eurealist.co.uk

This posted in the American Thinker By James Lewis June 2nd, 2005

For half a century the ruling class of Europe has owned the project of European unification. Nobody bothered to ask the voters. But now they have made a mistake. Purely as a gesture, France, Holland and Britain scheduled popular referenda on the EU Constitution. The entire political and media establishment explained how a new Holocaust would follow if the referendum didn’t pass. Jacques Chirac told the French that a “Yes” vote would be a punch in the nose for Uncle Sam, show up the Brits, and keep the wolf of capitalism from the door.

Surprise! A New Media has risen in Europe, and made the case against the grotesque EU Constitution. And the voters have said “No.”

There’s only one problem. For the EU, “No” really means “Yes,” or “Maybe,” or “We’ll Get Back To You Later.” Like the famous New York Post headline during the Ford Administration, the message from the elites is “EU to Voters: Drop Dead!”

Right after the French “No” vote, Jacques Chirac said that the EU project would keep moving along: the EU foreign service is forging ahead, EU military centralization will continue to undermine NATO, France and Germany will still want to raise taxes in Ireland and Poland to keep them from out-competing their bloated welfare economies, and the EU propaganda machine will keep whipping up feelings against the “Anglo-Saxon model” (also called free markets).

Just to make his position really clear, Chirac appointed Dominique de Villepin as his new Prime Minister. Monsieur de Villepin is a Napoleonic fantasy-monger who is dedicated to creating a French-controlled Europe, to bring down American power in the world. De Villepin enjoyed shafting Colin Powell at the UN before the Iraq invasion, by leaking forged documents suggesting that Niger had sold yellow cake uranium to Saddam. When Powell told the Security Council about the documents, the French immediately leaked news stories that “European intelligence agencies” doubted their authenticity. That’s because the French forged them all by themselves.

De Villepin is the most anti-American politician in France. He recently published a new book called “The Seagull and the Shark” — guess who is the seagull, and who is the shark? You’re right.

Europe’s ruling class cannot give up the EU superstate for one big reason:
hundreds of thousands of their careers are at stake. For thirty years Brussels has been a favorite employer for French enarques (graduates of the political training institutes of France). The Brussels bureaucracy has been stacked. As Daniel Hannan, a British Member of the (bogus) European Parliament has written, “The French governing class is the chief beneficiary of the European Union.”

That’s why France is the biggest cheerleader for European unification — not because the people wanted it, but because it promised fat salaries to tens of thousands of French bureaucrats and politicians. In fact, the EU is nothing but Super-France, the fantasy superstate the French elites have always lusted for.

What about the voters? The New Media are now spreading in Europe. The Netherlands, which just overwhelmingly rejected the EU Constitution, has some 500,000 blogs, which played a major role in the No vote. There are striking parallels to the US. In Europe the Left had a media monopoly just as it did in the United States — but even more so because of government-controlled media like the BBC. With blogs rising by the thousands, Europe may be seeing the first signs of a new class war, not between capitalists and workers, but between the people and the state. The vote against the statist Constitution may be a first sign. But just as the liberal elite in America will resist the New Media to the bitter end, socialists in Europe will fight for their entrenched power.

Europe’s ruling class has been amazingly irresponsible. They have been unwilling even to talk about regulating immigration from Islamic countries, even though the people have known for years that many Muslims will take generations to adopt Western culture. The elites have allowed France and Germany to wallow in a welfare culture, even though millions of hard-working Europeans live in poverty because of over-the-top taxation — some of the EU states consume up to 70 percent of GDP. Europe’s rulers have spread the fantasy that Europe can live in peace and freedom without ever having to pay the price of defending itself. Lying and misgovernment is endemic to the European ruling class.

Europe is what hard core American liberals would like to see everywhere, a completely bureaucratized state from the cradle to the grave. Because British Labour represents the social welfare elites, Tony Blair may now renege on his promised referendum for Britain. German and Belgian politicians never even bothered to ask their people. They just passed the EU Constitution by a party vote of professional politicians. The politicians simply voted to abolish their own countries witout asking the people.

Americans rarely see how stratified European society really is. Low income Americans can expect to rise steadily during their lives, changing jobs every three or five years as opportunities open up. By contrast, most Europeans are corralled early in life into classes defined by their school test scores, like the ancient Mandarin bureaucracy. In France, the ruling class consists of those who have graduated from the elite state universities for bureaucrats and politicians. The European Union is therefore simply the product of bureaucratic expansionism. Even the British Foreign Service is being undermined, by promising its mandarins new and better-paying jobs in the EU foreign service. The EU undermines every member country by bribery and threats.

A few decades ago every child in Europe was still forced to take the Baccalaureate exam at age eleven, to be corralled along a rigid career path for the rest of their lives. The highest scorers would go to an academic high school and college; the second group to a terminal high school; third and fourth went for low level and blue collar training. The test determined one’s whole life. It was hard to change one’s life after age eleven. While the system has now loosened up somewhat, the bureaucratic state still begins to exercise control early in life, and keeping control right to the end. When old people in the Netherlands are subtly encouraged to commit suicide using state-provided euthenasia, they are simply at the logical conclusion of a long bureaucratic walk through life.

As Ronald Reagan said, many governments have a people; what is different about the US is that the people have a government. In Europe the people do not have a government yet. The vote against the grotesque EU Constitution may be a first step to genuine people power. But this is only a very early step. If the European New Media can be kept free from political control, there is hope for the future. Europe’s bureaucracy is never shy about grabbing power, though, so we might well see efforts to regulate or stop the new voices from being heard on the other side of the Atlantic.

Posted by Raphaël Paour on The TransAtlantic Assembly

Not long ago, Lorenzo posted a link to an article in Le Monde describing the failure of the French social system. It was an interesting and very critical peace. The surprising thing however was the force of the criticism, usual for journalists who tend to adopt more neutral points of views. The failure of this systems remains a point a view, it is hardly a raw fact. However, even a quick overview of the main stream French media shows that this type of strong criticism is coherent with what seems to be a fairly well thought out plan of action of the media and some of the main political parties. They understand the results of the French referendum as coming from an unjustified faith of a large portion of the population in the French social system. If people falsely believe that this system should be preserved – even at the cost of European integration – then, in order to avoid this type of democratic accident in the future, the media and the politicians should start explaining right now that their beliefs are not grounded, that the system they want to keep is no longer virtuous.

I am sure that the media are partly right, and that this type of illusion fits into the complex set of reasons that explain the leftwing vote. What is worrying is that they should focus only on that explanation and won’t understand that if the Constitution was rejected by so many people in several countries it is also because it wasn’t a good enough text. They remind me of parents who can’t cook but complain that their child won’t eat the tasteless food they prepared.

As Lorenzo wrote, we should not dwell too much on the reasons of the various votes and think about the future. How can we go on with the European integration ? It was an argument of the leftwing No that after a final rejection we would be able to start again with a better, more ambitious project for a Constitution. However the failure of this project - which was a beautiful effort - is instructive. Why did it fail ? There are many different reasons, but in the end, if it was rejected in several countries, it is because this constitution was not sufficiently consensual. It was not able to obtain the consensus required by a constitution – because it gives legitimacy to the system as a whole – because it was, as the construction of the European Union itself, ideologically determined. In this sense it was more than a constitution. As Euan argued, to be consensual, the supreme norm of the legal system should not entrench politically controversial issues which should remain up for grabs and decided legislatively through majority decision. The next text for a constitution should give us the rules of the democratic game in a potent European State. According to leftwing opponents of the EU Constitution, the text was not good enough, not because it didn’t protect the French welfare State – as many people say – but because it made it impossible a priori for Europe to adopt a similar model. To content this part of the population the next text should instaure a democratic forum where their representatives could try to persuade others that the welfare State would benefit Europe. Rules of a democratic game are not enough as they only allow a State to formulate political preferences. A potent State is required for these preferences to be applied : one which can decide to raise taxes and decide how to spend them.

Two problems (and many others) remain: part II and part III of the Constitution. Fundemental rights should be entreched only if it is fairly easy for the democratic institutions to overturn a decision of the European Court of Justice interpretating them. How rights should be interpreted is a politically controversial issue which should also be up for grabs. Part III of the Constitution incorporated many rules set by previous treaties into this constitution. This didn’t change the place that these rules have in the hierarchy of norms. It was precisely the problem: the new text should lower the level of these rules and retrograte them to the legislative level so that they could be submitted to democratic discussions and decisions by the European legislative institutions.

It is not a paradoxe that a shorter text, containing less rules would be more ambitious than the one which was rejected. The ambition here is to find consensual rules which gives the basis for discussions and decisions on controversial issues, not rules to decide them a priori.

On Sunday 200,000 voters in Luxembourg, will give their answer to the EU Constitution. In Luxembourg voting is compulsory, and opinion polls are banned for the last month of campaigning so according to the Telegraph the results are impossible to predict they do however come down on the side of a yes vote “A No vote should be unthinkable - per head Luxembourg receives more EU money than any other country, most of it to fund a half-dozen major institutions housed there.” Telegraph reporter David Rennie in Schengen could only find “one lone no voter, a grape farmer trundling through Schengen in a toy-like vineyard tractor, who declined to give his name” obviously out of embarrassment at voting no.

Deutsche Welle on the other hand tends towards a no vote “At first glance, Luxembourg looks like it always does to any visitor: well-kept, European flags fluttering on numerous buildings, fresh geraniums planted in tidy flower beds. But below the veneer, trouble is brewing in Europe’s most pro-EU country.”

“Lately, the most ubiquitous presence in the country are the pamphlets and posters of the anti-EU camp. Ask the pedestrians and you will discover that Luxembourg is no longer as Europe-friendly as it has been in the past.”

The last survey in mid-June put opponents of the EU constitution at 45 percent, which is astounding considering that a few months ago more than 70 percent of voters in Luxembourg were going to vote “yes.”

“Luxembourgers, in increasing numbers, are echoing the same arguments used in France and the Netherlands to explain their opposition. André Kremer, from the Luxembourg Committee for a No-Vote, stated the reasons.”

“Our criticism is based on four points,” he said. “The first point is that the constitution was not conceived in a democratic way and is not democratic. Point two: it is not socially equitable. Thirdly, it is neoliberal and aims for totally open markets. And fourthly, it will militarize Europe.”

Guy Gibéryen from the populist Party for Democracy and Pension Equality “One would expect in a democratic country that the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ camps have the same resources,” he said. “But that is not the case in Luxembourg. The ‘no’ camp gets nothing, while the government uses taxpayer’s money for its massive ‘yes’ campaign. I’m convinced that this brainwashing will not work.”

Prime Minister Juncker has announced that he will step down if the electorate votes ‘no.’ For some that is the logical consequence of his support for the EU constitution, but for others, it smacks of blackmail, said a café owner in the capital.

“The prime minister says he will resign,” he said. “That’s crazy. That, in itself, is a reason to vote ‘no.’ It’s not about him. It’s about Europe. I am deeply disappointed.”

Which ever way Luxembourg votes on Sunday will not influence the problems facing the EU elites who still have to get 100% acceptance for the Constitution to become effective, it will just add to the clamour of the intergrationalist for a continuation of the process of ratification, but they should realise that at some point is this process does continue they are going to have to face the fact that at least three major players will have vetoed the project that is unless Blair continues to hold out against allowing the British the chance of voting.