clearly not "the unfettered control of Irish destinies"  proclaimed in Easter 1916.  Yet the leaders of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour and the PDs desire to give the EU more power still by ratifying the proposed EU Constitution -  and they still claim to be Republicans like the 1916 men and women. Clearly the implications of being an Irish Republican today need some thinking over.

________

*** AFRIKAKORPS800 GERMAN +10 IRISH MEMBERS

Ireland is contributing 10 soldiers to an EU military mission to the Congo to supervise elections in that civil-war-torn country.  Germany will be in charge, will provide 800 soldiers and  will command the the mission from Postdam, the symbolic headquarters of Prussian-German militarism.  Two Irish officers will be based in Postsdam. As the Irish contingent is less than 10, the Government does not have to get Dail permission for this step. The mission will last four months from July.

Several dozen Irish soldiers were killed in the Congo in 1960. That was a genuine UN peace-keeping force. The current Congo enterprise is an  attempt by Belgium, France and Germany to assert their economic interests in the mineral-rich country that is as big as Western Europe, under the guise of EU-sponsored troops with nominal UN approval.  French, Belgian and German mining interests, especially in cobalt,  are threatened by the Congo civil war. Ireland is now helping the EU  collectively to protect them. 

According to a report in Die Welt (18 May) The Congolese themselves do not seem very keen on the idea of having European troops in their country. During a recent opposition demonstration in Kinshasa, protesters held up placards saying, "Foreigners want to rule the Congo."  There is plenty of room for the rumour-mill to function, since there are no officers from EU states in the Congo yet, no one knows where the troops are to be sent and interpreters have not yet been appointed.  Albrecht Conze, Deputy Director of the UN Peace Mission MONUC in Congo, says, "There are rumours in the capital that the troops will protect only Europeans if there are any incidents, or that they will support one candidate in particular."  The Congolese opposition, indeed, has attacked the international community, which is paying for 100 per cent of the election costs, saying that they will simply support Joseph Kabila, the current President, and that the troops are there to back up this aim.  It is not very difficult to guess which side Conze himself is on. "It must be made clear," he says, "that the EU is coming to tell bad losers to shut up and to ensure the elections." 

________ 

 
*** IRELAND SIGNS UP FOR EU BATTLE-GROUPS
Another hole in the tattered garment of Irish "neutrality" in the EU is the Government decision to volunteer Irish troops for proposed EU battle-groups to go into action from 2008.  "I would prefer if they were called peace groups," says Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea.  So the Government is changing the  Defence Act to permit Irish troops to train outside the country. Up to now the Act allows troops to be sent on peacekeeping missions  that have been "established"  by the United Nations. Now the Act is being changed to allow Irish troops to take part in military missions with a regional group like the EU so long as there is some UN approval for it. This signals a shift from UN to EU military missions, with endless room for fudge and misrepresentation  over whether a mission really has a UN mandate or not.
________ 

*** MAKING THE EU FUN ... COMMISSION PLANS EUROVISION-STYLE EVENT FOR 50TH BIRTHDAY    The EU is planning to stage a Eurovision-style song contest and organise cake-baking competitions on an EU theme, under a public relations offensive to celebrate the 50th birthday of the EU next year.  According to Reuters news agency, the celebrations are part of Brussels' drive to win the public's sympathy after French and Dutch citizens voted down the EU Constitution last year. "We have big plans to make the EU more punter-friendly," one EU official told Reuters.
The campaign begins this month with the launch of a competition to find a logo and slogan for the EU's 50th birthday. In 1957, the six founding member states of the EU established its predecessor, the European Economic Community, in the Treaty of Rome.  The ultimate choice for the logo and slogan will be left to citizens in a popular vote, according to a document outlining the plans. One highlight of next year's festivities will be an EU-wide song and dance party, proposed by Belgium, modelled along the Eurovision song contest, which draws millions of spectators for an annual celebration of pop kitsch.

"We want to show the EU can dance," says the document, with live television coverage planned across the union. But new Member States in particular are reportedly unhappy with the song and dance contest idea. "They feel people are being forced to dance and sing, like they were by the communists," one EU diplomat told Reuters.

Some EU officials are also worried about the cost of the festivities, which will include an EU theme tune, a special "European Commissioner's Day" which will give Charlie McCreevy and his colleagues a chance to dispense free drinks to large numbers of their fellow-nationals  at taxpayers' expense, and EU cake-baking competitions.

The plan marks a new stage in the EU's popularity offensive, kicked off last year by EU communications commissioner Margot Wallstrom's "Plan D", which included the idea of giving celebrities fat fees to get them to act as EU "goodwill ambassadors."  The European Commission has also recently put particular emphasis in its press briefings on issues directly affecting citizens, such as tariffs for mobile phoning abroad and a blacklist of unsafe airlines.
________

*** WHO IS MARTIN TERRITT? ... DUBLIN EU COMMISSION OFFICE INDUCES IRISH BROADCASTERS TO BREAK THE LAW

Martin Territt is the new boss of  the EU Commission office in Molesworth Street, Dublin.  He has millions of euros at his disposal to try to counter growing public disenchantment with the EU and persuade us to vote to give the EU more power when the next Treaty comes around for referendum here. 

However Mr Territt has less experience than his precedessor Peter Doyle. In March and April last the Commission office in Dublin financed daily advertisements on Newstalk 106 and local community radio stations across the country making blatant political propaganda for the EU. These adverts were in clear breach of Ireland's statutory  ban on political advertising on radio and TV. Here are samples of what they said:
"Do you know that since 1973 Ireland has received over 5.5 billion euros from the European Community? " ;   "Do you know that telephone calls cost less because of the EU?" ; "Do you know that there is EU legislation to ensure the food you eat is safe?"   And so on.  Of course it is the broadcasters that were breaking the law by carrying such political propaganda, capable of influencing how people vote in elections or referendums.  But the ad agency employed by Mr Territt's office assured them it was alright, and both the ad agency and the broadcasting stations were glad to pocket the EU money.   
The last time the Dublin office of the Commission tried this kind of thing was in 1997, when it started disseminating propaganda on the Amsterdam Treaty coming up to the referendum on that. When Patricia McKenna MEP and others complained to Brussels,  the Legal Affairs Department of the Commission advised that the actions of its Dublin Office could be in breach of Irish and EU law.  Mr Territt's predecessor Peter Doyle was in effect rapped over the knuckles by his superiors  and the propaganda stopped.   A solicitor's letter has now gone to Mr Territt's employers in Brussels,  and to the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, complaining that the March-April advertising on Irish local radios office was breaking the ban on political advertising here. Mr Territt and the EU Commission Office in Dublin have in effect  been put on notice that if this kind of propagandist  behaviour continues or is resumed,  they are liable to find themselves before the High Court and Supreme Court for encouraging illegal actions by broadcasters in this country. 

If you hear this political advertising on your local community radio stations during July, it would be very helpful if you logged the day, time and character of the advert and sent an e-mail to us about it at the address at the end of this bulletin. 
__________
 

 *** WHAT "EUROPE DAY"(9 MAY) REALLY STANDS FOR ... THE STRATEGY OF DECEPTIVE STEPS
The political objective of establishing a supranational European Federal State has been central from the start to the various stages of the integration project: Coal and Steel Community, Economic Community, European Community, European Union.

"Europe Day"(May 9th) commemorates the Schuman Declaration on 9 May 1950, which stated frankly that the establishment of the supranational Coal and Steel Community was  "a first step in the federation of Europe" and that "this proposal will lead to the realization of the first concrete foundation of a European federation."
A Federation is of course a particular form of  State, and yet for decades the champions of integration have sworn they have no such thing in mind.  They have said this as the EC/EU has steadily acquired ever more features of a supranational Federation: its own laws, Parliament, Supreme Court, currency, foreign policy, battle groups, code of fundamental rights, flag, anthem, motto and now - they hope - its own Constitution and with it real citizenship and citizens' obligations. If the EU Constitution were  to be ratified, it would leave the power to levy taxes as the only major power of government still remaining at national level, and the advocates of integration clearly aspire to this in time.

The "ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe"  which is referred to in the Preamble to the 1957 Treaty of Rome set no limit to the European integration process. What is interesting is how, as if to calm people's fears and induce them to join unwittingly in the supranational State-building project, they are gulled into using familiar and seemingly innocuous terms to describe it for a period, whose legal meaning is then altered retrospectively in a subsequent European Treaty. Deception of this kind has characterised the integration project from the start.

Calling the European Union by the name "Europe" is the most obvious example, even though a dozen countries that are certainly European are not members of the EU at all, and the boundaries of geographical  Europe are quite different from the EU's.  Another example is the name "European Parliament".  The idea of a supranational Parliament or legislature would not have been publicly acceptable  at the time of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. The Rome Treaty called it an "Assembly", and it consisted of politicians nominated by governments, with direct elections being introduced 20 years later in 1979. Then the Asssembly started calling itself a Parliament without any legal basis for doing this,  and that term was generally applied to it for years before the name was formally changed, in the 1987 Single European Act, to make the term "European Parliament" legally valid.

 Another example of deception is the three legally separate European Communities - Coal and Steel, Euratom and Economic - that were established in the 1950s. For decades these were referred to as one "European Community"(EC) in common Brussels parlance before this unified Community was actually established legally, which did not happen until the 1992 Maastricht Treaty on European Union.  Most of the Maastricht Treaty, whose title introduces the name "European Union",  consists  of amendments to the three existing community treaties "with a view to establishing the European Community" , even though simple folk unused to the ways of the EU federalists will have thought that this Community had been established years before in 1992.  

The name "European Union"  is itself  a deception. Note that the proper title of the  Maastricht Treaty, which gave us the term European Union and the notional concept of EU citizenship for the first time, is a Treaty "on" Union, not "of" Union. One can only be a citizen of a State,  and what is called the European Union today  is not yet a State. The present EU does not even have legal personality or distinct corporate existence, unlike the European Community which does. So at present being an EU citizen entails no legal obligations, but everyone has now got used to the term "EU citizen" and regards it as innocuous.  So the Eurofederalists  believe the time has come to give EU citizenship legal content and impose real citizens' obligations  on people, hoping they will not notice the drastic character of the change proposed, for after all are we not EU citizens already? This is the key political purpose of the proposed EU Constitution. 
The name "European Union" today, stemming from the 1992 Maastricht Treaty,  is a descriptive term for various forms of cooperation between its Member  States - the supranational "Community pillar" on the one hand, where the Brussels Commission proposes the laws, and the "intergovernmental pillars" of crime and justice and foreign policy on the other, where Member States relate to one another as notionally sovereign entities.  Thus, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as European Union law, for the EU is not a legal person, only European Community, or "EC", law, for the Community does have legal personality.
  The proposed EU Constitution, the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, would change all that if it were to be ratified. It would equip the legally quite new European Union it would establish with real teeth,  but it is hoped that people will not notice, for there would be no change of name.  The Constitution would repeal the existing EC/EU treaties, would abolish their three-pillar structure and merge them into one unified system, all governed by the supranational law of what would, constitutionally and legally, be a new and fundamentally different Union from the present EU.
This new EU would be founded like any State upon its own Constitution. The Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe  would therefore in effect be the"Treaty  of European Union",                                                                          for it would establish the EU for the first time as a distinct legal entity, with the constitutional form of a supranational Federal State.  A European Federation would thereby be born, stretching from  Ireland  to the borders of Russia. I
t would still lack some features of a mature, fully developed Federation, but it would have most of them. This after all is how such classical Federal States as 19th Century Germany, the USA, Canada and Australia developed  -  over a long period of time as the powers of lower units were gradually subsumed into higher.   This new European Union based on its own Constitution would thus become our real legal sovereign and supreme ruler for the first time, instead of our own national State or country. The Irish Constitution would have to be changed to recognise the constitutional superiority of this new European Union. That is what the necessary referendum would be about, although one can be sure that the leaders of our principal political parties will swear blind that nothing like this is at issue.  The EU Constitution would make us real citizens of what in effect would be a United States of Europe, as such leading politicians as France's Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Belgian's Guy Verhofstadt, Italy's Romano Prodi and Germany's Hans Martin Bury openly and honestly acknowledge.  
Under the  proposed EU Constitution we would no longer be just honorary or notional citizens of an EU that has no legal personality or corporate exstence in its own right, which we are told we are at present. We would instead become real citizens of a real EU Federation and would owe it and its institutions the first duty of citizenship, which is to obey that State's laws and give the new EU now founded on its own Constitution our real loyalty and inward allegiance.  

The Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe  would thus be the fulfilment of the federalist dream of the 1950 Schuman Declaration which we are asked to honour on "Europe Day", even though most people have no idea that this is what the Declaration being commemorated  actually had in mind.   _________ 

*** WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE TO THE EU  WE HAVE NOW GOT?

Opinion polls in every EU country show that people want powers that have been taken by Brussels "repatriated" or brought back to the member nation States.  "Hardline" EU-critics who would like to leave the EU or who believe the EU's lack of democracy is bound to blow it apart in time, and "soft-liners" who think the EU can be reformed into becoming something quite different from what it is now, can unite in demanding that powers be taken back from Brussels.  This is one alternative they can all agree on: to return powers to democratic States and national Parliaments where laws can be made by people elected by citizens and where a country's own people can change the laws they do not like, which it is impossible for them to do in the EU.  There is plenty room for argument as to what EU powers might be repatriated. For  Ireland one obvious candidate would be fisheries. If Ireland did not have to share its sea-fisheries with the rest of the EU and had developed  them as Norway and Iceland have done, their annual value over the years would  be greater than all the money we received from Brussels since 1973.

The Laeken Declaration which established the Convention that drew up the proposed EU Constitution instructed its members to consider the possibility of returning some EU  powers from Brussels to the Member States. But the Convention, which was dominated by Eurofederalists, totally ignored this.  Instead it proposed shifting over 60 new policy areas from Member States to the EU under the EU Constitution that it drafted.  The Constitution does not propose that a single power should move the other way. As true believers in the intoxicating superstate-building project, those who drew up the Constitution regarded the acquis communautaire  as sacrosanct. National powers that have been surrendered must stay surrendered for ever.  EU legal aficionados call this the "doctrine of the occupied field".  What the EU has occupied, stays occupied. 
________    

 
*** "THE EURO WILL COLLAPSE WITHOUT POLITICAL UNION", FORECASTS TOP ADVISER TO COMMISSION PRESIDENT BARROSO    In an interview with Belgian daily, De Morgen (18 March), Commission President Jose Barroso's economic advisor, Professor Paul de Grauwe, argues that the euro has damaged Italy's economy and that without "political union" in Europe, the euro will collapse in ten to twenty years.  He also argues that the EU's Lisbon process, which forms the backbone of the Commission's efforts to make the EU more competitive, "is best buried."
Professor de Grauwe, of Leuven University, Belgium, was a strong supporter of the euro at its inception. He is author of a standard text on monetary union, The Economics of Monetary Integration, and writes regularly in the Financial Times.  In this article he says, "Sometimes I wonder: do we still need the European Union? I start to have doubts about that. It is sufficient that countries open up their economy. You don't need to do that in the context of the European Union."  Asked whether the EU has added value he said, "I'm not sure about that. Probably the Union creates a framework to keep markets open in an organised way. In that respect it has added value."

He goes on to argue that "the euro is a bad thing for the Italian economy. I'm afraid that Spain is also evolving in the same direction. If that happens, we are stuck with a big problem."  He says that developing a "political union" is the only way to mitigate the problems created by the euro, saying "A political union is the logical end-point of a currency union. But if that political union fails to materialise, then in the long term the euro area cannot continue to exist."  He says,"Now that nobody appears to want that political union, you can begin to wonder whether monetary union was such a good idea. I hardly dare predict that, in the longer term, the monetary union will collapse. not next year, but on a time-frame of ten or twenty years.

"There is not a single monetary union which survived without political union. They have all collapsed. You invariably get big shocks. A monetary union becomes very fragile without a political framework. With the exception of a Don Quixote like Guy Verhofstadt  (Belgian Prime Minister and author of the book "The United States of Europe"), I see nobody who is pushing the case for a political union."  He said, "A large free trade zone remains the only feasible option for Europe. It's an illusion that we can realise a political union in Europe in the near future. Political unification has failed. But that is a big problem for the currency union. That is in danger."

Prof. De Grauwe continues: "Lisbon was a political fiction. The Lisbon process is best buried. The whole process, for that matter, is based on the wrong diagnosis. We have built a system of social security that gives people too many incentives not to work. They can easily interrupt their career and leave the labour market early. For many people it is financially unattractive to work. So we shouldn't be surprised that economic growth is subdued."  He remarked that productivity per hour worked in the EU is the same as in the US, but that because Europeans take more time off, growth is slower than in the US where people work more and consume more.

In another article in the Financial Times on 5 May last  de Grauwe writes: "The fundamental problem is a flaw in the design of the eurozone which has completely centralised monetary policy while leaving important tools of economic policies in the hands of national governments. If this flaw cannot be remedied, the eurozone will not be sustainable." 
These articles are accessible on the internet under De Grauwe, Paul. One of his web-sites "The Eurozone: Problems and Prospects"  gives a detailed analysis of the eurozone from its inception. It concludes "Without further political integration one can predict with great confidence that the European Monetary Union will not last."  It is clear that Professor De Grauwe does not believe that further political integration is possible in the EU because there is no popular,  democratic support for it, however hard the Eurocrats and Europhiles seek to push it.  Hence his confident prediction of  the eurozone's inevitable collapse.  Irish politicians and pundits might take note.

_________ 

  *** EU FISHING POLICY LEADS TO AFRICANS' FLIGHT 
Nine EU countries have offered ships and planes to Spain, to help stem the flood of West Africans prepared to risk their lives crossing in fragile wooden boats to the Canary Islands. Some 9,000 have already made it this year, while at least 1,500 have died in the attempt. EU governments are concerned because, once the Africans have reached Spanish soil, they are free after 40 days to settle anywhere in the EU, including Ireland and Britain.

The major cause of this human disaster is one of the real scandals of our time. This is the devastation being wreaked along the west coast of Africa by hundreds of large foreign trawlers, which are destroying the livelihoods and often the lives of local fishermen.  Conspicuous among these are Spanish and Portuguese boats, allowed into these waters under the so-called "Third World fisheries agreements" negotiated by the EU, for which EU taxpayers have shelled out more than £2 billion  to the governments of countries like Mali, Senegal and Mauritania.  Most of this money, as has been well documented, goes to a small elite of politicians and officials in these countries.
The African fishermen cannot compete. Thousands have died, simply because their tiny craft are run down by the foreign trawlers pillaging the same fishing grounds - hence their desperation to escape to Europe. This murderous and corrupt system originated with the admission to the EC of Spain, with the largest and most environmentally destructive fishing fleet in Europe.
  To buy off Spain's right of "equal access" to European waters, Brussels hands over these astronomic sums to allow its fleet to destroy Third World waters instead.
The shining exception is Namibia which, having shut out the European invaders, has now built up its own sustainable modern fishing industry, employing thousands of local people and worth £10 billion.

Such a ludicrous situation would never have arisen had Ireland's Taoiseach Jack Lynch and Britain's  Premier Edward Heath not agreed to surrender their national fishing waters as a condition of EEC entry  in 1973.  The founding EEC Six, having mostly exhausted their own sea fisheries, concocted the Common Fisheries Policy which would enable them to move into Ireland's and Britain's waters on the very eve of the entry negotiations. Part of the price that we continue to pay, 33 years later, is that thousands of desperate Africans put their lives in danger in struggling to reach  the nearest EU landfall, from where they can move freely  to every country of the EU. 

It takes the Brussels Commission to present this complex human tragedy only in terms of how EU countries are now co-operating to force the Africans back whence they came; in other words, as no more than another glorious triumph for European integration.

___________  

 *** "UNFETTERED CONTROL OF IRISH DESTINIES"? ... TWO  RECENT EXAMPLES
- EU SAYS NO MORE STATE AID FOR DUBLIN FIRMS:  The EU is forbidding the Government to give State aid to companies setting up or expanding in Dublin and adjacent counties from 2007. State-aid for Cork-based industries is to end in 2008,  while only small and medium-sized firms will qualify for State aids in the Mid-West region between 2008 and 2013, when the State aid regime is to finish altogether. This Mid-West region covers Kerry, Galway, Mayo, Leitrim, Sligo, Longford, Roscommon, Cavan, Monaghan, Laois, Offaly and Westmeath.  The new restrictions will take into account all State investment in particular companies over the years. This means that future expansion by already established companies, such as Intel in Kildare, could be affected by the EU order.


- EU SAYS IRELAND CANNOT DECIDE WHAT COURT IT CAN CHALLENGE BRITAIN IN: 
The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) stated last month that  the Government breached European law by pursuing its Sellafield  case against the British Government over nuclear pollution of the Irish Sea through international courts instead of the EU Court in Luxembourg.  The EU Court itself usually upholds its Advocate-General's view, and is especially likely to do so in a judgement that would significantly  increase its own authority.

The European Commission launched the case against Ireland which has been upheld in the European court. London welcomed the ruling, which should  help Tony Blair as he seeks support for a dramatic increase in the country's nuclear power, reported The Guardian.  Even if Ireland takes  its case over Sellafield to the EU Court of Justice, its chances of winning there are slight, as that  Court  is likely to the favour the Big EU States which are all committed to nuclear power.
__________
   

 *** WHAT THEY SAY ON THE EU CONSTITUTION   "The rejection of the Constitution is a mistake which will have to be corrected Š If the Irish and the Danes can vote Yes in the end, so the French can do it too."  -  V.Giscard d'Estaing, speech at London School of Economics, 28 February 2006
***
"I want to believe obstinately that neither the French nor the Dutch have rejected the constitutional treaty. A lot of the questions in the French and Dutch debates find answers in the constitution. But the voters - and this is why we need this period of explanation and debate - did not realise that the text of the constitutional treaty, the nature of the constitutional treaty, aimed to respond to numerous concerns." 
-  Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg Premier and holder of the EU presidency, International Herald Tribune, 18-19 June 2005
***
 'It was a mistake to send out the entire three-part, 448-article document to every French voter," said Mr Giscard. Over the phone he had warned Mr Chirac in March: "I said, 'Don't do it, don't do it. It is not possible for anyone to understand the full text.'"
-  V. Giscard d'Estaing, interview in New York Times, quoted in Euobserver, 15 June 2005
***
  "I think the EU constitution is the birth certificate of the United States of Europe.  It is not the end point of integration, but the framework for - as it says  in the preamble - an ever closer union."  - Hans Martin Bury, Germany's Europe minister, Bundestag debate, Die Welt, 25 February 2005
***

"The Constitution is the capstone of a European Federal State."  - Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian Prime Minister, Financial Times, 21 June 2004
***

"This (drafting a Constitution)is what you have to do if you want the people to build statues of you on horseback in the villages you all come from."  - V.Giscard d'Estaing, Financial Times, 21 June 2004
***

"We know that nine out of 10 people will not have read the Constitution and will vote on the basis of what politicians and journalists say. More than that, if the answer is No, the vote will probably have to be done again, because it absolutely has to be Yes." 
- Jean-Luc Dehaene, Former Belgian Prime Minister and Vice-President of the EU Convention, Irish Times, 2 June 2004
***

"The Convention
(on the Constitution) brought together a self-selected group of the European political elite, many of whom have their eyes on a career at a European level, which is dependent on more and more integration and who see national governments and parliaments as an obstacle. Not once in the sixteen months I spent on the Convention did representatives question whether deeper integration is what the people of Europe want, whether it serves their best interests or whether it provides the best basis for a sustainable structure for an expanding Union. The debates focused solely on where we could do more at European Union level. None of the existing policies were questioned."
  -  Gisela Stuart MP, member of the Convention praesidium, The Making of Europe's Constitution, Fabian Society pamphlet, London, 2003.
***

"We need a European Constitution.  The European Constitution is not the 'final touch' of the European structure; it must become its foundation.  The European Constitution should prescribe that . . . we are building a Federation of nation-States. The first part should be based on the Charter of Fundamental Rights proclaimed at the European summit at Nice. . . If we transform the EU into a Federation of Nation-States, we will enhance the democratic legitimacy. . .We should not prescribe what the EU should never be allowed to . . . I believe that the Parliament and the Council of Ministers should be developed into a genuine bicameral parliament."  - Dr Johannes Rau, President of the Federal Republic of Germany, European Parliament, 4 April 2001
***

"Creating a single European State bound by one European Constitution is the decisive task of our time."
- German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, Daily Telegraph, 27 December1998  

by The National Platform EU Research and Information Centre, 24 Crawford Avenue, Dublin 9; Tel: 00-353-1-8305792; Secretary Anthony Coughlan.