Ireland saves Europe, votes "NO"

[a_majoor]

The Irish monks saved European civilization during the last "dark ages"; their people step up once again.....

http://freedomknowsnolimits.blogspot.com/2008/06/ireland-saves-europe-votes-no.html

[/quote]
Ireland saves Europe, votes "NO"

Ireland's popular NO to the backdoor EU constitution plunges the European Union back into a crisis, the same constitutional gridlock it experienced after the French and Dutch rejected the original 500+ page legalese leviathan. What are the implications?

Having realized citizens' inherent opposition to the direction the EU is going (more regulation, more bureaucracy, less accountability, less common sense) twenty-six governments decided to bypass their people and ratify the Lisbon Treaty through parliaments. Nothing wrong there, except that the EU is made BY governments FOR governments, and on issues of continental integration the 300 million Europeans deserve to vote independently of whoever runs their countries at this time.

I'm a fervent advocate of European integration and continentalism, but the EU went from a maker of freedom to a ball-and-chain at the foot of progress. Compulsory agricultural quotas, compulsory levels of consumer taxation and spurious regulations have alienated the very founders of the Union. That the original NO came from two of the Union's founding fathers should have rung a loud alarm bell.

The original constitution and the now-defunct treaty were the product of statism, the desire to create a super-state that would choke national sovereignty. The abject failure to obtain popular approval for the new order is before our very eyes. Brussels overpaid lazy meddling elites have been dealt another severe blow, and now there's no plan B.

The Union is in stalemate, as the changes supposed to correct for expansion (to make the Union governable) failed to take effect. It is a clear indictment of Government By Fait-Accompli. The roots of this debacle should be sought in the pervasive Brussels attitude of not caring for the citizen the least, promoting instead a culture of assistance and horse-trading (farm subsidies, anyone?). Irish voters saved millions of Europeans from a top-down diktat, and I believe the continent owes the Emerald Isle a big favour.


    “Call it hubris,” said one senior figure, “people seem to have forgotten what Ireland was like before we received European funding. They seem to think that we created our success all by ourselves. They are wrong.”


Thinking one could buy loyalty with Brussels money is exactly what made the referendum fail. The EU is out of touch, choked in red tape, anti-citizen, cynical and outright on the wrong track. It deserves every drubbing it has received recently, and deserves more until it is hammered down into a sober realization that it is, indeed, in need of a good trim of power, money and ego.
[/quote]

 

[ironduke57]

So they don´t want to play with us? Good, then goodbye Ireland. If they don´t want to be part of the EU noone is forcing them to stay. But first they have to payback all the money they got from the EU. Quite simple. (All IMO.)

Regrads,
ironduke57

 

[a_majoor]

Maybe the Irish don't want to play with unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels? Maybe they like the idea of an EU but not the form that is being proposed (and does that also mean you are willing to say "goodby" to the Netherlands and France as well?)

There is an alternative model to a Federal State, you can find the details here

 

[ironduke57]

So you find it better that every try of reformating the EU will be impossible because a handful people (this time around 100k of 500milion) don´t like it?
If it goes like now every time someone else will say no and anyone else is fucked. So IMO if they don´t want to go with us, they can go and see if they live better without the EU. There are enough other country´s which would be happy to come in.

As said this is my opinion, but most people I know share them.

Regrads,
ironduke57

 

[Kirkhill]

My immediate reaction?

Bejayzus, the Micks are good for something after all!!!  ;D
Time to go out and continue my support to the Irish economy by buying another dozen Kilkenny's.

To address "Wellington" though the Irish have just done what the Dutch and the French did before, and what the Brits and most other folks (IMO) over in Europe would do if given the chance the Irish were.  If you include the monetary referenda then you can add the Danes, the Swedes and the Norwegians to the list of those that have declined the opportunity to become "Europeans".

As to paying back what they "owe"?  They just played by the rules of the day - and as a European you should know better than most that rules are only as permanent as the regime and those have had an ongoing tendency to change.  When the Irish signed up for the EU it wasn't the EU. It was the EEC - a free trade zone.  There was nothing there in that agreement about a unitary state.  It was all about making money, not policy.

Having said that, if your attitude is that of the rest of the "Unionistas" then I foresee a long and healthy future for EFTA - the European Free Trade Association.

- PS I just caught your comment about other countries coming in - I noticed the welcome that the ECSC nations are giving to Turkey.

EFTA or ECSC has always been the debate.  I have always been a big fan of EFTA and an opponent of the ECSC.

Cheers.

 

[Teddy Ruxpin]

So you find it better that every try of reformating the EU will be impossible because a handful people (this time around 100k of 500milion) don´t like it?

Not meaning to intrude into foreign politics, but been to the UK lately?  Or Poland?  Or the Czech Republic?  Or Denmark?  There are plenty of Europeans who don't share the Brussels ideal of a bureaucratic "superstate" that usurps sovereignty from their own governments.  The Irish got the opportunity to vote...I wonder what would have happened had referendums been held in some of the other "approving" countries?

Oh, wait, I know... the EU would ignore the results or repackage the same plan in an effort to ram it though over and over again.

I read the EU's "ECHELON" (which concerns AUSCANUKUS SIGINT) conspiracy theory/report last night for the first time and was, once again, left with nothing but distain for this "institution" of "visionaries".

 

[Kirkhill]

Reproduced in its entirety under the Fair Dealings provision of the Copyright Act.

This speaks not just to the Irish and the EU but also to much of what I have been saying about British Parliamentarianism, democracy, authoritarianism and the distrust of the mob by the elites.  I can't add anything more to what Lord Owen offers.

The Lords must stop Gordon Brown bulldozing Lisbon Treaty through
By David Owen
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 15/06/2008

The British political system has often been admired for its pragmatism. We are not, by instinct, an ideological people. On Wednesday, when the text of the Lisbon Treaty is due to receive its third and final reading in the House of Lords, peers have the chance to reinforce that reputation and demonstrate that we respect the Irish referendum.

Also to reject with conviction any attempt to stampede parliament into premature acceptance of the Treaty. It is our right as parliamentarians, on behalf of our citizens, to demand of our Government that it uses the opportunity given by the Irish rejection to refashion the working of the EU in a manner which will command more support and reduce public hostility or indifference.

The Government wants the Lords to ignore the Irish "No" vote and go ahead and ratify the Treaty, even though it cannot now come into law, as planned, on January 1, 2009 - and will probably never come into law in its present form. By any conceivable test of democratic procedure, the House of Lords should vote to put Treaty ratification on ice, at least until there is an agreed EU policy as to how to handle the Irish "No" vote.

advertisementTo simply plough ahead on a straight vote to accept or reject the EU (Amendment) Bill is to demonstrate nothing less than a contempt for the democracy on which the European Union is supposed to be founded.

What is needed is an all-party motion to postpone the third reading on the legislation, and this ought to be carried by peers regardless of how they voted in the committee and report Stages of the Bill. Indeed, I hope that peers who, for a variety of reasons, may not have been able or did not wish to vote on the referendum debate last week will this coming Wednesday make a real effort to attend.

We have, after all, been faced with this question before. In 2005, prior to the vote in Holland and France on the EU Constitutional Treaty, Tony Blair, as Prime Minister, promised that the referendum in Britain would go ahead regardless of how those countries voted.

Nevertheless, after they voted "No" he cancelled the referendum, arguing it would be absurd to continue until it was clear how the EU was going to respond. In fact, as we know, there was a cynical repackaging of the Treaty.

No one knows at the moment - and certainly it cannot be resolved until the European Council meets on Thursday and Friday - what will emerge. It seems that the Irish Government will ask for time to consider how to handle the situation, if for no other reason than that on this occasion there was a far higher turnout and this makes it very hard to have a second referendum, as happened when Ireland voted "No" to the Nice Treaty in 2001.

Nor can the second referendum held by Denmark after the Danes voted "No" to the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 be cited as a precedent, given that the French and Dutch voters have already demonstrated that the Irish are not alone on this issue.

Though some countries may demand that the EU goes ahead with 26 out of its 27 member states implementing the Treaty, putting Ireland into some form of limbo, there is no legal mechanism for doing this and not much political enthusiasm for it either.

The likelihood is that, slowly, the member states will tease out those parts of Lisbon that can legitimately be implemented without treaty amendment, and quietly give up on those aspects that cannot. The Treaty has always been a package of measures supported with varying enthusiasms by different countries.

A lot of small member states have never liked the Blair proposal to appoint a president of the European Council who is not a head of government, yet it would still be perfectly possible to bring greater consistency by agreeing a procedure whereby one member state in the group holds the presidency of the European Council for 18 months, as opposed to the current limit of six months.

Some countries pay only lip service to the desirability of extra powers for the European parliament, particularly when they watch its MEPs' total inability to grapple with the corruption in the handling of their own expenses. Member states are also divided about reducing the number of European commissioners. There are many examples where there is flexibility for more efficient working relationships to be established while accepting that the Lisbon Treaty is dead.

In truth, Lisbon was not just about making the Commission work effectively. If it had been, there would be far less opposition. The problem was that the Lisbon Treaty also pushed forward integration, and it was this aspect above all which French, Dutch and now Irish voters disliked.

It is very hard for the political elite in Europe to accept that their dream of ever-greater integration does not carry conviction with their own electorates. They refused to admit this when France and Holland voted "No" and instead pretended that public resistance could be overcome by committing themselves privately to not having any referenda.

Fortunately for the EU's democracy the Irish constitution demanded such a step and the Irish people have now spoken for millions in Europe. Yet still the elite try and pretend that they can avoid facing the reality that their dream of integration in many countries is unloved and unsupported.

Lord Owen was foreign secretary, 1977-79

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/06/15/do1506.xml

 

[a_majoor]

While I can understand that many Europeans like Ironduke would be disappointed with the results of the Irish referendum, the reaction of the European elites is also very telling. If this is how they feel, then you can see why the "Treaty" was worded the way it was and why there were no other national referenda:

http://www.volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_06_08-2008_06_14.shtml#1213369165

[David Kopel, June 13, 2008 at 10:59am] Trackbacks
How the Irish Saved Civilization, Again

The Irish Times reports that the Lisbon Treaty has been defeated in a referendum held in the Republic of Ireland. The Lisbon Treaty is a new version of the proposed EU Constitution, which had previously been rejected by the voters of the France and the Netherlands. This time, the French and Dutch governments refused to allow a popular vote. In the U.K., the Labour Party had promised a referendum, but that promise was broken. Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing explained: "Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly... All the earlier [EU Constitution] proposals will be in the new text [lisbon Treaty], but will be hidden and disguised in some way."

Treaty proponents lamented that Ireland, with only 1% of the EU population, could derail a 27-nation treaty. But the very fact that only 1% of the EU's population was allowed to vote on a treaty which would massively reduce national sovereignty and democratic accountability was itself an illustration of the enormous "democratic deficit" of the EU in general, and the Lisbon Treaty in particular. According to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the Lisbon Treaty would be defeated in every EU nation if referenda were allowed.

The referendum debate in Ireland involved some Irish-specific issues, such as the Treaty's impact on farmers, its threat to Ireland's official foreign policy of neutrality, and the danger that Ireland might be forced to raise its low corporate income tax rate of 12.5% (which almost everyone agrees has been an essential part of the economic success of the Celtic Tiger). But the broader opposition seemed to stem from the sheer incomprehensibility of the Treaty. Even Taoiseich (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen admitted that he had not read the Treaty, which is over 400 pages long and deliberately written to be obscure. Treaty proponents included both of the two largest political parties (Fianna Fail and Fine Gael), and they appealed to the Irish people's strong support of trade with Europe, and to Ireland's optimistically internationalist orientation.

A group named Libertas was formed to lead the opposition, and Libertas agreed with the principles of international trade and Ireland's integration into Europe. But Libertas was successful at convincing Irish voters that the Treaty was perilous threat to the democratic sovereignty which is the glory of European civilization, and for which the Irish had struggled for so many centuries to win for themselves.

More coverage at the excellent British site EU Referendum (which astute readers may remember for its outstanding work in exposing media complicity in cooperating with Hezbollah to create staged pictures of the alleged Israeli atrocities at Qana, Lebanon).

So the attitude is: "Who cares what the people want; this is what we want as the permanent ruling class and we will not take no for an answer!"

 

[Kirkhill]

Funnily enough I am just watching a show on the para-normal and whether perception is reality.  I sense parallels.

People are conditioned to believe in laws.  But nobody ever reads laws.  Experts interpret laws for us.  Therefore the wording of the laws mean nothing.  They will be interpreted by the elites to mean whatever they want them to mean.

The Treaty of Lisbon is like some great and incomprehensible incantation designed to bamboozle the gullible. 

Unfortunately (for the elites) they seem to underestimate the low cunning of us the lower orders.  We have been dealing with flim-flam men and scammers and shamans for a very long time.  Politicians and Lawyers are just the latest incarnation.  ;D

 

[ironduke57]

I think I made my position quite clear. I am clearly pro EU. Sure it is not perfect, but what is. And what chance do we have in the future without it against steadily growing stronger China, India and Russia? Or the US?
If the people of a country don´t want go the same way as the others, fine. We all live in democracies so they should elect an government which will lead them out of the EU. Then they can see if they can do it better on there own.

An I have no problem with an really unified EU. It is just one more political layer which hold´s them all together. For the people on the streets this would be mostly irrelevant.

All IMO.

Regards,
ironduke57

 

[tomahawk6]

The working class dont want the EU but the political and wealthy do.Its city dweller vs the rural voter. In France which rejected the treaty it was the rural voter that swung the tide against the treaty.

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/0614/1213369840648.html?via=me

BRIAN COWEN and his Government have been humiliated on an issue that has been at the core of national policy for the past 40 years. Active engagement in the European project has brought great benefits to this country, but the decision of the Irish people to say No to the Lisbon Treaty has plunged the EU into crisis and stripped the Government of its authority.

More importantly, the decision of the electorate to ignore the advice of its leaders and to support a combination of forces ranging from the far left to the far right, represents a gamble of enormous proportion with the future welfare of the country.

The blushes of the politicians as they try to pick up the pieces may cause amusement, rather than sympathy, but the long-term consequences for the voters may be no laughing matter.

Things will never be quite the same again, no matter what deal is eventually patched up at European level. In simple terms, Ireland's position as the favoured child of the EU project can never be restored and we will have to live with the implications of that.

The implications for the entire European project are also negative, which will obviously please the No campaigners. Whether the bulk of the EU tries to move ahead without us or some complex deal is cobbled together to keep us in and allow the others to move forward, there will be serious consequences for Ireland.

On the domestic front the problem is that the Government's authority is now in shreds at a time when strong leadership is urgently required. The immediate problem will be trying to deal with our EU partners to find a way out of a debacle that has implications for all of the EU's 490 million citizens. It will also have to summon up the courage to take decisive action to cope with a deteriorating economy from a position of weakness.

For the new Taoiseach Brian Cowen the result is an unmitigated disaster. The people have refused to accept his leadership on the most important issue facing the country.

Recovering from that blow to his prestige will be difficult, if not impossible. The only consolation he has is that last week's Irish Times opinion poll, which forecast a No vote, showed that he was still held in reasonably high esteem by the public.

Cowen's first task will be to try and explain the Irish position to his EU colleagues at next week's European Council meeting in Brussels. They will want to know what Ireland is going to do to help them get out of the mess in which the Irish referendum result has landed them and to that there is no easy answer.

There is a big difference between the result of this referendum and the first one on the Nice Treaty, which was also lost. On that occasion complacency led many of the Yes voters to stay at home and the low turnout contributed to the defeat. The Irish government then got a deal allowing it to add a declaration to the treaty stating Ireland's position. That enabled it to be put to the people again and the answer was Yes.

This time around the turnout was higher and there is clearly no silent majority lurking out there to vote Yes. The other part of the equation is that there is no one clear reason for the No vote and therefore no obvious declaration or protocol that could be attached to the treaty to enable it to be put to the people again.

The question then arises as to whether some renegotiation of the treaty itself would be possible. After all there were some changes to its predecessor, the constitutional treaty, after it was rejected by French and Dutch voters. However, those changes were marginal and the governments of both countries then ratified the new deal without going back to their voters for a second referendum. That option is not available to the Irish Government.

If it quickly becomes clear that the other 26 members of the EU are simply not prepared to renegotiate the treaty, as the No side claimed they would, the Government could consider putting the issue to the people again on the basis that they had voted No on the basis of misinformation.

However, that would almost inevitably court a second defeat. They are simply caught in a bind, with no obvious way out.

A more likely scenario is that Ireland could agree with its EU colleagues to proceed with the elements of the treaty that do not require a referendum and opt out of those that do. The Danes did this after their voters rejected the Maastricht Treaty. It allowed the country to remain in the EU although its influence was restricted. One way or another, there is no easy solution.

The mess the country now finds itself in is largely the responsibility of the Government itself. It was the Coalition's job to deliver a Yes vote and it failed miserably. What was inexcusable was that many Fianna Fáil TDs did so little work in the campaign and that the party organisation across large swathes of the country failed to campaign at all.

Fine Gael and Labour also failed to deliver, but they are in Opposition and have neither the spoils of office nor the responsibility for governing.

It all started to go wrong months ago when the former taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, would not name a date for the referendum, although everybody in the political world assumed it would be in May or June. While Ahern may have had reasons to do with his tribunal testimony for being so cagey, it sent a signal to the electorate that they were being taken for granted and it started the whole Yes campaign off on the wrong foot.

In the meantime, the No campaign had begun to crank up. The Libertas campaign has been going since January and it was given time to develop momentum and put forward is arguments without any real challenge, as the Government dithered about the date. Then the change of Fianna Fáil leader distracted the Government and the media from focusing on the campaign.

Yet for all that there was still plenty of time for the Yes side to mount a strong a coherent campaign. Given that the first Nice referendum had provided sufficient warning that it would be extremely difficult to carry a Yes vote, there was no excuse for the lacklustre campaign mounted by the Government. Cowen was centrally involved in the first Nice referendum, as minister for foreign affairs, so he should have been keenly aware of the need to go flat out for four weeks as if he was fighting a general election.

Instead, he made a critical blunder early on by saying that he had not read the treaty. While he clarified that later by pointing out that he had been deeply involved in its negotiation, and that he knew its provisions intimately, the damage was done and a weapon handed to his opponents.

That blunder was compounded by our EU commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, who boasted that he hadn't read the treaty as it was incomprehensible. Hardly the best way of encouraging the voters to put their trust in the leaders of the Yes campaign.

Then in the vital last few weeks of the campaign Fianna Fáil decided to muzzle its most knowledgeable campaigner and most passionate advocate of a Yes vote, the Minister for European Affairs, Dick Roche. Because Roche has a tendency to be abrasive in debate, the powers that be in his party would not let him on the airwaves to argue the case. It was akin to a football team taking off its best defender because he is disliked by the opposing supporters. It was another indication of Government complacency.

It was not until The Irish Times poll jolted them into reality a week ago that Ministers started campaigning as if their lives depended on it. Even then it was only senior Ministers and a handful of TDs who threw themselves into the fray.

There is anecdotal evidence from all over the country of the party's failure to mobilise.

Meanwhile, the array of groups on the No side threw everything into the campaign. The fact that many of the No posters were barefaced lies is now neither here nor there. A majority of people simply voted No for one or other of the reasons listed on the posters: neutrality, sovereignty, abortion, taxation or the double-meaning turkey message.

There were many ironies about the No campaign. The unholy alliance of Sinn Féin and the jingoistic British press was just one of them. The net result of weakening the bond with the EU will inevitably be greater dependence on Britain as we approach the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising.

Of course the Yes side had a more complex message to explain but, by comparison, its posters were still remarkably dull. The fact that so many of the mainstream politicians cynically used posters in order to promote their own image rather than the message also did nothing for the Yes campaign.

The victory for the No side has clear political implications. Sinn Féin after its setback in last year's general election is back on a roll. Declan Ganley has been given an opportunity to launch Libertas as a political movement and seek to become the Silvio Berlusconi of Irish politics, while all the smaller radical right and left groups now have demonstrated the kind of clout nobody thought they had.

Given the low esteem in which almost all the mainstream politicians and parties are clearly held by a substantial proportion of the electorate, anything could happen in the future. For the moment, though, whatever the result may portend in the longer term, the politicians who presided over one of the most disastrous campaigns in Irish history now have the responsibility of trying to clear up the mess.

 

[Kirkhill]

The author of that piece doesn't get it either.

His take is that if only the Government had propagandized better then the masses would have fallen in line.  That and a nod to that favourite Irish whipping boy, the Brits, and their nasty, populist, jingoistic Press which for some incomprehensible reason has an impact on loyal, Guiness-drinking Irish Gaels.

The internationalists will not give up despite your correct observation T6. 

I stand by an earlier observation on noses and fists.  Rural voters are willing to accept more insecurity, more self-reliance, in order to increase the distance between them and their neighbour's fists and noses, reducing the need for laws.  Urban voters are willing to accept more laws, more constraints, in the (IMO) vain hope that laws will keep them separated from their neighbour's fists and noses and thus supply them security. 

Urban voters crave company and demand order - and in our modern global village that means the whole world needs to be ordered.

Rural voters crave isolation and demand freedom - and in our modern global village of diminishing wilderness outside of the law that is getting harder to find.

It isn't just a western political issue.  I think that that dynamic is at the heart of the problems we have with terrorists, nomads, tribal societies, Africa and the Islamic Crescent. 

My grandmother would have said "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."  My grandfather, more pithily, would have put it "What the eye don't see, the heart don't grieve over". Or in the modern idiom "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas".

People could cheerfully live their own lives - ritually slaughtering each other on Sunday before afternoon tea - with the rest of the world being blissfully unaware.  The occasional traveller might bring a stale-dated three year old report of wondrous atrocities that would form the basis of a tale to frighten the kids but by and large nobody took any notice - unless the Pope or Mohammed organized a raiding party.  Gernerally there was no sense worrying about it because it had happened long before you heard about it, you couldn't do anything about it and it may not have been true in any event.

Since the advent of the Telegraph in the 1850s however, we are suddenly confronted by the knowledge that these things are happening and, more importantly, they are happening now, and if only we could act we could prevent them. Telephones, movies, radio, television and the internet just build on the phenomenon supplying ever more information and creating an ever greater sense of urgency and responsibility and, especially in the minds of the urbanites seeking security, fear. 

They yearn for the day where they can live without fear.  They want somebody to take away all the nastiness.  They want someone to supply them a perpetual state of bliss.  That is at the heart of a column by Lorne Gunter where he takes to task a Professor who said that greater choice, greater freedom, does not equate to greater happiness.

Nobody ever promised greater happiness with greater freedom.

In 1776 the mantra was "life, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness": the opportunity to find happiness on whatever terms you chose.  And to fail on your own terms.

I came across this quote in Rosamond McKitterick's book "Mediaeval World" (Times 2003):

It is the practice of the princely clemency to consider with prudent care what the provincials and all people subject to him require. (Punctuation added for emphasis)  And to draw up a constitution arranged in titles whatever must justly be attended to for their contentment.

That was from Frankish King Clothar II's Edict of Paris in 614.  Mohammed was seeing Angels but it would be eight years before Mohammed high-tailed it out of Mecca for Medina.

Now if you swap "contentment" for the synonym "happiness" I find the antithesis of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".  In 614, in the interest of Peace, Order and Good Governance, it was the self-interested necessity of the ruler (the princely clemency) to figure out how to make his subjects happy.

The Carolingians replaced the Merovingians as they searched for a workable solution.  The Carolingians are still looking for a workable solution today in Europe and in Canada, and dare I say it, in the US, especially amongst those that sought an ideal constitution for the Iraqis rather than accepting that a pragmatic, laissez-faire government might achieve stasis and order faster.

I don't want my government to make me happy.  Insofar as I must have a government I want it to stay below the horizon while keeping me secure and leaving me alone.

 

[tomahawk6]

Nicely put 

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Kirkhill,

Your usual excellent analysis.  Well Done.

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

I think I made my position quite clear. I am clearly pro EU. Sure it is not perfect, but what is. And what chance do we have in the future without it against steadily growing stronger China, India and Russia? Or the US?
If the people of a country don´t want go the same way as the others, fine. We all live in democracies so they should elect an government which will lead them out of the EU. Then they can see if they can do it better on there own.

An I have no problem with an really unified EU. It is just one more political layer which hold´s them all together. For the people on the streets this would be mostly irrelevant.

All IMO.

Regards,
ironduke57

No offence Ironduke57, but I think you're intentionally oversimplifying the very broad impact of the Lisbon Treaty.  This is moving far beyond the financial union the Irish originally agreed to.  In essence it's a handing over huge swaths of policy and law that previously were determined on the national level making national parliaments, mostly supporting institutions to the larger EU bodies.  Most problematic is that once a nation has committed to this formation of the new union, that new union has the legal ability to unilaterally take more sovereign rights from the member nations.

Bottom Line:  As much as would NEVER trust mainland European Politicians to carry my golf clubs (Schroeder & Chirac are two that leap to mind), my biggest concern with this move is the question of "Why?" and "Who gains?".  My read is this an opportunity for France, Germany and Belgium to take undue control of the politics of Europe, which will result primarily in a set of taxpayer-sucking continental-wide policies that will enrich the large European multi-nationals (who I see as the big drivers in all this).  If they just want a European Defence Union - vote for that.  If they just want a standalone EU Foreign Policy position, vote for that.  But this omni-bus package which creates superceding structures is nothing less than a weakening of the power of an individual voter in each EU member state to determine their own future.


Matthew.   

 

[a_majoor]

The EU Constitution is kicking around like Frankenstein's Monster, and Theodore Darymple offers his thoughts on the matter. Canada should watch and learn, too many of our institutions are run by unelected and unaccountable bureaucracies with much the same attitude towards the citizens:

http://torydrroy.blogspot.com/2008/06/darymple-on-eu.html

Darymple on the EU

I met Theodore Darymple a few years ago at a Civitas meeting. He is obviously a Eurosceptic. he understands the massive elitist bureaucracy that runs the EU. he understands "What the people of Europe want is completely irrelevant."


Not to worry, the European political elites soon recovered from the shock. Ireland, they pointed out, is a small and peripheral country, and not a founder-member of the European Union. Anyway, what does it really matter if referendum after referendum, in Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Ireland, defeats the proposals of the European political class? The proposals can always be enacted regardless, by other means. What does it matter if two-thirds of Germans regret monetary unification, as do the French and the Italians? What does it matter if Prime Minister Gordon Brown refused to hold a referendum on the treaty in Britain -- having previously promised one -- once he realized how voters would roundly reject it? As European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said after the Irish vote: the Lisbon Treaty is not dead, it is living. What the people of Europe want is completely irrelevant.

 

[a_majoor]

Or not. A revolt of sorts is happening against Brussels, although it seems to be a revolt of the elites for now.

http://torydrroy.blogspot.com/2008/07/trouble-in-eu.html

Trouble in the EU

The Polish president is now refusing to sign the Lisbon Treaty. The Eu may finally have to listen to its citizens. The plutocrats may finally be humbled. They thought they could bully their way out of this mess. It is also like the Czech Republic will also not sign this massive power grab.

Poland in new blow to EU treaty


Mr Kaczynski's comments mark an unhappy start for Mr Sarkozy
Poland's President Lech Kaczynski says he will not sign the EU's reform treaty at present, following its defeat in an Irish referendum last month.

He said it would be "pointless" to sign the Lisbon Treaty, even though Poland's parliament has ratified it. All 27 EU members must ratify the document.

Mr Kaczynski was speaking as France took over the EU's rotating presidency.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said "something isn't right" with the EU and warned citizens may be losing faith.
The Lisbon Treaty is intended to streamline EU decision-making following enlargement of the bloc, creating a new EU president and foreign affairs chief.

In the UK David Cameron has attacked Gordon Brown's position on the Lisbon Treaty.'Failure to show leadership'
Mr Cameron said the PM could have "done the difficult thing and declared the treaty dead" or "the easy thing and join others in starting the process of bullying Ireland into a second referendum".

That's half truths, ignoring democracy, breaking promises - shutting people out when they should be given a say. Can you get any more old politics than that?

David Cameron

"Isn't it the case that in taking the latter path, you have let down the people of Ireland, you've let down Britain and you've let down Europe?" he asked Mr Brown.

British governments, whatever their political persuasion had "never wanted a European constitution with a European president, a European foreign minister and a European diplomatic service", he said.

"Even Tony Blair was clear when the process started in saying he didn't want a constitution," he said.

"So why, when the only people who were given the chance to speak say 'no' do you fail to show any leadership?

"Even Tony Blair was better than this."

 

[a_majoor]

The real (tribal) forces of history re emerge:

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/150469

Homogenizers in Retreat
At their worst—their best is bad enough—EU enthusiasts clumsily invoke the pale specter of a synthetic terror.

George F. Will
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 12:51 PM ET Aug 2, 2008

When Alexander the Great's weary soldiers trudged into northern Pakistan around 327 B.C., they were not too tuckered out to fraternize with the local ladies. Or so 'tis said, although ethnographers and DNA cast doubts on asserted close connections between Macedonians and today's Hunza people of the Himalayan foothills. But a myth's power does not depend on its plausibility, and the Financial Times enchantingly reports that on July 11 Prince Ghazanfar Ali Khan, representing the dignity of the "fair-skinned, blue-eyed Hunza people," arrived at Alexander the Great airport in Skopje—capital of the Republic of Macedonia, a shard of the former Yugoslavia—to assert kinship across 23 centuries.

So let us now praise a splendid reversal. Durable differences are flourishing, to the exasperation of would-be homogenizers of the world.

Macedonia demands recognition of a Macedonian minority in Greece, which wants Macedonia to change its name, which is the same as the name of Greece's northern province. Greece funds cultural institutions in Pakistan and Afghanistan among the Kalash people, who also claim descent from the soldiers of Alexander. He had no known children.

From the Mediterranean to the North Sea—Scotland is in another fever of nationalist regret about 1707, when its Parliament became subservient to Westminster—Europe is experiencing interesting ferments. In 1500, there were approximately 500 European political units. By 1800, there were a few dozen, and that was before the unifications of Germany and Italy. The 19th century of consolidation has, however, been followed by fissuring. In 1920, after the First World War shattered the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, Europe had 23 states. By 1994, there were 50. The disintegration of two entities born out of the 1914–18 war, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and the divorce of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, exemplify the politics of reasserted particularities.

Disaggregation is in the air even as the implacable consolidators of the European Union try to break ancient nations to the saddle of sameness. The EU has a flag that no one salutes, an anthem no one sings (it has no words), 27 different national memories and more than that number of durable ethnicities. Hence the EU is increasingly an opéra bouffe attempt to turn "Europe" from a geographical into a political denotation.

In 2005 referendums, the French and Dutch rejected what was preposterously called a European "constitution." It was a mare's nest of obscurantism (what was verbiage about the Sami people's reindeer husbandry doing in a constitution?) and lunacy (the right of children to "express their views fully"). Undeterred by democracy, and determined to continue the centralizing project, the EU ginned up the gaseous Lisbon Treaty, a sample of which is: "The Union shall contribute to the promotion of European sporting issues, while taking account of the specific nature of sport, its structures based on …" Good grief.

Ireland recently rejected this wordy device for leeching away even more of the national sovereignty that is a prerequisite for self-government. France's excitable President Nicolas Sarkozy, who currently occupies the EU's rotating six-month presidency, seems to think, as EU leaders generally do, that balky nations must keep voting until they vote correctly, at which point the ratchet of consolidation is irreversible. Britain's Conservative Party, which is favored to win the next election (sometime before summer 2010), says that if Ireland has not by then ratified the treaty, a Conservative government will urge rejection of it by referendum.

At their worst—their best is bad enough—EU enthusiasts clumsily invoke the pale specter of a synthetic terror, a recrudescence of bloody nationalism, to panic the EU's 27 member nations into "pooling" their sovereignties and "harmonizing" their social policies, for the greater glory of the EU bureaucracy in Brussels, which is in Belgium, which is in crisis. It was cobbled together in 1830 from French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders, and after 178 years these regions find each other increasingly irritating. Perhaps they would seek a divorce if they could decide who gets custody of Brussels—and of Belgium's huge national debt. The Belgians, with their seven parliaments, should consult with the restive Bosnian Serbs of Republika Srpska, and with Moldova's secessionist Transdniestria region. Such would-be statelets might not make economic sense, but it is not obviously irrational for other considerations to matter, too.

Of course, not all European affirmations of ancient differences are wholesome. In Spain, Basque separatists recently detonated four bombs, the first near the city of Bilbao, which in 1936 and 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, was briefly the seat of an autonomous Basque government. But it is, on balance, nice that Marx and his epigones, who were reliably wrong, were never more so than when insisting, as other slow learners still do, that religion, myth and ethnicity were preindustrial forces that would lose their history-shaping saliency in the modern, market-driven world of economic motives. A core tenet of conservatism was put perfectly by William Faulkner: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." If it were, the present would be thin gruel indeed.

 

[a_majoor]

Now workers in the UK join the revolt against the EU:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/4424125/Wildcat-oil-strikes-Europeans-are-finally-waking-up-to-the-demise-of-democracy.html

Wildcat oil strikes: Europeans are finally waking up to the demise of democracy
Angry people across the EU are discovering the fine print in all the treaties signed by their leaders, says Janet Daley.

Janet Daley
Last Updated: 4:39PM GMT 01 Feb 2009

Comments 5 | Comment on this article

The peoples of Europe have finally discovered what they signed up to. I do mean "peoples" (plural) because however much political elites may deceive themselves, the populations of the member states of the EU are culturally, historically and economically separate and distinct. And a significant proportion of them are getting very, very angry.

What the strikers at the Lindsey oil refinery (and their brother supporters in Nottinghamshire and Kent) have discovered is the real meaning of the fine print in those treaties, and the significance of those European court judgments whose interpretation they left to EU obsessives: it is now illegal – illegal – for the government of an EU country to put the needs and concerns of its own population first. It would, for example, be against European law to do what Frank Field has sensibly suggested and reintroduce a system of "work permits" for EU nationals who wished to apply for jobs here.

Meanwhile, demonstrators in Paris and the recalcitrant electorate in Germany are waking up to the consequences of what two generations of European ideologues have thrust upon them: the burden not just of their own economic problems but also the obligation to accept the consequences of their neighbours' debts and failures. Each country is true to its own history in the way it expresses its rage: in France, they take to the streets and throw things at the police, in Germany they threaten the stability of the coalition government, and here, we revive the tradition of wildcat strikes.

But the response from the EU political class is the same to all of these varied manifestations of resistance. Those who protest are being smeared with accusations of foolhardy protectionism or racist nationalism when they are not (not yet, anyway) guilty of either. It is not purblind nationalism, let alone racism, to resent the importation of cheap labour en masse when its conditions of employment (transport and accommodation provided, as seems to be the case at Lindsey) allow it to compete unfairly with indigenous workers. The drafting in of low-wage work gangs has always been seen as unjust: exploitative of the foreign workers, and destructive of the social cohesion of existing communities which, incidentally, is something about which the Tories say they are much exercised. So can the protesters expect their support?

The US had a rule during its great period of immigration in the early years of the last century, that no one could enter the country with a pre-arranged job. This was designed precisely to prevent the unfairness and disruptive effect of the wholesale import of cheap labour. An individual travelling to seek work, prepared to take his chances in fair competition with local workers is one thing: the organised recruitment of people from the poorest regions of the poorest countries in Europe in order to reduce employers' wage costs in the more prosperous ones, is something else altogether.

Nor is it "protectionism" to argue that competition for employment should take place within a context of social responsibility and respect for the fabric of communities. Genuine protectionism is setting up barriers to free trade: this is what Barack Obama is doing when he forbids the importation of foreign materials such as British steel, and urges his countrymen to restrict their purchases of goods not manufactured in the US ("Buy America!") I eagerly await the condemnation of his proposal for US economic isolationism from all those European leaders who were so anxious to see him elected.

Free trade in goods, as opposed to unlimited open borders for transient labour, is absolutely essential to the recovery of the global economy (and for that matter, to the relief of poverty in the developing world). I agree with those who fear that the US under President Obama may be about to do what it did under Franklin Roosevelt, whose protectionism and hard-nosed refusal to make concessions to international needs condemned the world to a depression (followed by a war). But what the British strikers are demanding is not the same at all, and if their complaints are caricatured or defamed, the price in social disorder could be hideous. It is not an exaggeration to say that this could be the moment of justifiable anger that neo-fascist agitators have been waiting to exploit.

The protesters are simply demanding what they thought – what all free people have been taught to think since the 18th-century enlightenment – was their birthright. That is to say, for the basic principle of modern democracy: the understanding between the state and its people that the proper function of a government is to represent the interests of those who elected it. And to be fair to both presidents, Obama and Roosevelt, this assumption is so deeply grounded in the American psyche that it is almost inconceivable for any US administration not to abide by it quite literally.

In the grand abstract terms of the enlightenment, the legitimacy of government derives from the consent of the governed, and therefore no government should have the right to hand over its authority to some external body which is not democratically accountable to its own people. So when the framers of the EU arranged for the nations of Europe to do exactly that, they were repudiating the two centuries old political struggle for the rights and liberties of ordinary citizens, of government "of the people, by the people and for the people". It has always been my view that this was a quite conscious decision by the EU founders who, in the wake of two world wars, came to believe that the infamous national crimes of the 20th century could be traced directly to the democratic revolutions of the 18th century, and that the only long-term solution to this was to replace democracy with oligarchy.

But there it is. And here we are, with a generation of European political leaders who almost all accept the terms in which their predecessors gave away the most important principle of that great democratic pact between a free people and its government. While times were good and there was enough prosperity to keep everybody distracted and happy, the loss went almost unnoticed except by a few persistent and despairing critics. Well, not any more. The American government may be committing itself to a policy that is economically unsound and even irresponsible, but its insistence on maintaining the compact with its own voters – on putting their concerns first – will at least ensure that democracy will survive there. I am not at all sure that will be true in Europe.

You may note that Canada has gone a long way in this direction, there are a great many institutions that weild real power over Canadians which are not democratically accountable. How we deal with these bureaucratic impediments to freedom will define us as a nation for generations to come.