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.
________
*** AFRIKAKORPS: 800 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. It 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
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.
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