eurealist.co.uk

I missed this at the time, but thanks to Martin Stabe for the link

Under a headline Spain snubs resident Brits in European referendum voteBy Hugh Ash in the Telegraph (Filed: 29/12/2004)

Registered voters in Spain’s 500,000-strong, British expatriate community have been barred from voting when the country becomes the first member state to hold a referendum on the new European Union constitution in February.

A spokesman for Spain’s Interior Ministry, which is organising the referendum, said: “Non-Spanish residents of EU nations are free to vote in their home countries.”

Many also feel other nation states will copy the Spanish example and disenfranchise the estimated 25 million citizens, who reside in EU countries other than their own,

I would have thought that the Spanish Minister was right, unless the British contingent were naturalised Spanish citizens; they have no right to decide the future of the Spanish Constitution, that surely must be entirely up to the Spanish people. This is not an EU wide referendum, which if it were I believe would be an illegal interference in a countries Constitutional laws. It is up to every single country in the EU to decide for themselves if they wish to adopt this constitution, if all twenty five do then the constitution can be adopted. But the result of one cannot have an affect on the voting in another, if it did that would make a mockery of any claims of democratic authority that the Constitution will give to the EU.

But of course like Spain’s Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodrigues Zapatero, Tony Blair, will also want to win the referendum, but unlike Spain who is not allowing Foreigners to vote, because they may tip the balance in the referendum, Britain is likely to do the oposite and allow foreigners to vote in our referendum for exactly the same reason, that they may tip the balance. If he does and they do force a yes against the wishes of the British people, then I for one would find it hard to accept that outcome and would suggest that the Queen who at her Coronation swore that we should only be ruled by our own laws should stand by that oath and refuse her authority.

Kate Mentink-Duncan, a Scot who, as an opposition Partido Popular councillor in Calvia, Majorca, is Spain’s only British-born politician, says “What’s at stake, is an issue affecting all EU citizens and to bar some from having their legitimate say over the constitution is undemocratic and unconstitutional - even if there isn’t yet a formal constitution on how Europe works.”

But Spain is not barring any British Citizen from voting in the referendum, they are not disenfranchising any British citizen, this decision is not undemocratic and unconstitutional, simply because this is not an EU wide referendum, we are therefore not voting as EU citizens (which is not legal anyway because as they never stop telling us, the EU is not a State and you cannot be a citizen of a non-state, citizenship implies statehood), but citizens of individual states, to decide if we wish our state to accept the EU constitution, and therby make it a state with its own constitution.

So therefore these British Citizens have every right to vote in Britain’s Referendum, unless of course Tony Blair decides not to allow them, in which case it will be he who is being undemocratic and unconstitutional.

In the report funded by the 5th Framework Programme of the European Commission “The Transformation of Political Mobilisation and Communication in European Public Spheres” or Europub.com for short, which describes itself as “an analytic review of the factors that influence the way British newspapers report Europe” I am sure they mean EU.

One of the many complaints was that British newspapers do not send enough correspondents to Brussels.

The Sun ever eager to please has obliged by sending Our man Michael Lea somehow I don’t think this is quite what they had in mind…..

From Martin Stabe: Fair and balanced

The Sun has appointed a European Correspondent based in Brussels. This is how they announced the appointment yesterday:

SUN LAUNCHES WAR ON EURO WASTERS

THE Sun today launches its office in Brussels — the capital of Euroland.

Our man Michael Lea, left, is there to expose the waste, greed, corruption and hypocrisy at the heart of the EU.

Power is being grasped from voters and placed in the hands of unelected mandarins and failed politicians.

Business is being strangled in red tape and taxpayers’ cash is used to fill the trough from which europhiles sup gleefully. Britain must soon decide on the constitution — a power-grab on paper — and the single currency.

Tony Blair will urge us to take the plunge and vote Yes to both the EU Constitution and to scrapping our beloved Pound for the euro. We will be assured the officials and shadowy politicians in Euroland know best how to spend our money.

But by reporting direct from Brussels, The Sun will explode that myth and take the fight to those milking the system.

Papers have been reporting from Brussels for years but most refuse to tell the real stories.

Now The Sun — and our new European Correspondent — will tell you what you need to know.

DO YOU KNOW A EURO SCANDAL? Email our man at

Martin Stabe comments wrily; “Looks like Mr Lea is going to make up his mind based on the reporting he does rather than some pre-defined agenda.”

I am often so flabbergasted at the BBC blatant bias that it takes me a while to wake up, not the case with Eureferendum title “Beneath Contempt” which mentions last night “Newsnight programme, a report on the UN “Oil for Food” scandal. In what was supposed to be a critical piece, we heard Peter Marshall, the Beebie reporter state, with not a hint of a blush:

The Asian tsunami has provided a perfect example of the need for an effective UN under an activist Secretary General. This time Kofi Annan was quick off the mark and America’s independent efforts soon looked superfluous.”

Looking at the comments section F U ( Fed Up) posts a link to The Australian News

In the aftermath of the Asian tsunamis, the US had acted quickly to assemble a core group of four countries to co-ordinate aid.

The core group, which consisted of the US, Australia, Japan and India, has since been disbanded, with the UN assuming its co-ordinating role. But the untold inside story of the short life of the core group reveals one of the most elegant exercises in foreign policy in recent times.

Its formation tells us much about the Bush administration, its ability to react quickly when necessary, its geostrategic priorities and its intimate relationship with Australia.

The US response to the tsunamis was far from slow, as some critics have alleged. When the magnitude-9.0 quake struck off the coast of Sumatra, triggering a series of powerful tsunamis on the morning of Sunday, December 26, it was mid-evening on Christmas night in Washington.

Yet within six hours, the US Agency for International Development was moving relief funds to US embassies in the region. According to senior US officials, it was natural and automatic that Australia was the first and most important interlocutor on this crisis.

The US Pacific Command, based in Hawaii, was in touch with its Australian counterparts straight away. Pacific commander Admiral Thomas Fargo was quickly on the phone to Australia’s General Peter Cosgrove.

In Washington, senior staff of the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council, who had not taken Christmas leave, were called back to their offices.

There followed a series of telephone conferences to discuss the immediate response as the proposal for the core group, credited to Under-Secretary of State for political affairs Marc Grossman, took shape.
Grossman would in due course become the US convenor of the group.

As these staff discussions were going on, US officials periodically kept key Australian diplomats informed.

Thus Australia, from the outset, was able to have an input into the inter-agency process, the fruits of the new Australian intimacy in Washington.

The core-group concept was formalised in a phone call between National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Powell asked Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to ring the Australian ambassador to the US, Michael Thawley, and Japanese ambassador, Ryozo Kato, to get the ball rolling.

Armitage rang Thawley on Monday December 27. Powell himself spoke directly to Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

The ease and familiarity of these relationships is critical in a fast-moving process like this.

Thawley has become a Washington powerbroker in his own right, regularly talking to Armitage. Unlike other ambassadors from the region, he also talks a lot to Karl Rove, Bush’s chief domestic adviser.
Downer has been Foreign Minister for all the time that Powell has been Secretary of State and the two are friends.

Senior US officials insist that the highest priority was effectiveness, enrolling countries that could deliver and do so fast.
“We were interested in countries that could do the ‘mostest’ the fastest,” says a senior US official. “We weren’t trying to make any big political point here.”

Nonetheless, a political point was made. Paul Martin, the Canadian Prime Minister, rang Bush to complain about being left out.
Blair told Bush that co-ordination should go through the UN and the G8.

But the truth was that the UN had no capacity to do anything or to make any difference in the short term.

On December 27, late in the evening, Washington time, the core group had its first teleconference with Grossman in the chair. Australia participated through Doug Chester, the acting head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The other participants were Japan and India. The meeting went very well.

Every day, until the group was wound up late last week, another long-distance conference would be held.

The four nations worked easily together, all committing their armed forces to deliver the aid as quickly as possible.

On December 31, the core group held a video-conference, involving Powell and the UN’s Kofi Annan and various senior UN officials. The core group meetings after this routinely included UN representatives.

“This was an opportunity for the US and the UN to kiss and make up,” says a senior US official. Another core- group official has a more blunt view: “All this talk about UN capability is crap. The core-group countries had forces steaming to the crisis while the UN was still on holidays.”

The core group was a classic example of focused, regional multilateralism, not initially involving the UN, centred on a real task.

Although the US priority was helping victims and saving lives, senior figures, such as Powell and Armitage, saw the duty, the opportunity and the risk for the US.

The US made tsunami relief an exceptionally high priority, even to the extent of deploying units that were meant to be heading for Iraq, according to some sources. In total, the US, Australian and Japanese military forces committed the greatest concentration of military power in Southeast Asia since the Vietnam War.

Australia’s contribution has received exceptional coverage in the US. Both The New York Times and the Washington Post ran front page photos of Australian soldiers helping tsunami victims while an unofficial internet site run by US diplomats sang the praises of the Australians.

Countless newspapers and television news programs ran graphics showing Australia as the outstanding contributor of tsunami aid.

The tsunami relief effort reached a political climax with the summit in Jakarta on January 6. The Australian Government urged the Bush administration to consider having the President attend himself. But while it would have been an enormous gesture for
Bush to go personally to Jakarta, it would have been a massive logistical exercise, diverting Indonesian security and military resources from the relief effort. So, instead, Bush sent Powell, the most internationally popular member of his cabinet, and his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush. This personalised Bush’s response in a way that was well understood in Asia.

And so, its work done, the core group was wound up. The lessons of this extraordinary chapter in international co-operation are now being studied in chanceries around the world. Greg Sheridan

Contrast this with a letter in the Yorkshire Post Eureferendumfrom Ged Robinson a leading light in the Leeds branch of the European Movement.

Who claims he has written to rebut many letters that criticise the EU and our membership of it,

“I thought I would give some details of the EU’s role in the response to the humanitarian disaster in Asia.”

Which boils down to no immediate response but an ongoing Assessment and evaluation of the situation? After which this idiot seems by some unimaginable leap of faith pleases to conclude that

“Yet again, in response to an international catastrophe, we see why we are members of a pan-European partnership such as the EU. We can achieve more together than we can alone”

How is it that they simply cannot make any comment without misleading? Not only on the facts, but what on earth is a pan-European partnership? Some equal joint venture where we all equally loose sovereignty to a pan European unaccountable and unelected EU run by and undemocratic “conclave of technocrats without a country, responsible to nobody.”

BEEBWATCH TODAY

January 8th: From the pathetic laughing stock called the Today programme; presenter Nick Clarke said, ‘Sadly, sentiment against the EU constitution remains strong’. Sadly? I thought BBC presenters were supposed not to broadcast their own views?

For me the perhaps the most interesting part of an EU Blog Pro or Anti, are the comments which are often short pithy points about parts of the main story. These comments give a quick reference to some of the basic misunderstandings and offer differing view points on the various topics, often I find a quick well placed one liner, can undercut a well thought out and referenced post.

However being Eusceptic I do find the opposition somewhat lacking in the ability to maintain an argument based on facts, and would rather move the debate on to the firmer ground for them, of opinion. This is not the fault of the individual posters who mostly honestly attempt to defend an institution in which they believe, but they do have a problem of trying to show the EU in a certain way when the spotlight is turned on the question at hand.

Unfortunately I do not often find I have ability to really take part in this interesting sport because my short pithy comments always seem to just grow onto several paragraphs, requiring several more paragraphs to oppose.

This from Eureferendum, commenting on the point that we like the Danes may well be asked to vote again if we give the wrong answer to the referendum, and because the Constitution will be changed it is tantamount to giving the EU a blank cheque.

I wouldn’t rely too much on past form, if you mean the Danes with Maastricht and the Irish with Nice. This time, we’re having a vote, and as one of the larger member states it won’t be so easy to tell us to “vote again, and get it right this time”.

The Danes with Maastricht are an often repeated lie. They didn’t vote again on the same treaty, they voted again on a treaty that allowed them to opt out of all their issues of concern, including monetary union. That’s why Denmark hasn’t currently adopted Euro for example. That’s not a mere detail.
So the Danes’ vote definitely counted. And now they’ll vote again, so it wasn’t a “black cheque” for later, either.

everything which has been done so far over half a century - for good or bad, depending on one’s viewpoint - none of that would have been possible at all, unless every member state had accepted from their accession that at each step there would be no changes to the treaties without unanimous agreement and ratification.

We may be heading towards paradise, or we may be going to hell in a handcart, but so far it’s been agreed that we’ll all travel together.

If certain states (which really means, the political elites in certain states) have over-played their hands, and insisted on a new treaty that is unacceptable to people in the UK or any other country - well, that’s just tough, they should have thought about it more carefully.

Whether ordinary people in other countries would really see it as a problem if the British people halted ‘the process’ is a moot point.
I suspect that in reality most of them wouldn’t be much bothered, one way or the other, while many others would be quietly relieved.

they voted again on a treaty that allowed them to opt out of all their issues of concern, including monetary union…”

That is a common myth. There was no difference in the treaties between the votes. All that happened was that the European Councils appended “declarations” to the treaties - which have no legal effect - restating that which was in the treaties already.

No, the opt-outs agreed at Edinburgh were not legally binding, nor were they incorporated as protocols. Whatever they thought they were doing, the Danes in fact voted the second time around on the same treaty. That’s why no other member state had to re-ratify the treaty in the light of the Danish “opt-outs”, which would have been the case if there’d been amendments to the treaty text.

I do believe that the “declarations” have legal effect. But I’ll have to check up on it.

have a look at: http://europa.eu….
Only protocols are legally binding, not declarations, and when the Danes voted again on the Maastricht Treaty it was on the strength of the Edinburgh Declaration, which had been attached to the Treaty but was not part of the text.
“The major difference is, of course, that the US president is elected while the commission is not”

Of course, the other - fairly major - difference is that the US President can veto legislation which (and correct me if I’m wrong here) the Commission can not.
True, but his veto can be over-ridden by a 2/3 majority in both houses, so it isn’t an absolute power. Is the power of veto absolute in the U.K.?

The commission does have a “veto” in the sense that, if it does not like the way its legislation is amended, it can withdraw the proposal. In the UK system, the parliament has the final say - it can over-ride the government by a majority of the votes in the house. On an important issue, this would lead to - and does - a motion for a vote of confidence which, if the government loses, requires to its resignation and (usually) precipitates a general election. Thus, at any time - in theory, at least - the parliament can bring down the government. In practice, of course, as long as the government holds a majority in the House, it is fairly safe.