eurealist.co.uk

Why do I say the EU is anti-democratic, it is worrying that so many do not know or do not care about basic democratic principals that the question could even be posed - Abraham Lincoln defined the fundamental characteristic of democratic government in his Gettysburg address;

it must be - of the people,- by the people, -for the people

The EU claims to be the last of those i.e. “for the people”, But the EU fails miserable on the first two. Even then, it is only “for the people” in a dictatorial fashion, it is for the people to fall into line with its own central socialist, secular beliefs, and if they refuse, it is for the people to be forced by the use of law to fall into line. If the EU considered the first two then there would be no choice but to accept that the third principal “for the people” would mean that the people themselves decided on the socialist or secular make up of their state. Which is a more democratic a state where the people are forced to bend the knee to secularism, or one where the people are forced to bend the knee to Christianity.

The EU is forever proclaiming it must do this for its citizens or it citizens want it to do that. It even claims it has not just a democratic mandate, but rather like those M&S adverts, it has freshly dew picked, double democratic mandate! through a Parliament representing EU citizens and a Council representing the elected governments of the Member States.

But in fact is has no democratic mandate, because in neither of these institution can the people actually change their EU government, and an election that cannot at least theoretically replace the government is not a true election. We elect our government but they do not stand on any platform that allows us dictate our wishes in relation to EU legalisation. If we vote to change our national government that does not change the government of the EU, we are only changing a constituent part of the EU Government not its policies and not its direction. The Council of the EU as a body in not accountably to anyone, the EU institution body which has the sole power to introduce legalisation and oversee the treaties is not elected. We do elect MEPs but not on any published raft of policies that they promise to fulfil, and the EU parliament although the only directly elected body has the least power of any EU intuitions.

The increasing use of international bodies and the institutionalising of decision-making of formerly domestic issues across national frontiers is inherently incompatible with the traditional framework of democratic control.

As authority is increasingly transferred from our government to the EU, the power of our executive is enhanced at the expense of our local democratic representation in the British parliament.

It has been argued in our own domestic politics that the natural position of our parliament is to be subordinate to an executive, because it is the executive which is the dominate legislator. So by extension the parliament is not loosing much by becoming subordinate to the EU, although it might be acceptable for our parliament to be subordinate to the British executive, that does not dictate that it should also be subordinate to the French or German executive, ie. replacing our executive with an EU executive is a totally different concept, for one thing our executive is a product of our parliament the French or German executive is not.

Thus increased policy making within EU institutions has allowed our national government to evade parliamentary control, at least to some extent, by claiming the collectiveness of the decisions made and costs for the country if the parliament rejects the agreement negotiated. This can be seen in some of the arguments advance for not rejecting the latest EU Treaty or the previous EU Constitution.

We will have to agree to this treaty because it is the product of several years of hard negotiations between member states, it is the best we can achieve at this time and if we reject it we will be forced out of the union into the arms of uncontrolled corporate America and costing us three million jobs.

The fact that over 200 areas our government said were unacceptability to this country when they were negotiating in the convention which produced the Constitution which is now the Lisbon Treaty, have all been included against our wishes seem no longer to be important.

We have already seen a considerable amount of the power of our nation state transferred to the EU by means of opaque and complicated legal treaties that are not easily understood, and as the House of Lords reported the relationship between the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) is of “first class constitutional importance” but the Lisbon Treaty is written in such as dense manner at to be almost impossible to decipher. The Lords also reported that the Treaty would not have any constitutional implications for UK citizenship. The fact that they also said the ECJ would be the final arbiter of the meanings of the treaty, seems not have been considered important when deciding how much it will affect us or our constitution. In reality the Lords have made a claim they cannot substantiate because they will not be the ones who will make the final decision.

What the EU fondly likes to call the democratic deficit is not merely a by-product of the transfer of powers to the EU level, but is also one of the purposes of this transfer.

When governments pool their authority in the EU arena they also increase their power in their own parliament, because they weaken the domestic political constraints.

So we have situation where our elected governments are working with others to undermine the domestic controls over themselves by creating binding intergovernmental arrangements. Which are then forced through our parliamentary system using every trick and power at the disposal of the government, aided and abetted by the EU intuitions:.

When you consider that the House of Lords expressed a wish that once the Lisbon treaty had been ratified the EU would publish the full treaty in a legal form, it puts into perspective exactly what is happening. Our Prime Minister has signed and is now forcing though our parliament a legally binding treaty that no one can judge correctly because it is written in such oblique language, and in any case the final treaty has not even been published and the even when it is, its true meaning will only become clear after it has been tested in the European Court of Justice. I would not buy a washing machine under those circumstances let alone a constitution.

The EU has no mandate from the people, but in order to integrate the impression that it has, the EU had decided that it will create a greater understanding of the EU and towards this aim it has created its own publicly accessible knowledge base, now most of the EU papers are converted into several different languages and posted on the internet.

The EU says, proudly, that democracy depends on people being able to take part in public debate. To do this, they must have access to reliable information on European issues and be able to scrutinise the policy process in its various stages.

That, one is supposed to believe is a step toward democratising the EU, in fact the EU leaders are very proud of their openness and try to equate it with the democratic process. Well in part they are right, knowledge is a requisite for democracy, it is not however, much as the EU would like us to believe, a fundamental issue. True a citizen cannot make informed political decisions without at least a vague comprehension of the way in which the political system works. And it true to say it is far harder for a system of government that hides its mechanisms of decision-making to be democratic than one that is open.

But the slight of hand being perpetrated by the EU leaders is although the EU allows for a great deal of openness, there is no mechanism for the people to express their duly informed political decisions, thus there is no democratic accountability. The EU has created one part of the equation but ignored the reason for creating the openness in the first place.

Thus the EU is showing that it is more concerned with the superficial aspects of democracy, with the impression of democracy. Such issues as openness, and discussion are important. They do not, however, address the fundamentally flawed and undemocratic structure inbuilt into the EU current system.

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