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Telegraph | News | With Friends like these…: “With Friends like these…
Posted at: 12:40

Still befuddled by the tail-end of flu, I wondered for a moment if the following press release was a parody. Then I read it again slowly, and realised - no, it’s just another day on Planet Brussels.

The press release, from the think tank ‘Friends of Europe’, was about a new Gallup opinion poll, that asked whether it would be ‘undemocratic’ to salvage key parts of the EU constitution, after it was derailed by No votes in France and Holland last summer. Not at all, the poll found: ‘By a wide margin of 77%, [respondents] thought EU leaders should re-introduce its most important elements without going through referendums’. Crikey, I thought. Where did they find so many people keen to allow EU leaders to bypass the voters. Then I read the small print. The poll was of… EU leaders.

Friends of Europe, a Brussels-based outfit whose board of trustees is crammed full of Euro-bigwigs and retired luminaries, actually sought out Europe’s elite, to ask them if they thought it would be good plan to leave the future of the constitution in the hands of Europe’s elite. In their own words, they asked Gallup to survey ’some 100 politicians, journalists, officials, NGO chiefs and top businessmen.’

The results were thoroughly encouraging: ‘An overwhelming majority of European policy experts surveyed by Gallup have said that it would not be undemocratic if the EU were to salvage key parts of its wrecked constitutional treaty,’ notably the creation of an EU foreign minister, and EU diplomatic service, according to the group. You can read the whole thing here, if you have the time.

There are some choice pull-out quotes from respondents, such as this one: Asked if it would be undemocratic to move ahead with an EU diplomatic service, Philippe de Schoutheete, former Belgian Permanent Representative [ambassador] to the EU replied: ‘Of course not. Electors rejected for a variety of reasons a complex text, not its constituent elements.’ I wasn’t going to make the obvious gag, but it’s Friday, so forgive me. With Friends like these, the European project doesn’t need many more enemies.”

Resurrecting the Constitution
From Euobserver

German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Jacques Chirac are engaged in confidential talks aimed at re-submitting the core of the EU constitution to French and Dutch voters, according to a German weekly.

Spiegel Online reports in a preview of the Spiegel weekly printed edition that conservatives from Germany, France and the European Parliament are plotting a scheme for reviving the EU constitution which was rejected by French and Dutch voters in referendums last year.

According to the plans, the charter should be reduced to its first two parts, setting out the EU’s competences and the charter of fundamental rights of the union.

These core parts should be boosted with the addition of a political declaration and be put to a fresh poll in both France and the Netherlands.

The remaining third part of the text, detailing the EU’s policies, should be ratified by the French and Dutch parliaments, completing the ratification of the entire constitution as it has been approved by 14 member states so far.

The operation to resuscitate the charter would be started under the German EU presidency in the first half of 2007.

Ms Merkel earlier proposed attaching a declaration on the “social dimension of Europe” to the failed EU constitution, in a bid to save the charter in its entirety.

The non-binding declaration would call upon the EU institutions consider the social implications of EU internal market legislation more thoroughly and is seen as being designed to soothe French voters’ fears over the alleged neo-liberal character of the union.

Is it just me or does anyone else see the duplicity of this, the French and Dutch voters rejected the Constitution in its entirety, so they will be asked to vote again, but only on parts of it, as a sweetener they will be offered a non binding declaration on the “social dimension of Europe” . Then the respective governments will ratified the remainder of the document. No wonder the talks are in secret!

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