Ratification Bottle neck”

Ratification Bottle neck

Anyone who thinks Britain in the EU is a democratic country should seriously think again.

Thanks to Dr Richard North for the link to a new paper written by Gian Luigi Tosato and Ettore Greco, which goes by the name of “The EU Constitutional Treaty: How to Deal with the Ratification Bottleneck”
The report is mind boggling and breathtaking in its utter contempt of any democratic process, and deals entirely with methods that can be used to circumvent the requirements of international law or any democratic response from the people in a referendum, to enable the forcing of the Constitution on states which have failed to ratify. But is does show that every word in every treaty must be considered in the light of the twisted logic the Europhiliac will apply to them, and cannot be considered a safeguard against a determined process of integration into the EU State.

For instance;
Art 4-447 The Constitution shall enter into force on …,
provided that all the instruments of ratification have been deposited, or,
failing that, on the first day of the month following the deposit of the
instrument of ratification by the last signatory State to take this step.

Will be interpreted as meaning the Constitution will come into force when the last state intending to ratify does so, it does not mean that the those states who do not ratify will be able to stop the Constitution. In other words the treaties which require 100% agreement for change are to be ignored if it suites the Euphiliac, their reason, because the 100% agreement applies to changes to the existing treaties, not to the replacement of the treaties with the Constitution. Although the one can argue that to totally replace one treaty with another could by any reasonable interpretation be considered a change, the twisted EU logic will probably be regarded as the real meaning of the clause. Even if not no one is going to ask for clarification before the referendum 9although perhaps we should) and the suggested interpretation will serve to at the very least muddy the waters, by confirming the Euphiliac claim that a no vote would mean having to leave the Union. However one thing is certain, many of those treaties would not have been accepted by member states in the first place if this was the case.

The report is divided into three parts and is full of statements that have scant regard to the meanings of words or the meaning of democracy,

Part One; Time frame and methods of ratification
Part Two; Anticipated application o some constitution innovations
Part Three; Solutions in case of Ratification Crisis:

Part One; Time frame and methods of ratification
The legal obligations during ratification;
Although they are obviously no obligations that can force a state to accept either changes to the present treaties or to accept the Constitution the report tries to argue that once a state has signed the Constitution then it must do everything to ratify it, the argument rests on good faith the principal of loyal cooperation. There is also consideration given to foreign policy with the asseverations that because the state has signed their foreign policy conduct must be assessed.
The last section of this part deals with the ratification process in member states, quite clearly the writers are not too fond of allowing the people to have a say in the proceedings and see the risk of allowing us to have give our views to be a danger to the plans.

“Nevertheless, the risk that frequent recourse to popular consultation at the national level could complicate if not paralyse the integration process should not be overlooked….It is clear that if national leaders choose to appeal systematically to the electorate to avoid having 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.” So who is who keeps telling us that the EU is democratic?

Part Two; Anticipated application of some Constitution innovations
In this section they argue that even though the Constitution is not ratified it is essential that as many of the reforms be implemented before the ratification which gives the EU authority to make them.

“There are three reasons why it would be advisable (where legally possible) to introduce some of the innervations in the Constitution even before it is ratified, first, the reforms in it are urgently needed, second, they could be facilitated by anticipated application and third anticipated enactment of some reforms could actually facilitate ratification”

Suggested Innovations that could be enacted before ratification
Legal personality
Precedence of the Council
Minister of foreign affairs
Euro Group
National Parliaments
Inter-institutional Cooperation
Consultation during the legislative process
Defence policy
Space of freedom security and justice, Introducing mechanism for assessing domestic security and setting up a European prosecutor’s office Closer cooperation with the EU parliament on Immigration police and judicial matters.

Part Three: Solutions in case of Ratification Crisis:

The main point here is find way around the present treaties 100% acceptance rules I have already pointed out one of the arguments some of the others can be found on EU Referendum.

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