eurealist.co.uk

This from a new blog, to me, Democracy.me.uk

The Future is a Foreign Country

This week sees the EU Parliament host the “Third annual conference on federalism”. If you were unaware there had ever been two previous such conferences then you’re not alone
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One of the ‘working papers’ issued to mark the occasion is ‘The European Union: A New Federative Project?’ Contrary to all of ‘New’ Labour’s lies, these federalists are not afraid to state the truth when they actively welcome the fact that the EU Constitution will strengthen their powers and thus move, ‘the European Union further away from a mere federative project into the direction of a federation. The main characteristics of this development are the following ones:

‘The name of the Treaty signalises a claim. No supranational organisation, let alone any merely international one, has hitherto called its charter a constitution. Up to present times this term has been reserved for states. By using it now for the European Union the Treaty has at least indicated that in many respects this Union has already state-like features, and it has established the further development of these features as a political programme for a federal state.’

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The British House of Commons, British law courts, and British civil servants are still here, but they have all become agents of the European Union implementing European law. This is no accident. By creating common standards that are implemented through national institutions, Europe can take over countries without necessarily becoming a target for hostility’

Full post HERE

Spanish Foreign Minister:

“We are witnessing the last remnants of national politics” - EU Constitution means “a surrender of member states’ sovereignty”. Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos is interviewed by the EU think tank “cafe babel”. Moratinos was asked, “Does accepting the European Constitution mean a surrender of member states’ sovereignty?” and he replied, “Absolutely. The member states have already relinquished control of certain economic and social competences, including justice, liberty and security. Now the difficult part is approaching: the giving up of sovereignty in the duel arenas of foreign affairs and defence. The concept of traditional citizenship has been bypassed in the 21st Century.” He argues that, “The post of European Minister for Foreign Affairs is revolutionary; it will coordinate development policy, foreign relations and defence. While it is true that the decisions that will be taken will generally require the unanimous approval of the Council, the Minister will be able to make proposals that could be approved by majority voting.”

The costs of social policy may well make many small businesses either retrench or close altogether; this will not help either the employment prospects or the country as a whole.

In my case I am considering closing part of my business so that my wife and I can manage the resulting smaller business without the necessity of employing staff, this would in fact increase our personal earnings, and at the same time make our lives that much easer, as we will not then have to comply with laws that seem designed with the sole intention of creating problems for the small business. It would also have the knock on effect of taking us below the VAT threshold so that we will no longer be collecting that particular tax for the Treasury. OK this in my case this only amounts to a few thousand each year, but there are many who are considering similar options, so it would be fair to say that if these policies kill the gooses where is the egg going to come from, at what point do the socialists begin to realise that you can only push so far before the whole system begins to collapse.

Without being cold hearted about this I do not see the reason that I, simply because I am offering employment, should also be responsible for the life style choices of those whom I employ.

I can quite see that this may seem selfish to some people but it is not them who have to meet the ever increasing burdens of this governments policies.

Red tape hits £40bn

From Times on line

THE red-tape burden on British business adds up to £40 billion since Labour came to power, the British Chambers of Commerce will say this week.

The BCC has been monitoring the cost to business of new regulations introduced by the government, together with European Union directives implemented in Britain. It last year estimated the cumulative burden was £30 billion.

This week’s estimate suggests an increase of at least 25%, mostly due to the working-time directive, which has cost business more than £11 billion, and the data protection act, which has cost about £5 billion. Other expensive red tape includes rules on disability discrimination, changes in vehicle excise duty and asbestos rules.

The red-tape total does not include the cost of the minimum wage, which Tony Blair announced on Friday would increase from £4.85 to £5.05 in October, and to £5.35 next year.

David Frost, BCC director-general, said: “British businesses supported a national minimum wage, but last year we saw it rise at over five times the rate of inflation. Increases at this rate are simply not sustainable and could have a serious impact on jobs and competitiveness.”

News:

Janet Bush; writing in the Independent says the Constitution enshrines into law two areas of EU governance which have been completely discredited and suggests the document should be read as a democratic duty, but cautions with the words of Gisela Stuart, who was appointed by Tony Blair as one of the British drafters at the convention, “The draft is so complex that it is difficult to understand; yet I am convinced that those who come to understand it may be forgiven for thinking that they have gone mad in the process!”

Bush, who starts her article by comparing the EU constitution to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy;

“At the start of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the people of Earth loudly complain when they find out that the planet is about to be destroyed to make way for an intergalactic highway. They are given short shrift by the commander of the Vogon constructor fleet, who points out that the plans have been available for 50 earth years in the planning department of Alpha Centauri.
Replace the intergalactic highway with the new European constitution and the commander with Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president who led the convention that drafted it, and you have a flavour of the black hole between the peoples of planet Europe and the political elite that has drawn up a blueprint for our future”.

Then points out that a typical view of Europe’s political classes is “you don’t need to read the European constitution to know that it is good”. As long as the constitution means more Europe, it doesn’t much matter what kind of Europe”.

“Barely anyone is talking in a serious way about what the constitution says about how the economic management of the EU is set to develop. There is even confusion on the profound point of currency. The text of the constitution says that the euro is the currency of the EU, which leads one to think that saying yes to the constitution means signing up to the euro without a referendum on it in Britain. Some experts say that this is a “horizontal clause”, meaning that Britain and Denmark can keep their opt-outs from the single currency if they so wish (where Sweden is left, outside the euro but with no formal opt-out, is not clear). Others are not so sure. The EU’s trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, suggested in The Independent last week that the Government’s “yes” campaign for the constitution might include a pledge not to seek membership of the euro in the near future. The “no” campaign argues that he can afford to concede this point because the constitution will do the job of forcing Britain into the single currency anyway”.

“One of the most idiotic aspects of the constitution is that it enshrines into law two of the aspects of the EU’s economic governance which have been completely discredited and are crying out for reform. There is broad political consensus in the EU - and that includes the UK and Germany - in favour of dismantling the Common Agricultural Policy, which makes food more expensive for European consumers, favours large agri-businesses over small family farms, and ensures the continuing destitution of farmers in developing countries. Reform has consistently been scuppered by France, which cannot stand up to its feather-bedded farming lobby; now the whole ghastly mess has been written wholesale into the new constitution.

The same is true for the Stability and Growth Pact, which is supposed to ensure the co-ordination of fiscal policies across the union, which France and Germany have been in breach of for several years, and which even the outgoing President of the Commission, Romano Prodi, pronounced to be ’stupid’.

A Change of Tune

In a letter to the Times Dennis MacShane argues that “The constitutional treaty states that EU law shall have primacy over the law of member states. But this simply reflects existing ECJ case law.”

According to “Vote No” this was not the government position at the Convention, in fact Peter Hain failed to have the clause removed from the draft, his argument was the exact opposite, that this was an attempt to codify exiting case law.

Suggestion for amendment of Article : 9
1. Delete.
2. In exercising the Union’s non-exclusive competences, the institutions shall apply the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality as laid down in the Protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality annexed to this Constitution. The procedure set out in the Protocol shall enable national parliaments to ensure compliance with these principles.
3. Delete. See para 2 and comment below.
4. Delete.
5. Delete.
6. The Union shall respect the national identities of its Member States, inherent in their sovereignty, their fundamental structures and essential State functions, especially their political and constitutional structure, including the organisation of public administration at national, regional and local level, and their responsibilities for the maintenance of law and order and for national security.

Explanation (if any) :

Paragraph 1 is an attempt to codify the existing case law and illustrates that to do so may result in
over-simplification. So best left for case law. All the caveats that would be required to make this accurate would also make it far too complex for a constitution.

As a rule, we would like to see the principle of proportionality in conjunction with that of subsidiarity throughout the text. We have added it to paragraph 2 in both the first and second sentences. By doing this, paragraph 3 can be deleted as unnecessary. This paragraph could go into Article 8 as paragraph 5.

Paragraph 4 (and paragraph 5) is another iteration of the principle of loyal cooperation (see
Article 8, 5). Nothing is lost through its deletion. It should be removed in the spirit of simplicity and
clarity.

Paragraph 5 extends the strict definition of the principle of loyal cooperation found in the TEC to
the Union as a whole. This could have implications for CFSP. As the principle of loyal cooperation
is clearly stated already in Article 8, paragraph 5, this can be deleted.

Paragraph 6: An inherent responsibility of any State is the maintenance of law and order and the
protection of national security. This is sufficiently important to justify a specific reference in this
article which deals with fundamental principles.

Tiscali Europe - Home: “An EU Foreign Minister
‘Lowest common denominator’ or ‘all to play for’”

Many feel that the most innovative and radical part of the European Constitutional Treaty is the creation of the position of Foreign Minister of Europe, a position that has already been assigned to Javier Solana, the current High Representative of the EU for the Common Foreign and Security Policy. However, many feel that the creation of the post has begged the question of whether or not a European foreign policy even exists.

Just about everyone seemed to be in favour of the creation of the post but it is still not clear what exactly the post will entail. Will he be a traditional Foreign Minister with a brief and government policy to promote? Or will he be a cajoler, a facilitator and a listener, treading delicately so as not to upset the French, British and German Foreign Secretaries?

Culled from The International Herald

France; “In a bid to separate the vote on the constitution from Turkey’s ambition to join the EU, the amendment to the French Constitution that was voted in by the two houses of the French Parliament on Monday requires future governments to hold referendums on any enlargement of the Union. The revision of the French Constitution that allows the government to transfer responsibilities to the European Union in line with the Union’s new constitutional treaty and to put the treaty to a referendum.

Opinion polls indicate that most of the French plan to vote in favour of the EU constitution, but that majority has shrunk from almost 70 percent in September to 58 percent this month.

That appears to have prompted the government to speed up the timetable of the referendum: The vote Monday was held two weeks earlier than planned, and the referendum itself, initially announced for the autumn, could take place as early as May”.

The point I would like to address is that the French seem to have appropriated to themselves a veto on any further enlargement of the Union. Although I can see the reason the French government would wish to offer this crumb of democratic control to their people, in order to defuse the row over Turkey’s entry into the Union which the French seem to particularly object. I cannot see that it can be up to the French people alone to decide this issue by referendum, when the people of the other states will not have a voice, this seems to me as being against the concept of the Union.

Of course from my position I would like to see a referendum on many of the powers granted to the Union, I would like to see a referendum on EU Citizenship, we have no choice in the matter, a referendum on the EU arrest warrant would be nice, also on the powers of Europol or the perhaps a referendum on the EU driving licence.

We of course have been promised a referendum on joining the Euro and have maintained an opt out from that in the Constitution, but this will not stop the others going ahead if they wish, and a further point is, if we are now in the territory of offering a referendum on specific parts of the integration, certain members of the union find objectionable perhaps we could extend that concept to all the citizens of the Union, at least then we would have some form of democratic control over these self imposed leaders.

But this is not what is going to happen because these people do not want us the voters to have any say in the matter.

From Ratification Bottleneck;

“Nevertheless the risk of frequent recourse to popular consultations at the national level could complicate – if not paralyse – the integration process should not be over looked. An example is President Chirac`s recent proposal to hold a referendum on Turkey’s entry into the European Union. It is clear that if national leaders choose systematically to consult the electorate in order to avoid having to manage directly the more delicate steps in European integration. It will become increasingly difficult to reach common or strategic position on the more important problems or events.”