eurealist.co.uk

We are constantly told that the now deep frozen EU Constitution is far to complicated for the ordinary man in the street to understand, and that we should of course leave the decision to our elected representatives. They have the time the knowledge and the ability, apparently, to understand the ins and outs of this very complicated document, if they were to allow us mere mortals a voice, we would without doubt misinterpret and misunderstand and therefore vote on the wrong things and come to the wrong conclusions. It is heart warming to realise that our minister have their finger on the control button and really do understand what the Constitution means, as these two letters in the Telegraph clarify.

Tessa out of touch

Sir - Tessa Jowell claims that the proposed EU constitution “wasn’t about a vision of Europe, it was about how to manage the process”. Rather than criticising others for not reading the full text, she should have taken the time to read just the preamble.

Purple passages such as “the peoples of Europe are determined to transcend their former divisions and, united ever more closely, to forge a common destiny” might have struck her as rather more visionary than managerial. The fatal flaw is that the peoples of Europe do not, in fact, share that grandiose vision - when they are asked, it usually turns out that they would prefer to keep, and run, their own countries.

(Dr) D R Cooper, Maidenhead, Berkshire

Sir - Tessa Jowell’s musings on her contacts with hoi polloi were interesting, if only in highlighting how out of touch our politicians are, and remain, from the real feelings of the people. I particularly liked her view that aggressive interviews on the Today programme are “a complete turn-off for most people”. I suggest she compares its listening figures to Today in Parliament and she will soon understand where the turn-off occurs - and, with a little reflection, why.

Gerry Morrow, Hong Kong

I often hear and read things from our leaders! that that a few years ago would have been laughed out of court as Marxist claptrap, everyone intuitively knew what was real and what was dangerous propaganda. To briefly remind my reader shortly after the election the home sectary said that NULabour were going to reinvent respect for parliament as an important institution of the state.

So it was that bells started to ring when I read in The Guardian this week that the Archbishop of Canterbury launched a wide-ranging attack on the media, accusing journalists of distorting debate, contributing to a climate of national cynicism, and unjustly attacking institutions over their secretiveness. Dr Rowan Williams appeared to take in tabloids, broadsheets, weblogs and broadcasters with equal vehemence.

He charged all with conspiring against public understanding.

Dr Williams claimed that some aspects of current journalistic practice are “lethally damaging”, contributing to the “embarrassingly low level of trust” in the profession.

The archbishop said: “We need to deflate some of the rhetoric about the media as guardians and nurturers of democracy simply by virtue of the constant exposure of ‘information’ and we need to be cautious about a use of ‘public interest’ language that ignores the complexity and, often, artificiality of our ideas of ‘the public’. ”

He accused the media of manipulating fear, exhibiting violent conflict between people for entertainment, and living off internal feuds: “Corrupt speech, inflaming unexamined emotion, reinforcing division, wrapped up in its own performance, leaves us less human: fewer things are possible for us. Bad human communication leaves us less room to grow.” His attack encompassed national newspapers which “communicate as if every reader … shared the same fundamental values, preferences and anxieties”, broadcasters for their obsession with breaking news, and weblogs which indulge in “paranoid fantasy, self-indulgent nonsense and dangerous bigotry”.

ROD LIDDLE takes the archbishop and his argument to task in a comment in the Times this morning “Our holy Soviet archbishop”

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has been taking a few swipes at the media and has been disparaging the internet. He has criticised it for dissembling “paranoid fantasy, self-indulgent nonsense and dangerous bigotry” — an accusation that could equally be said to apply to much of mainstream religion. He also derided the web as a “free for all” that was “close to that of unpoliced conversation”. To which we might reply well, yes — that’s the point, isn’t it? Not content with missing the entire purpose of the internet, Williams then went on to miss the entire point about the British press. Journalists distorted debate and contributed to a climate of “national cynicism”, unjustly attacking institutions for their secretiveness. So far, so New Statesman. This has become the mantra au courant of new Labour’s fellow travellers, a whine continually heard from the op ed pages of left of centre publications.

The argument goes that the cynicism into which we journalists lapse is not a reaction to the perfidies of government, but a sort of institutionalised personal weakness like drunkenness or sodomy.

It is a whine that we hear sometimes from the prime minister himself, in order to excuse himself from some catastrophe or debacle, such as the war against Iraq. Look, he says, I was honestly mistaken. Criticise me for that, but don’t say I lied to you all. But it is the profound and, to my mind, almost irrefutable evidence that we were lied to that causes the anger and cynicism — not the war itself or the failure of our intelligence services.

It was the centrepiece of Williams’s argument that most interested me, though. The press is here, the archbishop said, to nourish the public good. Not to inform or entertain — but to nourish the public good. Now, where have I heard this before? It was an argument eloquently advanced by Georgi Plekhanov, the proto-Soviet theorist, the first Russian Marxist and the man whom we have to thank for, among other things, dreary socialist realism in art and, for daily reading matter, Pravda. The writer Maxim Gorky said of Plekhanov suggestively that he “resembles a Protestant pastor.”

Williams’s belief that the purpose of the press is to “nourish public good” underpins every sentence of Plekhanov’s polemic, Art and Social Life, first delivered as a lecture in 1912. It also underpins the ideology of pretty much every totalitarian state that sprang up during the 20th century: there is a commonly agreed public good that we are beholden to preserve and advance.

The bourgeois or decadent notions of disinterested investigation, scepticism, art for art’s sake and so on, had no place in Soviet Russia or, for that matter, Nazi Germany. It is a beguiling but truly repulsive creed and one that I thought had dissolved when the first brick of the Berlin Wall was hacked away by those brave and jubilant East Germans in 1989. But apparently it is still alive and well in the dear old C of E.

There is something naive and hopeless about Williams, qualities which you may or may not feel are also exemplified by the Church of England. Recently he turned his attention to African debt repayments and, in urging us to write off the lot, asked rhetorically if we wished to live in a world where we all trusted each other regardless of whether that trust was reciprocated. But we trust and believe in each other because we learn to trust through experience, not on a whim or through an article of faith.

Now he has assumed that we all share a common belief in what constitutes public good and yet quite clearly — from his own descriptions of the worldwide web — this is not so. And nor should it be so.

Heaven knows, the British press is far from perfect. If the Lord had met Piers Morgan I suspect he would have formed a disaffection for our newspapers every bit as strong as Williams’s. But arguably the most valuable thing we in the liberal West possess is a fervent disagreement about what is good for us as a society.
As David Mannion, editor-in-chief of ITV News, put it, the archbishop’s argument could easily be seized on by those who wish to control the news agenda for their own ends.

Yes we used to know dangerous bigotry when we heard it from far left wing Marxists, nowadays even the leaders of the states institutions spew out this garbage as if it is normally acceptable opinion.

I do not move in exalted circles, most of my time is spent either in my kitchen at the computer or visiting local shops or travelling from farm to farm collecting the produce for my menu. And this last week trying unsuccessfully to shoot the few rabbits that are making alarming inroads into the lettuce, beetroot, rocket, leeks and beans my wife is growing for the kitchen, which is why I am writing this at the crack of dawn this morning.

So it is a bit of a shock this morning to read in the Booker column that about half of some very good French restaurateurs, all within an hour of the Mediterranean. Have become “Tired of paying 40-50 per cent of employees’ gross earnings in tax to the state, fed up with the 35-hour week, sickened by the eager willingness of employees to seek rewarding benefits like sick pay, angered at having to give staff up to six weeks holiday and 20 public holidays a year on full pay, five of the chef patrons had decided enough was enough.”
Three Michelin-starred owners had given up that coveted status, sacked all their staff and were now cooking themselves, serving only limited choice menus, with wives or family running the “front of house”.

A fourth patron had stopped serving lunches except on Sunday. A fifth had sacked everyone except his young chef and, doing everything else with his wife, was now content to accept fewer bookings.

And the reporter of all this culinary mayhem is none other than the mild mannered food and travel critic, Richard Binns who apart from writing the odd article for the Sundays also produces useful little gastronomic guides to rural France and Britain. I first met Richard several years ago when he visited Ludlow on a fact finding mission in preparation for an article on what was soon to become the major foodie town outside of London.

For this mild mannered English gent to say “If Chirac thinks he can devise a successful strategy based on the French social model,” “he is living in cloud-cuckoo land.” Is something of a shock to the system, this is no media hack looking for today’s headline but a serious travel writer who abhors the headline grabbing antics of some food writers I won’t mention.

But his observations are very true, and it is not just in France where this is happening here. On the borders of Wales we are already winding down our operation, and simply do not open unless we have bookings. By this time next year we hope to have completed our plans, to reduce our takings and our overheads and our exposure to the mores of the government’s apparatchiks to impose ever increasing social burdens on business. Small business people all over the country are consciously making the decision to down size rather than face the impossible task of meeting the regulations, this is not because we want to turn away trade or do not think employees deserve a decent wage or holidays or sick pay, but that the blanket rules take no account of the facts. We have sat down and worked out that we would actually be a lot better off if we did not have any staff and brought our takings down below the Vat rate. So in the end instead of razing the standards of living throughout the country with its new social rules on business, the EU and government are going to be increasing the unemployment rate and decreasing its tax take.

Was it not old Labour who proudly announced that they were going to squeeze the rich until the pips squeak, but in the event found the rich simply were not prepared to be squeezed, and took themselves and their taxes out of the country. By the same token it is all very well for the EU left wing social policy pushers to insist that we follow their road to the promised land of milk and honey for all, but to paraphrases Mr Binns they are living in cloud-cuckoo land.

TEAM - The European Alliance of EU-critical Movements - Press release 17-06-2005: “The need to discuss alternatives

• ‘The so called ‘period for reflection’ will be used to find ways and means to overturn the referendum results in France and the Netherlands, and to introduce parts of the Constitution in addition to those already being put in place… It is clear the time has come when alternatives to the European Union need to be discussed with, and by, all the peoples of the continent based on democracy, respect and co-operation between nation-states,’ says John Boyd, TEAM Co-ordinator in a press release.

PRESS RELEASE - 17 JUNE 2005

At the end of their meeting the European Council of Ministers have failed to make the obvious statement that the Treaty for a European Constitution is dead. Therefore the so called ‘period for reflection’ will be used to find ways and means to overturn the referendum results in France and the Netherlands, and to introduce parts of the Constitution in addition to those already being put in place which includes:

• The office of an EU President
• The office of an EU Foreign with an EU Diplomatic Service
• A European Army with rapid reaction forces and battle groups
• The European Defence Agency
• A European Gendarm Force

These are offices, institutions and armed forces for an EU state which would displace piecemeal intergovernmental arrangments under the Nice Treaty and further erode national parliaments and democracy and the right of nation-states to self determination.

There is mounting antipathy across the continent of Europe to the EU-elite’s plans for a European Union state. It is clear the time has come when alternatives to the European Union need to be discussed with, and by, all the peoples of the continent based on democracy, respect and co-operation between nation-states.

John Boyd
TEAM Co-ordinator (Chairman)”

Let me make it quite clear: I would like to be nice about the Conservative Party and its members. I would very much like to write about their wonderful ideas, courage and ability to connect two brain cells while waggling their fingers. And, indeed, I shall do so, as soon as I find any evidence of it.

Helen Szamuely

Chirac calls for new summit to “reconcile” EU with voters. Jacques Chirac has called for a new summit, possibly during the UK presidency, to discuss how to “reconcile” the EU with voters. He said in a speech to EU leaders, “France is ready to back the idea of a special meeting of heads of government to address those crucial issues on which the future of the Union, and each of our countries, depends”. He argued that there was a need to “launch a discussion on how to reconcile citizens with the European project and to bridge the gap that threatens to open between Europe and its peoples”.

Funny that, I though this had already been done, wasn’t it at some place called Laeken and didn’t they set up a convention of the future of Europe, and didn’t Giscard s little central controllers ignore the Laeken declaration and go full steam ahead for more integration and more power to the EU institutions, and wasn’t that idea rejected by France and Holland, which led to this problem in the first place. Talk about not listening.

David Blunkett, in his days as Home Secretary, sneaked a clause into his Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, which comes into full force on August 1. The new law gives ministers the power to draw up an exclusion zone, anywhere within a kilometre of Parliament Square, in which demonstrators are to be banned from protesting without permission from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
This week, Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, exercised to the full his new power to set an exclusion zone around the Commons. He has banned all spontaneous demonstrations within half a mile of the Palace of Westminster.

The Telegraph

The right to demonstrate peacefully, without the permission of the Government or its agents, is an absolutely fundamental part of our democracy. Elections and opinion polls may measure the numbers of people who support a particular party or policy. But only demonstrations and protest marches can show the strength with which people hold their convictions.

It is one thing to stroll round the corner on election day and put a cross on a ballot paper. We can all do that, whether or not we care very strongly which candidate should win. But to join a protest march on Parliament requires vastly more time and commitment, and shows a strength of feeling that no ballot can.

The actual numbers of people who supported the Countryside Alliance in its campaign to stop the ban on foxhunting were not all that enormous, as a proportion of the electorate. But the fact that so many of them were prepared to go to the trouble of organising coach trips to Westminster from Aberdeen and Penzance, and marching all the way to London from Wales and Yorkshire, showed the sheer passion with which they held their views.

All right, the campaign failed. But there were many MPs representing urban constituencies who simply didn’t realise how strongly people felt, before the marchers arrived in Parliament Square. At least the marchers made them think - and that can only be good for an MP.

Politicians are insulated quite enough, as it is, from the people whom they represent. They are insulated by their index-linked pensions, their generous expenses and secretarial allowances, by the concrete tank-traps outside the Commons and the cheap beer inside. This new Act, with its powers to restrict the numbers and noise of demonstrators, can only cut them off further.

I wonder what the young, idealistic Tony Blair would have thought if somebody had told him in his student days, as he strummed his guitar and campaigned against apartheid and the Bomb, that one day he would restrict the freedom of British subjects to demonstrate. What would he have thought, come to that, if he had been told that he would introduce house arrest, restrict the right to trial by jury and try to force all British subjects to carry identity cards.

After all the big news about the EU Constitution and the British Rebate it is perhaps time to return, even if briefly to the real objections many ordinary people have against the EU and the absurd over-regulation imposed on them by central government.
As Government officials, acting on European regulations create new rules in an amendment to the Food Safety Act.

Now according to the Telegraph
All home bakers who sell their products at fetes, village cricket matches or WI stalls or farmers markets will have to record and keep and the receipts and account for every ingredient and these records must be available for inspection by Trading Standard’s who are insisting on them keeping receipts for a year for each item purchased.

A spokesman for the Food Standards Agency said the legislation only applies to outlets selling on a regular basis. He said: “We would envisage local authorities [will] take a proportionate and flexible approach.”

The European Commission Representation in the United Kingdom
On its Myth page labels this myth 137

Myth: Home-made cakes must be labelled with all ingredients

Crumbs, now home-made cake is dangerous – An EU directive may force full ingredients lists on all food retailers
The Times, 9 July 2004, page 5
If baking for the school or church fête was not onerous enough, the Government could soon ban home-made cakes from sale unless they carry a special label declaring whether they contain nuts.

Fact
New EU rules will require pre-packaged food sold in, for example, supermarkets, to be properly labelled with full ingredients lists. This will enable those who suffer from allergies to avoid the often very unpleasant consequences that can ensue after eating the wrong thing. However, Directive 2003/89/EC does not force full ingredients lists on food sold in places like restaurants and fast-food vans. Food sold loose or packaged on the premises for direct sale may be exempted from these strict labelling requirements, provided the consumer or customer receives “sufficient information”. How this is done is left up to individual member states, providing legislative leeway to avoid the type of over-regulation The Times suggests will affect home-made cakes sold at school fêtes.

It is all very well for the EU to claim that this is a myth and it is up to individual member states, but it is their directive which is being implemented. They may wish to claim that the British government is being over zealous in applying this directive, but the fact remains that is what is happening, and it does bring the affects of Brussels rule strait into the homes of every householder in Britain.

So is it any wonder that we then turn round and say we do not want these intrusive rules, we do not want to live in such an over regulated country we do not want to be forced to accept the laws of a government we cannot control. A curse on the EU and all the little small minded government officials who over egg the powers this organisation gives them to make our lives ever more proscribed.

National farm subsidies are no substitute for CAP shake-up

Sir: Only one thing could be worse than the Common Agricultural Policy - and that would be to have 25 separate agricultural policies, each with its own competing subsidies, each with its own protectionist measures (”Let every country subsidise its own farmers”, Andreas Whittam Smith, 13 June) . That would ultimately cost the economy, the taxpayer and the environment far more.

It’s far better to pursue further reforms of the CAP - reforms which we have already made a start on, and where we have had a significant measure of success, for the first time in thirty years.

RICHARD CORBETT MEP

(LABOUR, YORKSHIRE & THE HUMBER) LEEDS

Sir: Sir Michael Franklin asks: “Do we want subsidised French exports unfairly competing with our own farmers?” (letter, 15 June). Of course not, but there is an easy answer. Each EU member state should be free to subsidise its farmers in order to supply its home market, but produce leaving the country should be subject to an export duty so the Government recovers its subsidy and avoids “dumping”.

If subsidies were contained within national borders they would become a purely domestic issue, and therefore amenable to democratic control within each country.

DR D R COOPER

MAIDENHEAD, BERKSHIRE

Sir: There is no better back-up for Denis MacShane’s call to start talking to Europe (Opinion, 14 June) than the sight of Tony Blair, visiting George Bush, arriving in Washington in the rain without a formal welcome and leaving in a hurry with little accomplished.

We have been used to support the Iraq debacle and divide Europe and now we are being dropped like unwanted packaging. There is a lesson here for the rampant British nationalists who think we can go it alone and drive forward using the rear-view mirror. We have a say in Europe and none in the US, and it’s time to say it.

ROY E BENNETT

HACKBRIDGE, SURREY

Sir: All these arguments as to why Britain should reduce its £3bn European rebate are persuasive, but I’m reminded of the words of the late Tommy Cooper. After moaning about losing a few shillings he’d left on the bar of a pub, he said: “It’s not the principle, it’s the money.”

ALAN CLEAVER

WINCHESTER

News from the BBC: Germany’s Federal President Horst Koehler will not sign the EU Constitution until the Federal Constitutional Court decides whether the charter conforms to Germany’s own constitution.

Although the Constitution was passed in both houses it cannot become law until the Federal President signs it. Martin Stabe the London based Germany Blogger says MP Peter Gauweiler, who opposes the treaty and wants Germany to hold a referendum on it.

edit: more background from EU observer
German president Horst Kohler has said he will not sign the bill allowing for the enabling of the EU constitution into German law until the country’s highest court has ruled on a complaint by a centre-right MP.

This means that ratification by the EU’s largest member state is likely to be delayed for months as the court deliberates the decision, but also soon enters into the summer break.

MP Peter Gauweiler brought his complaint to the constitutional court in May arguing that the EU constitution oversteps the boundaries that the German charter provides for the integration of state institutions in the EU.

Mr Gauweiler, a member of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union, also claims that the German parliament cannot give more rights to the EU than it has itself and is arguing that the constitution should be put to a referendum in Germany.

A post on EU Referendum

Refers to Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, who has used the powers granted him by the Serious and Organized Crime and Police Act and has created a half-mile exclusion zone around Parliament for all unauthorized protests.

So much for rule of the people for the people, and rule by consent, in a consenting country by definition the people should and must be allowed full access to the law makers; it must be an open democracy, that is what consent means in a country where the people agree to be ruled by those we elect there is no need for powers to protect the lawmakers from the people. These little Stalinists cannot be allowed to become a ruling elite with special conventions that only apply to them, locked up in their own version of Red Square, surrounded by heavily armed police to keep the people who have to live under and pay for this dictatorship at arms length.

I wonder what the Conservative and Liberal opposition will make of this move, if past experience is anything to go by they will make very little out of it, thus clearly showing that they acquiesce with the further removal of our rights and the instillation of a separate political class.

BRUSSELS - EU leaders are unlikely to agree the bloc’s next budget (2007 - 2013) during their meeting this week, Luxembourg Prime Minister and current EU president Jean-Claude Juncker said on Wednesday

Given that Blair is diametrically opposed to all the others I would say that Juncker probably has called this about right, just goes to show how observant these Europhiles can be when they want to.

The Future of the European Constitution. Parliament Research Paper 05/45 13th June 2005. (47 pages)

Upon reading the above Paper, it becomes obvious it was a great mistake to allow the people a say on this proposed EU Constitution. The people obviously cannot be trusted to come up with the right answer and the decision whether to have a Constitution for the European Union could have been done by Parliaments ratifying the Constitutional document themselves, without involving the people.

This Paper is well worth a careful read by all those that read this e-mail and worth while involving all the people each person can reach. There is no doubt whatsoever that this is not “just another treaty” and is meant and regarded as necessary as a Constitution for the European Union. It is meant as a true “rule book”, as the law above the law. A Constitution like the ones most independent sovereign Countries had (and should have always looked up to and obeyed) before their involvement in the European Community/Union.

Page 21 “Is the Constitution dead”?

I Quote, “Under Article 48 TEU the European Constitution must be ratified by all 25 Member states before it can come into force. The flexible arrangements for future amendments under Constitution Article 1V-444 will only apply once the Constitution has entered into force, not to its initial ratification.”

“The failure to ratify by one or more Member States will prevent the Constitution from coming into force. Many observers believed that a straightforward ratification by all 25 Member states was unlikely and that a more likely scenario was that one to three States would not ratify the Constitution initially. The UK. Ireland and Poland were seen as possible non-ratifiers. Referendums were seen as being the most unreliable means of ratifying.”

Declaration No 30, which is appended to the Constitution, concerns the possibility of non-ratification by one or more Member states. It states:

The Conference notes that if, two years after the signature of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, four fifths of the Member states have ratified it and one or more Member States have encountered difficulties in proceeding with ratification, the matter will be referred to the European Council”.

In the past, when small Member States (Ireland and Denmark) voted against an EU Treaty amendment, thereby preventing it from coming into force, ways were found for the new treaty to be ratified. In the case of Denmark, this involved opt-outs that were negotiated by the European Council. However, it had not been envisaged that the people of France and the Netherlands, two of the EU’s founding Members, would have voted against it. Somewhat ironically, it was President Chirac who told a press conerence on 28th April 2004 that “friendly pressure” should be exerted on Member States that failed to ratify the Constitution and who wanted a “ratify or leave” clause to be written into the Constitution”. End of Quotes.

Noted from the above, the document was referred to as a “Constitution”, and that is exactly what it is and was always meant to be.

Anne Palmer. 15.6.2005.

Thank you Richard, all better now.

According to MEP Richard Corbett, the Socialist’s constitution spokesperson, EU leaders meeting at the end of the week are most likely to agree that a period of reflection is needed in the ratification process.

But to avoid this becoming an “indefinite postponement” there should be “a public and pluralist forum, possibly a new convention … for a serious and wide-ranging debate”, he says in a paper drawn up after discussions with his group.

This convention, which would be similar to the convention convened three years ago with governmental, parliamentary and civil society representation.

The very last thing we need is another centrally controlled convention on the future of Europe run by the intergrationalist to further their aims.

The constitutional treaty is “a dead document,”
Vaclav Klaus president of the Czech Republic said France and Holland’s no votes to the European Constitutional Treaty are evidence to the triumph of freedom and democracy in the EU.
To push for further ratification is pointless, he said, since the thumbs down in two EU founding countries has shown ordinary Europeans do not think just like their policymakers.
The constitutional treaty is “a dead document,”
“both yes and no votes were of equal value and legitimacy. People in these countries made their choice, so this is obviously not a failure of the referendum, though it is of course a failure for those for whom yes was the only possible answer.”

Perhaps Blogs are having an effect, EU Referendum has made the point several times that the Budget row is a get up to direct the pundits away fro the real issues. Today the Telegraph picks up on the story “So dazzled are commentators by President Chirac’s outrageous demands that they have taken their eyes off what he is doing, so to speak, with his other hand. We do not intend to repeat their mistake. The case for Britain’s budget rebate is as strong today as when it was negotiated. In 1984, Britain was the second largest net contributor to EU funds. In 2004, even with the rebate, it was still the second largest net contributor.”

The Telegraph points out that “Britain does worse out of the EU’s budgetary arrangements than any state except Germany. Far from increasing the UK’s contribution to an even more iniquitous level, the EU should be seeking to cut its costs, so that everyone, not just the British, can “get their money back”. End of story.”

But notes that the leaders of the EU are raising the argument over the budget as a smoke screen to hide the fact that they are ignoring the No vote in France and Holland and just going ahead as if things were normal.
“The most striking thing is that the EU institutions are pushing ahead as though the No votes had not happened. The leaders of the Commission, the Parliament and the Council have called for ratification to proceed as planned. Luxembourg is voting as scheduled.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament has voted through several Bills that cite the constitution as the source of their authority. Last week, for example, MEPs proposed a unified EU seat on the UN Security Council. They quoted as their legal basis “the European Constitutional Treaty, which creates a legal personality for the Union and a European Minister for Foreign Affairs”. The man whom the constitution envisaged for this post, Javier Solana, is comporting himself as though in office.”
“What we have to do is continue,” said the silky Spaniard last week. “The worst that could happen would be for the EU to enter into a psychological paralysis.”

“With almost Marxist historiography, Eurocrats dismiss the French and Dutch results as the product of “false consciousness”. The peoples of those two countries plainly misunderstood the issue. They were really voting against Turkey, or against Raffarin, or against Anglo-Saxon liberalism - against anything, in short, except the proposition actually on the ballot paper.”

“They plainly need to be better informed, re-educated, brought to see their true interests. To our masters in Brussels, the goal of a united Europe is not simply desirable but inevitable. Public opposition to that goal is thus an obstacle to be overcome, not a reason for changing direction. We may find their attitude laughable. But, when the laughing stops, they will still have their constitution.”

Reminding us that during the recent referendums Yes campaigners argued that a No vote would be a rejection, not simply of the constitution, but of the entire European project. Let them now stand by their own logic.

What price a veto, Our government do like to keep reassuring us all that we need not be concerned about further EU integration because they hold a veto, they have lines they will not cross, lines that used to be drawn in the sand, but sand is such a pliable element that recently Blair has changed those lines to solid red ones, we have not been informed where they are drawn.

But it would appear that even if we do have a few veto’s the EU system will hit back if we decide to use one of them.

Scotland On Sunday is the only place I have seen this:

TONY Blair has been warned that some of the poorest people in Britain could pay the price for his refusal to back down over the UK’s multi-billion pound annual rebate from the European Union.

Britain’s European partners have told the government that they would target the amount of EU aid channelled towards the poorest regions of the country - some of them in Scotland - if they cannot claw back extra cash from the £3.4bn refund paid to the UK every year.

The remarkable warning was given by officials from Luxembourg, currently holder of the union presidency, in the run-up to this week’s EU summit which promises to be the most bitter gathering of European leaders for several years.
Preparations for the summit have been dominated by concerted attacks on the UK rebate, which a number of EU states want to see frozen and ultimately phased out, in a bid to balance the budget and free extra cash to aid modernisation programmes in the union’s 10 new member states.

Blair has resisted the pressure on the rebate, chiselled out by Margaret Thatcher over 20 years ago, but insisted that any compromise would only be accepted if it were part of a “fundamental debate” on the EU’s entire budget.
Scotland on Sunday understands that Blair will make an overhaul of the EU funding settlement - particularly the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), criticised for favouring French farmers - the centrepiece of Britain’s own presidency of the EU, which begins next month.

But British officials last night confirmed that he has already been warned that the EU would consider cutting the UK’s share of regional subsidies if he did not back down.

“The issue of subsidies has been raised during the preliminary talks about the summit,” one said last night. “We are not sure which categories of aid they are talking about, and we are not certain that they can just go ahead and reduce any allocations like that, but we would resist any further unfairness in the UK’s share of EU finances.”

“The EU could, for example, decide to review the system of regional subsidies which benefits in a big way most northern regions as well as Scotland and Wales. The new system, aimed at reducing expenses, could mean that these regions receive virtually nothing if the rebate is not renegotiated, and that all the money from the structural funds could be channelled towards the new member states instead.”

Full Story

George E. Adair at EU ROTA has a post showing why the UK should not give up their rebate without significant “other” financial reforms in the EU Budget. It is one thing to hear “reform this” and “reform that,” it is quite another to see the numbers bare.

Mr Adair uses 2003 to base his figures on because he says it the last financial year in which all the figures are available.

In the Times LibDem MP Nicholas Clegg and MEP Christopher Davies try to muddy the waters by claiming incorrectly that because “The constitution includes provisions that not even the most hardened Eurosceptic could disagree with, that elements of the proposals can be introduced without a full referendum” (is there such a thing as a part referendum).

Claiming that the constitution “allows national parliaments the right to scrutinise every European commission proposal to ensure all new laws pass the test of subsidiarity”.

As if Altiero Spinelli little invention was ever intended to give national parliament any power in the first place? Booker addresses this point this morning. It is quite simple and perhaps these two gentlemen should take on board that the Constitution is a legally document that if ratified by 25 member states will give authority for the proposals in the document, if however it is not ratified, those proposals do not have a legal base. As bookers says “When ministers are caught acting illegally in this way, what do we expect them to do? Come clean and admit they have made a mistake? Or just lie about it? Much easier to take the second course. But whether it is wise to base our system of government on such institutionalised dishonesty is another matter.”

Booker Column
I haven’t checked yet but I suspect Dr North will have posted details of Mr Bookers column this morning.

Two stories which link the impotence of the people we think we elect to run this country the first is based on Alistair Darling announcement of the new ideas for raising roads taxes,

“What neither Mr Darling, the BBC nor anyone else bothered to explain was that his plans are only part of an EU-wide scheme that has been planned for several years, using the EU’s own satellite system Galileo, and that an important part of its purpose is to provide the EU with an independent source of income worth billions of euros a year.”

Mr Booker explains the “European Commission first “published a proposal that all vehicles should pay road tolls electronically”, based on “Galileo, Europe’s planned satellite navigation system”. The Department for Transport’s own website includes a 2003 consultation document on the need for a harmonised, Galileo-based system of road-tolls throughout the EU. This was confirmed by EC directive 2004/52 on the setting up of a “European electronic toll service”, designed to use Galileo once it has been put in place by French Ariane V rockets in 2008.”

But “The difference between the US GPS system and Galileo is that the American system is free to all users.”

The other reason for having the Galileo system “will be to provide the EU’s armed forces with a satellite navigation system independent of the USA, which is why China has bought a 20 per cent share in Galileo.”

The other story is the ongoing “bureaucratic impasse which threatens the survival of the Oswestry firm run by the Swedish balloonist Per Lindstrand. The problem arose in 2003 when power to certify aircraft was handed over to the new European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Overnight it became illegal for Dr Lindstrand to sell his most successful product, the HiFlyer, a giant, passenger-carrying helium balloon which rises up and down on a wire operated by a winch.”

Nobody it seems is capable of sorting this problem out, even Karen Buck, the junior transport minister said she was aware that Dr Lindstrand had had “problems”, but since there was nothing she could do about it, there was little point in her going along.” Mr Booker says “If she admits that, as a minister, she no longer has power to do the job she is paid for, why is she paid at all?”

A very good question, one I suspect we will not have an answer to from this government or any other of the political parties.

Mr Booker also details the ridiculous situation caused by the Eurocrats determination to ignore the fact that they do not have legal authority to introduce some of the proposals in the EU Constitution, “Let me make it clear that there is no plan, proposal or intention to slip elements of the constitutional treaty through by the back door,” Jack Straw told the Commons last Monday, in response to the charge that many provisions of the treaty are already being implemented before it is ratified. Mr Straw agued that “The defence agency is not in the treaty.” Yet there it is, Article I-41.3 of the constitution giving legal authorisation for the setting up of the “European Defence Agency”. as Mr Straw did with his subsequent claim that the defence agency was somehow authorised by a vague aspirational clause in the Maastricht Treaty committing the EU leaders eventually to frame a Common Defence Policy.”

This is an indication of the way subsequent EU treaties work a simple rewording changes something which is an aspirational agreement into a legal obligation to do so allowing ministers and EU proponents to claim that this or that proposal is not new because it was in a previous treaty when in fact what had been agreed was that there might at some future point be a defence agency into a solid commitment to introduce such an agency, this all the intergrationalist need to forge ahead with their plans, only this time the French and Dutch voters have caught them on the wrong foot.