According to his Telegraph blog,a senior EU Commission official admitted to Daniel Hannan this week, that there are five countries where he and his colleagues are determined to avoid a referendum, I assume on the EU Constitution, they are Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Poland. Of course all five could and some most certain would vote against the Constitution, this would obviously create even further obstacles as they attempt to find a way round the democratic votes in France and Holland.

As it is they have been spending an inordinate amount of time and energy concocting various theories as to why their first attempt to force their Constitution failed, and then working out exactly how they are going to circumvent the democratic blockage and guard against any chance that the people might  vote the wrong way again. Whilst at the same time making sure that only those with a certain yes are allowed to proceed with the ratification process.

Now of course they are claiming that even though two countries have voted against and they stooped the process to prevent a domino effect in the rest of countries who might have voted no, thus denying us a voice, that we cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the democratic choice of the others. Of course in truth only 4 countries have allowed a referendum two vote in favour and two voted against. As it is their democracy argument stinks, the ratification of the constitution is based on the agreements made in the previous treaties which make it clear that each member Nation State must ratify before the Constitution can have legal authority. That means like it not, each member has a clear veto on treaty change, and it has absolutely nothing to do with any other member states decision, it is up to each state to decide for itself if it wishes to pass more power to the EU, if they do not they cannot be forced to do so by being compelled to accept a treaty change.   

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Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph tells us that The European Union is a solution in search of a problem. Whatever the question, the answer is invariably “more Europe“. War in Lebanon? We need to be able to deploy an EU army. A breakdown in the World Trade Organisation talks? Let’s have a more integrated European economy. People voted against the constitution? They obviously thought it didn’t go far enough.

Hannan says “it was more or less inevitable that Brussels would respond to the recent security alert by awarding itself new powers. And, sure enough, John Reid and his fellow interior ministers have rushed to announce the further harmonisation of aviation and policing.

Never mind that the liquid bomb plot was thwarted by the system currently in place. Never mind that, as far as we can tell, the countries chiefly involved were Britain, Pakistan and the United States, and that collaboration among the intelligence agencies of these three states would be unaffected by any new EU rules.”

Hannan also deals with the stock response from Euro-phobes that there are some things that we ought to do together. The, if the terrorists are operating at an international level, we need to take them on at an international level argument.

He says “we have been doing so for decades without any help from Brussels. Sovereign states have evolved highly developed mechanisms for police and judicial co-operation: the Hague Convention, extradition treaties, intelligence sharing, Interpol, mutual recognition of court orders, acknowledgement of sentences spent in each other’s prisons.

What is being proposed now, in effect, is that such collaboration should principally be administered by the EU.”

This is nothing new, of course. Every federalist departure is presented to the electorates as a remedy to some existing problem. The euro was meant to be all about making the single market work better. The common defence policy was sold as a way of bolstering Nato. What is new is the scope of the EU’s ambition. The powers it is now annexing have always been internal to nation states: that is why we call them “home affairs”.

“In a spasm of thoughtlessness, or perhaps of fear, we are giving Brussels control over matters that are central to the relationship between government and citizen. At the same time, we are tossing away the notion of territorial jurisdiction which is perhaps the supreme safeguard of national sovereignty.”

This really is the point which has been made clear on blogs quite some time ago; the EU advances its own adgenda using any excuse it can, this has very little to do with present problem of terrorism and a great deal to do with creating the EU state.

As Hannan says “Europe - Your Country,” say the signs at the European Commission. It soon will be.

The Telegraph hits the jackpot with EUsceptic comment this Easter Monday, with this article
below Daniel Hannan`s comment that you might as well vote for Duck a for all the diference it makes and David Rennie report on Blairs dishonesty over the EU Budget

Impoverished by the EU
(Filed: 17/04/2006)

A billion here, a billion there: pretty soon it starts to add up to real money. As David Rennie reports today, the final bill to British taxpayers for Tony Blair’s cave-in on the EU budget is about £20 billion more than was announced at the time. This is a truly stupefying sum. The idea has somehow got round that our contributions to the EU budget are trivial when set against the advantages of increased market access. But it is worth setting the figures in context.

The additional amount conceded by Mr Blair last December, £7 billion, is equivalent to the total police budget for England and Wales. The United Kingdom’s annual gross contribution to Brussels, £12 billion, is equivalent to the combined revenue raised by inheritance tax, capital gains tax and stamp duty. We are, in short, paying in an awesome amount of money.

And what are we getting in return? Our Parliament is hobbled, our countryside ruined, our fishing grounds plundered, our businesses asphyxiated with regulation. Even in his own terms, as a pro-European, what did Mr Blair get in return for handing away our taxes? Did the French agree to reform the Common Agricultural Policy? Did the net recipient countries express their gratitude to Britain? Of course not.

We made some disobliging remarks about the Prime Minister’s negotiating skills at the time, but don’t take our word for it. Listen to how he was received in Europe. Le Parisien declared that “Chirac won the match against Tony Blair on the British rebate”. Welt am Sonntag commented: “Tony Blair began the EU presidency as a tiger and ended it as a doormat”.

Of course, for Mr Blair, the figures are irrelevant. For him, Europe has always been more about demonstrating his internationalist credentials than about securing specific objectives for Britain. The idea of a cost-benefit analysis of EU membership strikes him as absurd, which is why he refuses to commission one.

Yet it is worth reminding ourselves, once again, of quite how much we are paying. At the last election, Mr Blair excoriated the Conservatives because of their modest plans to trim £4 billion a year from the tax bill. At the same time, he breezily expects us to pay three times this amount to Brussels every year. He cannot have it both ways. The next time he sneeringly asks the Tories how they plan to finance their tax cuts, they should reply, politely, “from the EU budget”.

This morning MEP Daniel Hannan in his regular spot at the Telegraph confronts the idea of state funding for political parties,

 “If there is one thing we politicians agree on, it’s that the rest of you owe us a living. That’s why you should be alarmed that the Labour and Tory leaders are meeting tomorrow to discuss state funding for political parties. People of the same trade seldom meet together, as Adam Smith says, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public. That we elected representatives want more of your cash is hardly surprising, but our blatancy ought to shock you.

 Embarrassed by the exposure of our fund-raising methods, we cheekily suggest that the problem is not our behaviour, but the absence of support from the taxpayer. And you, poor saps, fall for it. You are so outraged at our brazenness that you miss the real scandal, namely our equation of state funding with honest politics. You splutter that the taxpayer already has plenty of demands on his wallet; but you unthinkingly accept the argument on our terms, as a trade-off between subvention and corruption.

 In fact, that argument is impossible to stand up, either in theory or in practice. The countries that are keenest on state funding - which tend to be in Europe rather than the Anglosphere - are generally the ones with the dirtiest political systems. And the rankest scandals in these nations usually involve party funding.”

 
Hannan then proceeds to illustrate his point with examples of corruption in other European countries:  “the sleaze that brought down Helmut Kohl a decade ago”,   “France, also awash with state funding, where some 700 politicians have been charged with corruption in the past decade, almost all in relation to party financing scams”

 Many of us have often been appalled at the arrogance of some European leaders, Hannan asks

“Could it be that being able to compel cash from your constituents, instead of having to ask them politely, makes you arrogant? Is it not possible that state funding, and the magic circle of parties that it creates, encourages an "us-and-them" attitude towards those who are outside the system?”

 I agree with several of the points expressed and illustrated in this article:

The way that state funding widens the gap between government and governed.

State funding prevents new parties from challenging established ones

When the state pays for political parties, it assumes that it can tell them what to believe.

“The apparatus of public funding creates a lucrative career structure for politicians

A graduate can work for his local party branch, then put in a couple of years at the attached state-funded think-tank, and then stand for parliament. Throughout his life, he has been dependent on the largesse of the taxpayer.

So it is hardly surprising that, when he becomes a minister, he is comfortable with the idea of higher taxes. This is why even the notionally centre-Right parties in Europe tend to be corporatist: it’s not just that they have to keep finding state sector posts for their supporters; they simply can’t imagine a world in which most activity is independent of the government.”

It is for this reason that I take issue with the recently published Power Report,  although it correctly identifies the problems of a lack of public involvement in politics, its suggestion that each party should receive state funding in line with the level of votes it gets, will not in any way increase accountability of political parties, it will in fact do just the opposite, by obligating us all to support political parties and the political system will insulate politicians even further from the public.  

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Sir - Daniel Hannan’s article (“So, you thought the European constitution was dead, did you?”, Opinion, March 20) was courageous and penetrating.

Written answers in the Lords reveal how the EU is taking forward the Fundamental Rights Agency in Vienna, which will execute its all-embracing charter.

This is the initiative that the former Europe minister Keith Vaz told us would have no more force than the Beano and that the Prime Minister said would not be enforced by the Luxembourg court.

It deprives us of our remaining legal independence by imposing the EU’s social model on our economic, employment, welfare, education, health, environment and cultural policies.

The devil, as usual, is in the detail. The Government now claims that the legal bases for this massive extension of EU power are:

1. Article 308 of the Treaty Establishing the European Community. But this only allows the EU to act “in the course of the operation of the common market”.

2. Articles 30, 31 & 34 (2)e of the Treaty on European Union. But these cover “provisions on police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters”.

3. The fact that the Fundamental Rights Agency is replacing the EU’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which was, in turn, based on Article 308 as above. So this was also unjustified.

When pressed on these answers, the Government has admitted that the agency’s legality “is still under discussion in the council and its legal basis has not yet been agreed”.

So the initiative proceeds in a legal vacuum, supported by the Government. Yet the Lord Chancellor has admitted that the Luxembourg court is already relying on the charter in its judgments, and the commission has ordained that all new EU legislation must conform explicitly to the charter.

The underlying problem is that when the Luxembourg court rules that all this is legal, there is no appeal against that verdict.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch, London EC3

Telegraph Letters

Sir - When Daniel Hannan says "we are fantasising about the kind of EU we might ideally like to have", he is highlighting the dilemma faced by Britain as a result of its membership (Opinion, March 20).

We are swimming against the tide of European integration, which is the raison d’être of the whole project. It has never suited Britain to be a part of this adventure, as our whole history and constitution have been devoted to independence - independence from foreign control and independence of the people from executive control.

Parliament has, since its inception, been the manifestation of the power of the people. The institutions of the EU, which is a foreign power, have superseded it and the people, as typified by Mr Hannan, are gradually waking up to that fact.

Are we to be a nation or a province of Europe?

Alan Smith, Sanderstead, Surrey

Sir - Daniel Hannan is quite right to point out that the EU constitution, rejected by the French and Dutch electorates, is being imposed on us anyway.

He also correctly implies that the federalists have complete contempt for formal democracy as we know it.

However, he is wrong to claim that Open Europe is "waging a lonely campaign" to alert people to such eurofederalist intrigue. Trade Unionists against the EU Constitution (TUAEUC) and the Campaign against Euro Federalism (CAEF) have continually alerted trade unionists to the undemocratic nature of these developments. Indeed, delegates to the British TUC last September overwhelmingly backed opposition to the EU constitution.

The centre-Left Centre for a Social Europe also puts out daily e-bulletins alerting the labour and trade union movement to the dangers ably outlined by Mr Hannan. The cross-party Democracy Movement also has an excellent website outlining, among other issues, the threat to civil liberties enshrined within the discredited EU constitution.

Democrats are in danger of talking ourselves into a self-fulfilling prophecy of dominance from Brussels unless we highlight the vast breadth of growing opposition that exists against such a state of affairs.

Brian Denny, Trade Unionists against the EU Constitution, London E1

Telegraph Letters 

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan writing in the Telegraph 

Two years from now, the European constitution will be in force. The Eurocrats have worked out a deft way of getting around them. Around 85 per cent of the text can, with some creative interpretation, be implemented this way.

True, there are one or two clauses that will require a formal treaty amendment: a European president to replace the system whereby the member nations take it in turns to chair EU meetings; a new voting system; legal personality for the Union.

These outstanding items will be formalised at a miniature inter-governmental conference, probably in 2007. There will be no need to debate them again: all 25 governments accepted them in principle when they signed the constitution 17 months ago.

We shall then be told that these are detailed and technical changes, far too abstruse to be worth pestering the voters with.

The EU will thus have equipped itself with 100 per cent of the constitution, but without having held any more referendums. Clever, no?

Hannan implores us “Don’t take my word for it: listen to what the EU’s own leaders are saying.”

Wolfgang Schüssel,  "The constitution is not dead."

Angela Merkel,     “We are willing to make whatever contribution is necessary to bring the constitution into force."

Dominique de Villepin,  “France did not say no to Europe."

Hannan makes the point that even our own “Europe minister, Douglas Alexander, repeatedly refused to rule out pushing ahead with the bulk of the text without a referendum.”

But “For the purest statement of the Eurocrats’ contempt for the voters, however, we must turn to the constitution’s author, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

"Let’s be clear about this," pronounced Giscard a couple of weeks ago. "The rejection of the constitution was a mistake that will have to be corrected."

Although after the French and Dutch rejection the ratification process was halted in order to prevent a domino affect, and a period of reflection was called, Hannan makes the point that “Since the French and Dutch "No" votes, three countries have approved the text and three more - Finland, Estonia and Belgium - look set to follow in the coming weeks, which would bring to 16 the number of states to have ratified.”

It is therefore clear that those who would suggest that the constitution is dead, are simply not looking at the evidence. 

“The European Commission has launched a massive exercise to sell the constitution to the doltish national electorates.

Their scheme goes under the splendidly James Bondish title of "Plan D". I forget what the D stands for: deceit, I think, or possibly disdain.”

“While all this is going on, the EU is proceeding as if the constitution were already in force. Most of the institutions and policies that it would have authorised are being enacted anyway: the External Borders Agency, the European Public Prosecutor, the External Action Service, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the European Defence Agency, the European Space Programme.

The text is not, as the cliché of the moment has it, being "smuggled in through the back door"; it is swaggering brazenly through the front.”

Being fair to the "Project" Hannan says it has always advanced in this way. “First, Brussels extends its jurisdiction into a new field of policy and then, often years later, it gets around to regularising that extension in a new treaty.

This, indeed, is how the EU was designed. Its founding fathers understood from the first that their audacious plan to merge the ancient nations of Europe into a single polity would never succeed if each successive transfer of power had to be referred back to the voters for approval.

So they cunningly devised a structure where supreme power was in the hands of appointed functionaries, immune to public opinion.

Indeed, the EU’s structure is not so much undemocratic as anti-democratic in that many commissioners, à la Patten and Kinnock, have been explicitly rejected by the voters.

In swatting aside two referendum results, the EU is being true to its foundational principles.”

Of Britain’s stance Hannan says “we are carrying on as though the French electorate had killed off the constitution, and so spared us from having to think about the European issue at all.

Once again, we are fantasising about the kind of EU we might ideally like to have, rather than dealing with the one that is in fact taking shape on our doorstep. Will we never learn?”

Well many of us have already learnt, but Douglas Alexander, repeated refusal to rule out pushing ahead with the bulk of the text without a referendum, is a clear indication that our elected representatives do not share our views. I do not for one second belive that people like Alexander cannot see what is  happening across the channel, they simply do not want an open debate until it is too late. Which fact flags the real problem, it is not the EU, the problem starts at home, we have our own political elite who are more concerned with keeping in with their Continental colleagues in the European project, than  they are for truly representing the wishes of the British people. 

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Telegraph | News | It’s full steam ahead for EU constitution, even after ‘No’ votes: “It’s full steam ahead for EU constitution, even after ‘No’ votes
By Daniel Hannan
(Filed: 17/07/2005)

You may have got the impression that the European constitution was dead - that the French had felled it, and the Dutch had pounded a stake through its heart. If so, think again. The constitution is being implemented, clause by clause, as if the No votes had not happened.

While British ministers chunter on about the document being “in deep freeze”, other countries are plunging ahead with ratification. Since the No votes, three nations - Cyprus, Malta and Luxembourg - have gone on to approve the text. All right, these may not be the three mightiest powers in Europe, but their endorsement means that 13 of 25 members have now said Yes.

Eurocrats see this number as enormously significant. “It is a strong signal that a majority of the member states thinks that the constitution correlates to their expectations,” said the Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, on hearing that Luxembourg had ratified. “The constitution is not dead,” added the Grand Duchy’s prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker. The European Parliament has duly set up a committee to look at how to proceed with implementation.

Formal ratification by all 25 states is regarded in Brussels as a technicality. To all intents and purposes, the EU is carrying on as though the constitution were already in force. Most of the institutions that it would have authorised are either up and running already, or in the process of being established. My researches have produced the following non-exhaustive list:

• The European Space Programme

• The EU criminal code

• The European Defence Agency

• The common asylum policy

• The mutual defence clause, which replicates Nato’s Article Five

• The External Border Agency

• The Fundamental Rights Agency (née Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia)

• Autonomous politico-military command structures

• The European External Action Service (that is, the EU diplomatic corps)

• The EU prosecuting magistracy

• The Union Foreign Minister - that silky socialist, Javier Solana

• The Charter of Fundamental Rights

Whenever a chunk of the constitution comes before my committee in the European Parliament for approval, I ask: “Where in the existing treaties does it say that we can do this?”

“Where does it say we can’t?” reply my federalist colleagues, giggling at their own cleverness like Mr Toad in The Wind in the Willows. Pressed for a proper answer, they point to a flimsy cats-cradle of summit communiqués, Council resolutions and commission press releases. The more honest of them go on to explain that this is how the EU has always operated: first it extends its jurisdiction into a new area and then, often years later, it authorises its power-grab in a retrospective treaty.

The 25 member governments, they argue, have endorsed the constitution; so has the European Parliament and so, as of last Sunday, have most national parliaments. It is clear where Europe wants to go, Hannan. So will you please stop being so literal-minded? I carry on feebly with my protest: how can they wish away the referendum results? Surely it counts for something that people have voted No.

“They weren’t really voting against the constitution,” I am told. “They were voting against Chirac. Or against Turkey. Or possibly against Anglo-Saxon liberalism”. Against anything, apparently, except the proposition actually on the ballot paper.

Then again, the EU has never been especially interested in public opinion. The ruling ideology - peace in Europe through political integration - is thought to be too important to be left to the ballot box. If a plebiscite elicits the wrong response from the plebs, they must be suffering from what Marxists used to call “false consciousness”. They misunderstand their true interests. They need better information, more education. And, in the meantime, the project goes on.

It is in this context that we should understand Mr Juncker’s considered view - cheered to the echo by MEPs - that “the French and Dutch did not really vote ‘No to the European Constitution”. We may regard such comments as an entertaining hallucination. We may view the whole Carry On film in Brussels as hilarious. But, when the laughing stops, the constitution will be in place.

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.

In the 20 years since Margaret Thatcher’s deal, we have remained the second largest net contributor, paying £170 billion gross (£50 billion net) into the EU budget. A billion here, a billion there: pretty soon it starts to add up to real money.

Daniel Hannan

Yesterday the EPP’s German leader, Hans-Gert Poettering, told parliament that British Conservative Roger Helmer was no longer a member of his grouping, a declaration that Poettering seems to have invented his own parliamentary rule to make. Later in a move that has been suggested was to save face for Poettering, who had also threatened four other conservatives Daniel Hannan, Chris Heaton-Harris, David Sumberg and Martin Callanan the Consevative whip was removed from Helmer.

Now as I understand it the Conservative Party who say they are against the Constitution were told to leave the EPP’s grouping by IDS when he was leader of the party, but this was reversed by Howard on the understanding that the conservatives would be able to vote for themselves and against the rest of the EPP’s grouping. Yet the five Conservatives who signed the motion to censure against Barroso after he refused to answer a parliamentary question about a holiday taken aboard the yacht of a Greek billionaire, and the following granting of Spiros Latsis company with several million pounds, have come under strong pressure from Timothy Kirkhope the leader of the Conservatives in the parliament demanding they remove their names from the motion of censure.

So much for the independence from the grouping, we were promised, so much for the veracity of the Conservatives policies on the EU.

The EU is launching a fully fledged foreign service, with missions to third countries and the United Nations, Euro-ambassadors, trade attachés, a diplomatic training college, the works. The fact that it is doing so without any legal basis does not seem to bother anyone.

So says Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph today “EU’s ‘illegal’ diplomatic corps is edging out our national embassies”
Hannan continues “It is true that the proposed constitution allows for such a development. Article III-296 creates the office of EU foreign minister and specifies that “in fulfilling his or her mandate, the Union Minister for Foreign Affairs shall be assisted by a European External Action Service (EEAS)”.
But the constitution, as you will have noticed, is not yet in force. Ten countries have still to hold referendums on it, and in at least five - Britain, France, Denmark, Poland and the Czech Republic - the result is too close to call.
Still, Brussels rarely lets a little thing like public opinion stand in its way. As far as most MEPs and commissioners are concerned, the constitution must now be implemented regardless of how the national electorates vote.”

The intergrationalist claim that they have the right because “The fact of signing the constitution in Rome has imposed an obligation on the member states, in accordance with the general law of nations, to refrain from any action that might impede entry into force of the constitution.”

This is of course is utter nonsense a Treaty cannot have force until it is ratified, and as the constitution is not yet ratified there is no legal right to proceed. The governments may well be obliged not to “impede entry into force of the constitution” but they are not obliged to allow clauses within the constitution to be pre-empted in this way.

Nor does this go only for the EEAS. Large parts of the constitution pertaining to justice and home affairs are also being implemented in anticipation of the voters’ verdict, while the Charter of Fundamental Rights is already being treated as a justiciable document despite the fact that only four of the 25 member states have ratified the constitution that gives it binding force

Not that any of this much matters. Says Hannan “The EU traditionally advances by extending its activities into a new area and then retrospectively legalising the power-grab in a treaty. It is a clever tactic; by the time we notice what is being done, the Euro-sophists are able to say: “Look here, this has been working informally for years, and you’ve never complained before.”

Last year Gian Luigi Tosato and Ettore Greco produced a paper in which they described the ways that the constitution could be pre-empted..

“The EU Constitutional Treaty: How to Deal with the Ratification Bottleneck”

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” In fact some of the innervations are currently the object of intense political debate in a few countries.

So from the intergrationalist point of view this political debate and any democratic choice must be avoided, and the best way to do this is to proceed with the innervations regardless of any opposition.

This mindset that even the slightest nod towards any democratic fancy must be squashed, or at the very least undermined by any means available, clearly indicates the unaccountable nature of the EU institutions, it is our democratic choice this is totally removed in the EU system of governance

Other
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.

At the heart of Europe By Daniel Hannan
Bloody cheek - they’ve only been here two minutes

Daniel Hannan Conservative MEP for the South-East Region and arch Tory Eusceptic writes today in the Telegraph in his usual spot “At the heart of Europe” This week Hannan is defending the British rebate “In a random survey of 30 foreign MEPs, I was able to find only one, a Portuguese, who did not want to scrap the deal struck by Margaret Thatcher 20 years ago.” Apparently neither was Peter Mandelson prepared to stand up for the rebate he “ostentatiously refused to stick up for the rebate” says the MEP.

Hannan offers a reasonable if incomplete defence of the rebate “Only once in 32 years of membership has Britain got back more than it paid in. During almost all of that time, despite languishing near the bottom of the wealth table, we were the second largest net contributor after Germany.” “We suffer on two counts. First, we are a food importer with an efficient agricultural sector, which means that we pay more into the CAP and take less out. Second, we conduct an unusually high proportion of our trade with other continents, and so are especially badly hit by the EU’s external tariffs. The rebate does not give us “our money back”; it simply reduces the amount we hand over.”

I would suggest that to argue we are badly hit buy the EU’s external tariffs would undermine any argument to leave the EU which denies the eternal tariff would be a big factor that should prevent us leaving because these are now well within manageable limits.

“It is true that £12 billion is the gross figure. About £8 billion of EU money is spent in Britain. But much of this is allocated to schemes whose chief purpose is to advertise the EU”.
He could have gone on to explain that we also have to meet these payments with an equal amount of our own money and that the way these payments are made undermines the Westminster government.

A then rather curious but interesting argument that I have not come across before, “In any case, nowhere else in public life do we look at the net rather than the gross figure. No one, for example, would argue that income tax, rather than being 22p in the pound, is in fact zero, because the whole sum is “given back” in roads, schools and hospitals”

However this is not my main concern with the article it is the way it is framed that annoys me, it is a weak argument that has no basis in fact and leaves Euscpetics open to accusations of at least unreasonableness, if not downright little Englander tactics, that I for one would find very hard to defend.

Hannan Starts with a tirade against Lithuania through attacking the EU Budget Commissioner, Dalia Grybauskaite who happens to be Lithuanian, yet he then goes on to say that the British Commissioner does not support the rebate either, which immediately undermines his argument.

It is the ingratitude that rankles. For years, we refused to recognise the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. We held on to their gold reserves until there was an independent government to take them back. We were one of the first countries to support their application to join the EU. And what do they do the moment they are in? The very first act of the Lithuanian Budget Commissioner, Dalia Grybauskaite, is to demand that Britain give up its budget rebate.

It is not Lithuania that is demanding the end of the rebate it is the EU itself, Dalia Grybauskaite based her argument not on the need of Lithuania but on the need of the EU for a bigger slice of the cake, they want it to proceed with their spending plans. The fact is it matters not which country a commissioner comes from they do not speak or act for their country supposedly, they do in fact swear allegiance to the EU alone, so if Peter Mandelson were to swap jobs with Dalia Grybauskaite he would be saying the same things.

What makes it especially galling is that we backed enlargement in the first place because we thought it would mean a smaller role for Brussels. Europe would be so diverse, we told ourselves, that it would be impossible to apply common policies to the whole continent. Powers would have to be returned to the national capitals.

How wrong we were. According to Mrs Grybauskaite, an expanded EU needs an expanded budget. She wants an extra trillion euros – an almost unbelievable sum – to fund her various projects. And the only way she can get it is if Britain increases its contribution.

Yes we supported enlargement because we thought that would lead to less EU, to less interference, to help create the EU the British always seem to dream of, a simple trading partnership. Of course this vision was seen off by the intergrationalist who ensured that they held their convention on the future of the EU before enlargement, when the candidate countries were not allowed to take part in the debate, but were already signed up to enter. Which exactly shows the naivety and incompetence of the British politician when they meet the professionals in the European arena; these are people who can see beyond the immediate horizon or the next sound bite.

The best argument we have got against removal of the rebate is that we have a veto and we do not agree so we will keep it thank you, we might also chuck in that without it we would pay 14 times more into the pot than either France or Italy and would be vying with Germany for first place.

However it looks as if Blair is not going to defend the rebate as posted Here

Which by a roundabout way brings me to this quote from a comment on EU Referendum by
Denis Cooper: “As far as the EU is concerned the British rebate is an exception to the rule, and like all such exceptions it will be attacked again and again until it’s eliminated. This is why it’s a mistake to suppose that we can escape any provision in the main body of the EU Constitution by adding a protocol to the Treaty. Yes, the protocol will be legally binding, but only until one British government or another is bullied or persuaded into giving it up. So if you don’t want the euro, you can’t rely on protocol 13 for a permanent exemption from Article I-8 -which states inter alia “The currency of the Union shall be the euro”.

This Sceptic Isle

Ukip Uncoverd has the full transcript of ‘This Sceptic Isle’ the programme was broadcast on BBC Radio Four 4th January at 8:00 pm. Introduced by Ruth Lea it at least allows coverage of the sceptic argument on the EU. Among the interviewees is Trevor Kavanagh editor of the Sun the news paper the Euphiles love to hate, who says..

“The Sun is not a knee-jerk xenophobic newspaper which tries to just campaign on emotional issues like the question of whether the Queen’s head should be on the pound note or the euro coin. What we want to do is to raise the genuine and legitimate argument about the way Europe is governed by an unaccountable, undemocratic and remote bureaucracy, and the fact that there is a democratic deficit that even Brussels acknowledges but will do nothing about.”

Tell that to Britain in Europe or even the EU Commision, who are so worried that newspapers like the Sun are fouling the ground for the EU`s own propaganda that they have set up their own rebuttal departments to counter the stories these papers publish.

There was some balance in the program with inclusion of EU supporters Lucy Parl BIE and Charles Grant Centre for European Reform, but the main voice was that of varying shades of Euscepticsism with Roger Knapaman, Teddy Taylor, Lord Pearson, Daniel Hannan, Marc Glendenning all adding slightly different angles to the debate.

One area explored was the fact that people like Roger Knapman UKIP were happy to go along with the government’s and now the EU`s claim, that the referendum is in fact a question of our involvement in the EU, and that a no vote will somehow result in Britian leaving the union. I feel this is a very bad tactical error because a no vote will not result in the government accepting that as the final word from the British people. Tony Blair has already said as much, inferring that it would instead result in a further referendum; the only thing that could possibly stop that, would be if the No was massive. The government are playing a game of frightening the children by suggesting that, as the likely outcome, in the hope that it will make people vote yes even if reluctantly. The fact is there will be one question on the ballot paper, and it will not be about Britain staying in the or coming out of the EU, it will be about further integration, it is therefore tactically stupid to assist the government and the EU by campaigning for a question we are not being asked. Marc Glendenning from the Democracy Movement said of the Ukip Position “Their leadership has been confirming or helping to bolster the government’s strategy, which is utterly insane in relation to the actual objective of getting Britain out of the European Union.”

A fear was also expressed by Trevor Kavanagh and Lord Pearson that a French No would be worse for Eusceptics than a French Yes, rather interestingly Pearson’s said “I think if France votes No, it really does throw the whole thing back into the melting pot. And what I fear if France votes No, is that we would be back into another intergovernmental conference, which would produce yet another Treaty, amending the existing treaties, producing but far more cunningly, the same effects of the present Constitution. And if all the eurocrats and the political elite of Europe would claim that the people had won a great victory and look this was all entirely different and this is alright, isn’t it, and then that would be ratified, in the same process by the governments signing up to it, the executive signing up to it and Parliament becoming a rubber-stamp, and the people being entirely excluded which is what’s been happening for the last 40 years. These people are in no hurry to achieve their European dream, they’ve taken 40 years to get where they are, they are quite happy to spend another 5, if necessary.”

The last point is extremely important to understand, because Lord Pearson is right, that those who are working towards a united Europe are very happy to wait for the right time to advance their toward their goal, even if it means waiting years for certain blocking politicians in member states, to reach the end of their time in power, they have done this before and will do it again. On a personal level it would be preferable to get this sorted out now, one way or the other because Britain’s involvement in the EU is draining the will of the British people to stand up for themselves as a nation, and is making liars of our own politicians who keep insisting they are in charge.

Daniel Hannan is a Tory MEP If only the Tories would take on board his views, but until they do then there is a place for UKIP.

Telegraph | News | At the heart of Europe:
Snip
Forget the rhetoric about the parliament “coming of age” and “standing up to the executive”. It is back to business as usual, with legislature and executive backing each other against a sceptical public.

I have not met a single Euro-MP who thinks that this was the best available team. Of the 25 commissioners, six are former Communists and four have recently lost elections - again demonstrating that the Commission is not so much undemocratic as anti-democratic, attracting politicians who have been expressly rejected by voters.

We have an agriculture commissioner who makes money from the CAP, a competition commissioner who, after only two days, has already run into conflicts of interest, and an anti-fraud commissioner who was recently involved in a fraud case (although he was acquitted).
snip
“There you have it. As far as MEPs are concerned, it is all right to have supported a totalitarian regime, to have been convicted in a corruption case or, indeed, to be an evident dullard with no knowledge of your portfolio. What is not all right is to support the supremacy of national parliaments. Dolts, shysters, reds and retreads are welcome. But someone who believes that nations should set their own taxes? That would be going too far.”

Just Like the good old USSR

A few ways in which the EU will go out of its way to help those old communists in the new Commission feel right at home.

Anyone who opposes or deviates from the EU system will be ostracised. All sorts of tricks are used to isolate and marginalize those who opposed the EU. Those questioning the EU are often portrayed as insular and parochial, The EU has also said in court that to criticise the EU is close to blasphemy.

Like the USSR the EU is governed by a group of people who appoint one another, are unaccountable to the public, enjoy generous salaries, massive perks and huge pensions, are pretty much above the law for life and cannot be sacked.

The EU, like any committed socialist government, operates without any real feedback from the people, and certainly without any concern for what the people think. As mentioned in a previous post. the EU pays money to NGOs selected by them, and then ask those NGO`s to contribute to the debate, thus sidelining any other debate from real people, and allowing the EU to say that it has of course allowed an input from interested parties.

The state must always come first. The only people who benefit are those who have put themselves and their friends in charge. The workers never really benefit from socialism. The profits of the hard working, the creative and the thrifty are redistributed to the bureaucracy: the lazy, the unthinking and the wasteful. See MP and MEP salaries, perks and pensions well above the average.

There was one political party in the USSR (and no opposition) and the same is true of the EU. Political parties which don’t support the EU are denied the oxygen of financial support

State socialism in the EU has not led to affluence, equality and freedom but, effectively, to a one-party political system. When all parties offer the same policies on the EU, as do Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservative there is no democracy. Our political parties are all now trying to manoeuvre the publics interest onto what they deem as the important issues facing the public, yet each of those issues policing, law and order, transport, health, education are defined by what the EU wants and in some cases, transport or environment, for instance are directly under the control of the EU. Education the EU spends minions each year in our schools and universities this money is not used to educate but to educate our young to be good Europeans. If you don’t believe me the next time some professor is seen to be promoting the EU, or denigrating those who oppose the EU just do a Goggle on them and their universities and see how many times “Monnet Centres of Excellence” pops up.

The EU has created a massive bureaucracy, heavy handed secret police systems, (now even your own solicitor or accountant must by law, report you if he has a suspicion that you may have been breaking the law, this on pain of imprisonment, as happened to one solicitor recently, whose client although charged, had those charges dismised for lack of evidence, yet his solicitor got 4 years) Government control of the media and the endless secrecy and lies, the suspension and eventual sacking of Marta Anderson for doing the job she was asked to do, to well!

The socialist bureaucracy of the EU is run by people who arrogantly believe that they are the only ones who need to know and that they always know best

The system looks after its own. When the EU constitution was being debated the main sticking point among delegates was not the sovereignty of their individual nations, or the rights of the voters, but the number of delegates each country would be allowed to send to EU meetings. Each nation’s individuality was pushed to one side as irrelevant and inconsequential, in favour of the rights of politicians to attend regular, all expenses paid beanos.

Like the USSR the EU was created with little or no respect for normal democratic principles. Much of what has happened within the EU has happened secretly and without the normal principles of democracy being considered or applied. What has happened over the last few decades has happened largely in secret.

As Daniel Hannan MEP said: “We often talk about the EU`s democratic deficit as if it were a design flaw, an oversight by the founding fathers. In reality, it was their chief purpose. Monnet and Schuman knew that their project would never survive if it were regularly subjected to national electorates. That is why they vested supreme power in a civil service, insulated from public opinion. Their calculation was that, if people were simply presented with a fait accompli, they would go along with it” The fact is that the European Union is not so much undemocratic but anti-democratic. Its institutions, structures and procedures were deliberately designed to circumvent the democratic process”.

And Dr North Eureferendom
”That much was set out in Spinelli’s original Ventotene Manifesto in 1942, when he set up the template for what would become the European Union, declaring that his “movement” would

…have the task of organising and guiding progressive forces, using all the popular bodies which form spontaneously, incandescent melting pots in which the revolutionary masses are mixed, not for the creation of plebiscites, but rather waiting to be guided.

“It derives its vision and certainty of what must be done”, Spinelli wrote, “from the knowledge that it represents the deepest needs of modern society and not from any previous recognition by popular will, as yet non-existent. In this way it issues the basic guidelines of the new order, the first social discipline directed to the unformed masses. By this dictatorship of the revolutionary party a new State will be formed, and around this State new, genuine democracy will grow.”

Instead of information about the EU we have been fed a good deal of propaganda. The bureaucrats organise and control people and they try to control the availability of knowledge. The people are always controlled with lies and misinformation. (Today these are known as `spin’.)

Anyone who dares to oppose the EU or to promote England is likely to be described as a `racist’.

The former USSR was renowned for its vast number of laws, rules and regulations. But the USSR was nothing compared to the EU. New regulations have poured out of the EU governing every aspect of our lives. Huge numbers of new criminal offences have been listed. There are so many new laws that the British Government cannot study them all. The Council of Ministers cannot even read the new laws which the EU passes. The real power now lies with faceless, nameless, unselected bureaucrats who have no accountability whatsoever.

Corruption was systemic in the old USSR and it is systemic in the EU. The EU is riddled with the standard socialist form of corruption. Like the USSR the EU operates in a way that ensures the redistribution of wealth. In both cases the system means that the wealth is redistributed from the workers to the bureaucrats.

In the former USSR the citizens of individual countries were told that they should forget about their former national identities. They should, they were told, consider themselves members of the USSR rather than citizens of the Ukraine or Russia. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU super state.

The EU is intent on destroying and absorbing national states. Britain and England will both disappear completely as the EU super state develops its identity.

The USSR was an ideological dictatorship. That is what the EU is. The aim of the EU is the formation of a state, the preservation of socialism within the state and the expansion of the principles of political correctness. Most political groups which oppose the EU are small, and will remain small, because it is virtually impossible to obtain funding or publicity for any group which opposes the EU.

Organisations which represent national interests (particularly English interests) are denied power, money and publicity on the grounds that they must be racist. Anyone who supports Britain or England will find themselves branded a racist. (Supporters of Wales and Scotland are never accused of being racist since both these countries will still exist as regions in the new EU super state.) Dr MacShame said Eusceptics were Xenophobic, it just so happens that Xenophobia is one of the new crimes the EU is trying to bring in, but by whos definition.

The USSR had a gulag and so does the EU. The EU has an intellectual gulag; if your views differ from the `approved’ views you will find it difficult to get them published.

Naturally, those who disapprove of the EU will find it difficult or impossible to obtain a job working for the EU. Making a speech or writing a book which criticises the EU (or the laws of the EU) may be regarded as a crime if it is considered subversive. (It is, of course, up to the bureaucrats of the EU to decide whether or not something is `subversive’.)

Citizens in the old USSR had to carry ID cards. The loss of civil liberties which this entailed used to be regarded with suspicion and some contempt by Western European democracies. In the new EU, citizens are losing their freedom and must carry ID cards. (It is a myth that ID cards contribute anything whatsoever to national security. ID cards always exist for one reason only: to take away the freedoms and civil liberties of the citizens who must carry them.)

Officers in the new EU police force have even greater privileges than officers in the much feared KGB. All members of the new EU police force have diplomatic immunity. They can walk into your home, arrest you, and you cannot do a darned thing about it.

Yes the seven new EU Commissioners who also happen to be ex Communists will feel right at home in the EU`s own politburo.

At Least one Conservative is pointing out the faults

Telegraph | News | At the heart of Europe:

“At the heart of Europe

By Daniel Hannan
(Filed: 24/10/2004)

From Commissar to Commissioner in one easy step

It has been a brilliant diversionary tactic. As far as the watching media are now concerned, there is only one Commission nominee: Rocco Buttiglione who, we are told, denounced homosexuality as a sin at his hearing.

In fact, Mr Buttiglione did no such thing: it was a Green Euro-MP who used the S-word. But by fabricating a row about the hapless Italian, Left-wingers have deftly switched attention away from what would otherwise have been the main story: the appointment to the Commission of seven former Communists.

Some of the nominees were very senior apparatchiks. Siim Kallas, the Estonian candidate, was a party member for 28 years, deserting it only when the Soviet Union was visibly falling apart. Laszlo Kovacs was one of the leaders of the Hungarian Communist Party.”

……
consider what some of the former Communist candidates have already said, even before their formal appointment. In this space last month, I mentioned that MEPs had formally asked each of the incoming commissioners which parts of the proposed constitution they intended to implement without waiting for formal ratification. We now have the answers.

“The Commission should already build on the political commitment to greater integration expressed by member states,” says Mr Kallas. “Instead of standing idle until the formal entry into force of the constitution, we should start the necessary preparatory work,” says Mr Kovacs. The Polish and Lithuanian nominees have said much the same thing.

And, disgracefully, they are being applauded for it: MEPs wholeheartedly agree that referendums should not be allowed to impede what they call “the process of European construction”. The ugly truth is that the EU, like the old USSR, is not especially interested in democracy.

I don’t mean, of course, that Brussels is a tyranny: it does not throw its opponents into gulags or take away their passports. But it has in common with the Soviet system a belief that the ruling ideology is more important than the results of ballots.