Declan's democracy
You know the "unelected commission", so often referred to by those less than enamoured with the European Union: what about electing them? 
I've just been sent an interesting little booklet called The Fight for Democracy: a series of interviews with Declan Ganley, the founder of Libertas, which is standing as a pan-European party in 14 of the 27 EU countries.
What interests me about Mr Ganley is that he does have some genuine ideas for making the EU more democratic. Most of those who say they are campaigning for reform have long ago come to the conclusion that the EU is not transformable. Therefore, they argue, less should be done at a European level and powers should be returned to national parliaments.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, and Mr Ganley stresses it is one option for those who want a more democratic EU. But he also suggests that the European Parliament could elect the whole commission, or that the nation states should hold elections for the job of commissioner.
At the moment commissioners are simply appointed by the head of government of each country. Of course, no president or prime minister would wear this reduction in their power of patronage, let alone risk a political opponent ending up as their man or woman in Brussels. But it's an intriguing idea.
And just a plug for imaginative coverage of this election: find out how they will vote down Brussels Way.
That's Brussels Way in Luton... But who would they elect as a commissioner?
I’m Mark Mardell, the BBC's North America editor. These are my reflections on American politics, some thoughts on being a Brit living in the USA, and who knows what else? My 
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~26~RS~)
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Mark Mardell's friends in Brussels do not want Declan Ganley elected to the EU Parliament this week. They would like him do badly on Thursday and then announce he will not lead the NO campaign in a second Irish referendum. Mark Mardell is now hoping we are going to explain why Libertas are wrong on the eve of election. Declan Ganley is however a fine man who did a great job in last summers Irish referendum and is very much the type of person who should be replacing the washed up federalists in Brussels that are responsible for creating the current EU crisis of democratic legitimacy.
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Mr. Declan Ganley is a candidate in my constituency here in the West of Ireland and he can be certain of my vote. I believe he will honestly tackle the 'EU Elite' in Brussels and make efforts to strenghten Intergovernmentalism in the EU and try to put a stop to this dangerous march towards Supranationalism.
As the 13 present Irish MEPs in the 732 member Parliament are dispersed amongst various political groupings it doesn't surprise me that they fade into oblivion once they've been elected and do or can do very little to benefit their home country. I feel our MEPs are there for the money and the perks and lose any national affection they may have had prior to their election.
I believe that smaller nations have little influence in the present EU configuration.I read in a reputable news magazine recently that if decisions in Brussels don't go Germany's way, well then, they simply don't go.
The 'EU Elite' has also perfected the art of media manipulation which augments EU verisimilitude, especially in its foreign policy. My ten years experience in the Balkans showed me the ugly side of the EU with regard to interference in the internal politics of Balkan States and manipulation of the International Media in misreporting events and even events which never happened.
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Either the EU gets back to what it was intended to be, a group of free trading , cooperating nations living in peace, not an enormous obscene unelected monster straddling national bounderies and interfering in the laws and traditions of member states, or it must cease to exist. Britain already has at least three levels of home grown bureaucracy and the last thing required is another level hanging like a giant resource eating spider at the centre of a grossly inefficient federal superstate. Alliance with most of the other countries of western Europe, does not add to our security, if history is anything to go by, western Europe is no more than a handy airbase for any possible enemies. France , Germany and the low countries could never be relied on in time of danger, they have always been found wanting in the past, and at present in Iraq and Afghanistan so why would one suppose they have changed in any way.
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#3
"Britain already has at least three levels of home grown bureaucracy and the last thing required is another level hanging like a giant resource eating spider at the centre of a grossly inefficient federal superstate."
By that rational you must also call for the break-up of the USA...
"Alliance with most of the other countries of western Europe, does not add to our security, if history is anything to go by, western Europe is no more than a handy airbase for any possible enemies."
Err but most of those 'enemies' are now part of the alliance - and that was the original thinking behind the Treaty of Rome etc. - so in this respect the EEC/EU has been an resounding success!
"France , Germany and the low countries could never be relied on in time of danger, they have always been found wanting in the past, and at present in Iraq and Afghanistan so why would one suppose they have changed in any way."
Has it ever crossed your, so obviously USA centric, mind that history might just prove France , Germany and the low countries right in their reluctance to become involved.
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"Either the EU gets back to what it was intended to be, a group of free trading...."
WHAT?
No that is what the British politicians told the British people in order to sign up. Sorry if you were lied to but that interpretation is totally at odds with how with the nature of the original treaties right back to the rome treaty which were integrationalist in nature. Even my late grandmother understood this.
They were bourne out of the understanding that sovreign nation states had caused interminable wars and misunderstandings. The nation state as a presever of peace and prosperity had totally failed. The graveyards of europe were full. Nationalism or statism wereby sovreignty rested wholly with the nation state was by then tragically laughable as it broght nothing but two world wars death and misery. That option based on wholly sovreign states and mere trading as it had in the 19th Centuary had FAILED. All that was left was economic and POLITICAL interdependence.
You can argue about the EU democratic deficiency in its institutions. Many european intergrationalists will agree with you. But trying to claim that the european institutions were there originally to promote mere free trade is well wide of the mark.
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#1 - Freeborn-John
There is just no pleasing you is there? You seem to find something to knock in just about everything MM threads - even his articles on fishing policy are apparently a diversionary tactic. Now you seem to think that the entire Brussels establishment are 'his friends', and profess to know what he is '. . . now hoping we are going to do . . ."
Who are you? His analyst?
Your previously well argued and sensible EUsceptic posts seem to be taking on an increasingly desperate tone. I do not, for example, recall a post suggesting that Ganley is anything other than 'a fine man'. Disagreeing with someone does not, among civilised people, diminish their status as human beings. We leave the personal remarks to lesser mortals.
Returning to topic, I have just checked the Libertas web site in search of a manifesto. There is none. I am told that they are committed to 'five core principles'. They are summed up in exactly 360 words. And we are supposed to take them seriously?
I agree absolutely that the EU as presently structured has shown itself to have scant regard for core democratic principles. I am completely in agreement with those who believe it needs fundamental reform. I am hopeful that this week's results will give the EU establishment a wake up call and lead eventually to a proper process of public engagement. What I will not do is embrace the policies of a party which have none.
And before you ask me - again - not to respond to your posts, I will respond as I please and when I please. It is called democracy.
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#3 - kaybraes
Current deployment in Afghanistan is:-
France 2,780
Germany 3,465
Belgium 450
Netherlands 1,770
Maybe a little factual research before snide digs at France, Germany and the Low Countries?
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Mark writes:
"But he also suggests that the European Parliament could elect the whole commission, or that the nation states should hold elections for the job of commissioner.
At the moment commissioners are simply appointed by the head of government of each country."
There are a couple of problems with this idea. The first and most obvious is that the whole point of the commission is that it is supposed to be an executive branch of government, albeit with legislative powers, NOT a representative branch. What is the point of electing a commission if you already have elections for a parliament? Why not simply give the parliament the powers of the commission? If the commission were to be elected, there would be this massive farce whereby Europe votes twice for no apparent purpose; once to elect a parliament with no powers, and once for an executive made up of politicians and not experts.
The second reason this idea is flawed is because it says absolutely nothing about the rules that govern the election process. The reason the appointment of commissioners is so nefarious is because the major political parties in Europe know that it will be their members who head the governments of every member state. Think about the practicality for a moment. In every member state, coalition governments form and the largest parties end up heading the coalition. Sure, the minority parties get heard, otherwise they leave the coalition. But the largest parties ALWAYS get to head the coalition, because they have the largest portion of that coalition. Now that isn't theory, it is the actual history of european democracy. You can rely upon the pattern, as it were, even if you don;t know why it happens.
In other words, the "rule" that says the head of the government shall appoint person X is effectively a rule that says one of the two dominant european parties will appoint person X. And that is rather the point.
Now, the European parliament also has rules about how it must function, and who can run for office, and so. I don't pretend to understand these rules completely, however I do understand that the same people who drafted the rules also drafted the rules for the other EU institutions. Now I know those institutions were created by the employees of major political parties. The rule were written by party members and, lo and behold, the parties seem to do very well indeed out of the result.
So I don't expect that the European parliament will be entirely critical of the parties who created it. Call me cynical.
And this is why ANY system of representation in Europe is going to have very real problems becoming accepted by the populace. It is not just the EU institutions who have become party based, created by and for the party. National governments have also become increasingly party based, and more dangerously still the parties themselves have grown so similar in every respect that it is difficult to understand how they are usefully described as presenting the voter with a choice.
Most critically, all the parties now take funding from precisely the same entities. In the corporate world AND in the political world, it is now understood that it is "bad form" to fund one party and not the other. That is considered "partisan".
When I hear Obama talk about trying to end partisan bickering, I must admit it makes me smile in a nasty way. If anything, he should be trying like hell to increase the party bickering in the media, because there is absolute concurrence between the parties when it comes to sponsorship, policy and doctrine. If Obama does succeed in presenting the parties as "working together", folks might start to wonder how closely they are working together, and what that means for the power of their vote.
Now whether the westminster system has always been, in reality, mono-party based, or whether it has become increasingly monolithic, is a moot point. The crucially important point is that the public are becoming increasingly aware of the fact.
I think. I hope. "It seems to me". Certainly I see more public discussion of corporate feudalism now than I did ten years ago, but maybe I see more of what I think about, and I simply think about the problems of corporate representation more than i did ten years ago.
But it is fair to say that if there are problems with the democratic process in the EU model, then the same problems exist in the national models. And people do seem to reject the EU model as undemocratic.
I note the pro-EU camp get irate at the criticism of the "undemocratic EU" by people who then advocate the glory of the UK monarchy, and I do sympathize. However, two wrongs do not make a right, and an extra layer of sham democracy in Europe is no cure for the sham democracies at national level.
The only way to stop corporate representation becoming dominant in the legislative body is to either ban corporate sponsorship of political parties (communism) or to give the public the power of legislative procedure.
The former path simply takes power away from the owners of corporations and puts it into the hands of the party leadership. It is jumping out of the fire and into the toilet.
The reason direct democracy (the people having the power to initiate and veto law) is a solution is because corporations are still able to lobby government and make their concerns heard, which is excellent for the market economy, BUT corporations are not able to profit from the erosion of human rights and the commercial exploitation of the common people.
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"France , Germany and the low countries could never be relied on in time of danger, they have always been found wanting in the past, and at present in Iraq and Afghanistan so why would one suppose they have changed in any way."
This is fantastic comment. I am bemused by the idea that history is the story of continental Europe trying and failing to protect the interests of the UK ruling class. If it were irony, it would be crude but amusing.
And the reference to Iraq is even more incredulous! When I think about the billions and billions of Euros that were lent to Saddam by European investors, in order to secure energy supplies and bolster the Euro as a reserve currency in the global marketplace, all I can think about is this idea that France and Germany were falling over themselves to help the USA invade and destroy the value of those loans.
There is no doubt that "we are all in this together". We certainly are. We are all stuck in this mental hospital with one another, and the general chatter is enough to drive a reasonable person towards grain liquor.
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Obviously at the moment this isn't the best comparison, but democratic accountability in the UK predominantly rests on the ability of the House of Commons to pass a binding vote of no confidence in the Government by a simple majority.
The European Parliament needs a two-thirds majority. Change it to a half (possibly with a quoracy requirement) and let institutional confidence and politics do the rest.
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democracythreat #8 is right: the unelected Commission is a safeguard against political interference. And national government leaders hate it: Commissioners and their staff tend to turn into Europeans, and ignore instructions from their own governments.
Ganley has the wrong target. The key problem with the current organisation of the EU is in the way the key decisions are taken. Parliament has had no serious and open debate about defence, taxation, borders, Doha, financial regulation, economic reform, social rights, etc. Big debates and decisions on matters such as these are taken behind closed doors, within the Council of Ministers.
Heads of State regard the EU as their union. It is not a union of citizens. The Commission has been rendered passive under Barroso (as wished by Heads of State); Parliament is treated as a cipher; citizens are not even granted that status. This is no different from the political scene in the uK or France (maybe so elsewhere?).
I voted for the EU and would do so again: but it has to change if it wants to succeed.
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Mark touches on an important point here: "...Of course, no president or prime minister would wear this reduction in their power of patronage...", i.e. it is the national leaders who are preventing the EU from becoming more "democratic", not the EU itself.
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Democracythreat: I would certainly support more direct democracy than at present within the nation-state but i also think that representative democracy has merits that should not lightly be discarded. The challenge is to marry the best of the two while retaining a system capable of effectively governing.
The executive branch (a.k.a. government) is about making decisions and therefore should ultimately report to one person. The challenge is to avoid one-man dictatorship for which the traditional remedy has been intermittent national elections either directly for the head of the executive (a presidential system) or to an assembly (parliament) that can bring down the government. It does not seem feasible to me that an assembly of all citizens could form the executive, but it might be feasible for a vote of all citizens to dissolve government before the next election.
The business of law-making is more suited to deliberation between a largish number of experts on the law. Representative democracy therefore works best in legislatures. An assembly of all citizens lacks the necessary legal expertise and the citizens would not be able to devote sufficient time to the deliberations to be able to come up with a coherent body of law. What can work though is an ability for citizen-initiated votes to strike down anything outrageous that emerges from the the legislature. This is my understanding (possibly an incorrect one) of how direct democracy works in Switzerland.
What is mandatory from my point of view is that national constitutions cannot be changed by politicians, but only through a vote of all citizens. Constitutional law must act as law on the politicians and therefore should be no more be changeable by those politicians than the criminal law should be changeable up to the inmates of a prison.
Democracy is closely associated in our minds with the idea that the majority decide, but this principle is not accepted at international level. The principle that the majority decides presupposes that the people doing the voting constitute a united polity that will agree to be bound by their majority and this is only the case within nations. The democratic legitimacy of all international organisations depends another principle (unanimity) which prevents indiviudal member states (i.e. netire nations) to be forced in to doing something something against their will. That is why all international organisations (except the EU) use decision-making by unanimity when making serious political decisions binding on their membership. The EU is unique among international organisations in abandoning the principle of unanimity and its growing crisis of democratic legitimacy can be dated from precisely the point (1992 and Maastricht) at which qualified majority votes were introduced into political decision-making.
In my opinion it is possible to marry the best elements of executive action, a deliberative legislature and direct democracy (i.e. citizen-imitated referendums to strike down laws coming out of the legislature) even at the international level. But it would not look like democracy at the nation state level which is the only model that European federalists seem capable of imagining. I would say that international democracy can never be achieved from the starting point at which the EU now finds itself because it has been built on an assumption that the purpose of government is to push other governments around, and has crossed the Rubicon in subordinating democracy to collective action aimed at maximising that influence over other governments. If democracy is ever to be built at the international level it will achieved by those countries in which the traditions of liberty and democracy are native flowers. This means the English-speaking world, plus a handful of others including Switzerland. Any international democracy worth the name must be capable of including a giant the size of America without crushing representative governance in smaller states that include a highly developed democracy like Switzerland. The EU is impossibly far from that today (and trying to get further from it via Lisbon).
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i like ganley because he is a federalist.
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#4, Boilerplated,
Your responses are becoming ever more unbelievable
re "Has it ever crossed your, so obviously USA centric, mind that history might just prove France , Germany and the low countries right in their reluctance to become involved."
Just roll over, wave your legs in the air and accept everything, but never ever complain about what you receive because you deserve whatever the dictators, fascists, communists et al you admire give you.
#7, threnodio,
Sorry threnodio but maybe you should also look where these forces are located, I recall the Belgian contribution to the first Iraqi war whereby they refused to sell munitions to the allies and sent a couple of minesweepers to the far extremes of the gulf, most Belgians I knew apologised for their government as they were very embarrassed by their lack of guts.
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#15 - Buzet23
That is a fair point.
There are also questions about forces which may not be deployed in Helmand province. My point was about sweeping generalisations and dismissive remarks used as a big stick with which to beat the EU. Afghanistan a NATO project - nothing to do with the EU.
In that context, kaybraes may have a point but what the hell has it to do with the issue in hand?
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#16, threnodio,
You're quite right about it not being an EU affair and for that I'm thankful, Nato is far more experienced that the EU and I dread to think of the mess an EU defence force would create. As you say though this is off topic and nothing to do with this weeks elections, I checked my Belgian lists and it seems Libertas is not there which is a pity, maybe there were not the required 500 needed to put their heads on the block and say they supported them which is what is required to have a list it seems.
So far this week it has been pretty calm with just pamphlets through the door and the posters are still undamaged for many days.
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In reply to commenst made @ #15
"Just roll over, wave your legs in the air and accept everything, but never ever complain about what you receive because you deserve whatever the dictators, fascists, communists et al you admire give you."
The truth seems to catch a raw nerve judging by your reply, funny also how the USA stood back between 1939 and the December 1940 when the UK stood alone against dictators and fascists, what help was offered had to be paid for, so the UK doesn't need any lessons from the USA about standing up for 'what is right' (and 'what is right' is not the same thing as what you want - often the latter is as bad as the initial problem, as is being found out in Iraq now, a country that once had no Taliban and no sympathisers of Bin laden...). Oh and lets not forget who armed Iraq in the 1980s - so please - try remembering a bit of history before pounding the keyboard so hysterically.
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In reply to comments made @ #16
"In that context, kaybraes may have a point but what the hell has it to do with the issue in hand?"
Nothing but it don't half make a good diversion away from the realities of what what the euro-sceptic policies are...or not.
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I am sorry to say that I find the journalism here, including that of Mr. Dymond, is sometimes oblique and sometimes more than that.
Within a couple of days almost 400 million people can vote for the EP. It is IN FACT a parliament that makes quite a number of laws, approves the president of the commission, is taking more than a look on the budget, if it is not reducing the prices of cell phone calling across borders, and a number of other things.
We might expect a low turnout at the elections, and it is also possible that some voters through their voting will try to express their opinion about things that has nothing to do with the parliament. In both cases it shows that the voters has not yet acquired the adequate understanding of the role of the parliament.
The citizens of the union must do what politicians and companies are already doing: identify transnational problems as transnational problems. (It is strange but it actually looks like a repetition of the process that removed internal borders in the nation states only this time it goes beyond the nation.)
Neither politicians nor media are particularly helpful in this process, and whether the article supports this identification or it just supports a general feeling in the UK is impossible to say, but the moment 30-40% of the citizens have a strong idea of how to distinguish between transnational and not transnational, it will change the character of the discussions. We will get a European public, and the citizens will have a list of demands and wishes to the democracy on the transnational level we are not having a the moment.
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#18 - Boilerplated
Now who is lurching off topic? The old joke about the US turning up late for world wars is just that - a joke. There was no logical reason for the States to become involved in 1939. Only when they were attacked by an Axis power did it assume any logic. Neither does the comment about arming Iraq stand up to scrutiny. There is no morality in the arms business and I do not recall export licenses being refused to British suppliers who were just as much involved.
You are absolutely correct that the evidence of Al Quaida and Taliban support in pre-war Iraq has been totally discredited. It might therefore be fair to argue that it was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact remains that the policies of the western allies has contributed significantly to the radicalisation of Europe's Muslim community and led to precisely the kind of politics that are described in Mark's last thread.
This election is supposed to be about the way we organise ourselves in Europe. When and if we become collectively a world player, then it will be a legitimate question. For so long as we prefer to play 'foreign power' under the NATO banner, it is irrelevant.
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Mathiason (214): Unfortunately the EU does not restrict itself to transnational issues. I already mentioned the issue of housing. There are clearly no transnational houses, but EU Housing ministers meet and create EU directives on the construction of housing.
The EU merely pretends that all issues have a transnational dimension in order that it can interfere in domestic politics. Take for example the rules on refuse collection. The EU says that environemtnal issues are transnational issues. And that waste is recycling. And recycling is an environmental issue which is therefore its responsibility. And so we end up with the rules that local councils must follow on waste collection being set by undemocratic institutions in Brussels.
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/index.htm
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Imagine.
Imagine no commission
unelected as they are
no million regulations
sent to us from afar
imagine legislation
made by those we know
oh,oh,oh
I know you may call me a dreamer
but Im not the only one
one day you will join us
and Europe will be as one
(as a trading block,not as an imposed and artificial federal state no-one was asked if they wanted !).
Dont give the EU the legitimacy it cravesdont vote.
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In reply to comments made @ #21
"Now who is lurching off topic?"
Actually the more I think about it the more I realised that these historical facts are at the heart of what the EU is and the USA's relations with the EU. Bearing in mind also the relationship between both UKIP and Libertas and corporate America.
"The old joke about the US turning up late for world wars is just that - a joke. There was no logical reason for the States to become involved in 1939. Only when they were attacked by an Axis power did it assume any logic."
My reply was in the context of comment about fighting dictators and fascists, there was no logical reason for the UK to 'stand by' Poland in Sept. 1939 - the UK had not been attacked, the UK and Germany could have carried on seeking peace instead - except that the UK believed that it needed to do the right thing in fighting dictators and fascists. What did the USA do though, sit on their hands... The USA didn't even help out in their own 'back-yard' (the far east campaign), they left the UK to carry on alone there too, had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbour would the USA have done anything to fight dictators and fascists (in fact had Japan not declared an axis with Germany would the USA have ever fought in the European/African theatre)?... As I said to "Buzet23", the UK needs no lessons in 'doing the right thing', least of all from the USA.
"This election is supposed to be about the way we organise ourselves in Europe. When and if we become collectively a world player, then it will be a legitimate question. For so long as we prefer to play 'foreign power' under the NATO banner, it is irrelevant."
Far from it, a united european alliance in NATO, and the UN for that matter, will help moderate others (with quite possibly 4 of the five permanent members, holders of 'vetoes', being likely to cooperate due to being trading partners), whilst there is still NATO and the UN the EU doesn't actually need a 'EU Army'.
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#22
"And so we end up with the rules that local councils must follow on waste collection being set by undemocratic institutions in Brussels."
Undemocratic because you disprove, not because 'Brussels' is the seat of some despot leader, all the regulations you slate have been approved (plenary vote) by freely and democratically elected MEPs. Remind me "Freeborn-John", do you also disprove of the appointed UK council staff who make decision every day in your name, do you disprove of UK MPs sitting in the House of Commons when they have obtained less than half the popular vote in their constituencies, what about legislation passed into law by that totally undemocratic House of Lords... Sorry but if you actually knew anything about how the EU worked you would be turning your anger on your own domestic political system rather than the EU, demanding that proportional representation be used for all domestic elections, that at the very minimum appointment to the House of Lords are taken away from party leaders and Government.
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Johanesstannes (23): Nice one.
A Brussels politician preaches to the poor Irishman,
"You got more than the Yanks, don't complain.
You'll be bigger than them, if you vote yes to Lis-bon" they explain.
And the Neo-con's name
Is used it is plain
For the EU politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the disenfranchised European remain
On the caboose of the gravy train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.
Dont give the EU the legitimacy it craves. Dont vote on June 4.
Dont give the EU the power it craves. Vote NO to Lisbon.
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"What interests me about Mr Ganley is that he does have some genuine ideas for making the EU more democratic."
MM misses the point which is that the EU was never intended to be a democracy, it was constructed to be a dictatorship by design. That is entirely consistent with a couple of thousand years of European history and culture. So is the deceit and betrayal that got it into power.
As a military or political ally, Europe for the most part has proven worthless to the US. Only the UK has made any kind of contribution to the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe France and Germany and the low countries would like to stay out of the war on terror and everything like Iran and Afghanistan swirling around it. Maybe Americans would like to have stayed out of WWI, WWII, the cold war and maybe it should have. I for one would oppose any and all further efforts or sacrifices on America's part to help Europe in any way. Europe is just plain no damned good.
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Hello Citizen MATHIASEN ( 20 )!
"The citizens of the union must do what politicians and companies are already doing.."
This sentence is at the core of the EU's problems.
Under Article 1 of the United Nation's Covernant of Social and Political Rights it is ILLEGAL to aquire "citizens" without said citizens being ASKED in a REFERENDUM whether they agree to being aquired as "citizens" !
The EU has no genuine citizens of it's own,it merely borrows them for it's elections from countries that are members.This will change if the despised treaty/constitution goes ahead.
The French,Dutch and Irish have expressed (in vain) their opinions.Here in Germany recent polls indicate that 74% of (real) citizens do NOT WANT more power to be given to the EU and recent polls in Austria and Holland show similar results.
Why is this not a cause for concern for the un-elected commission and a parliament that pretends to "represent" a fabricated European "people" ?
People don't like politicians forcing things on them,...even by stealth and dishonesty.I can understand that the parliament-no-one-asked-to-be-created are in favour of the increased powers (and salaries) that Lisbon offers,but don't the "big boys" see where this is taking Europe ? Shouldn't the EU alarm bells be ringing ?
P.S. Is it really true that the EU has changed the colour of alarm bell knobs from red to green ?
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#27
"MM misses the point which is that the EU was never intended to be a democracy, it was constructed to be a dictatorship by design."
Oh right, so that's why, in all 27 countries in the EU, over the next five days all the MEPs are up for free and fair (re)election - anyone could put their names forward, any party of any political flavour - the EU in undertaking this because it's a "dictatorship by design"... Again "MarcusAureliusII" proves that (s)he doesn't really know anything about the EU or how it's run, only that the EU must be the biggest threat to his/her beloved USA since the Apache rod out for their last battle!
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#28. Hello citizen Johannestannes!
I have one thing in common with Immanuel Kant and Jürgen Habermas: I am thrilled by the thought of enlightenment and responsibility.
BBC will not allow that I write it in German so even if it is completely ridiculous I will have to translate the maxim of Kant, which has already been translated 100 of times:
Enlightenment is the exit of the human being from the irresponsibility for which he can only blame himself.
It is still true. Also for the German voters.
Mathiasen, Berlin
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Declan is a federalist or so he claims. Thus I find it bemusing that a lot of Eurohaters like him, despite him actually being in favour of the European Idea. Shows once more how half-informed individuals seem to think they know it all. I would vote for Declan if he were a bit more coherent and wouldn't oppose the Lisbon treaty. He wants change. We all want change. But in a continent like ours, change comes either through wars or through time. I prefer the latter.
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Frankly, I do not see what all the fuss is about concerning an "undemocratic Commission" in Brussels. The Commission staff are nothing but Civil Servants selected by public competive entry, carrying out the policy wishes of the EU Council of Ministers (made up of the elected Heads of Government and Ministers of the Member States) and of the elected European Parliament. There is no more a deficit of democracy in the Commission than there is in the Civil Service of each and every Member State of the EU or for that matter in any democratic country with a professional State administration.
Are bloggers suggesting that Civil Servants/professional Public Administrators should be elected into post? Now that would really politicise the Commission or for that matter any Civil Service, making it the tool of political parties and their bosses. Great Britain introduced competitive exam based entry and a non-political professional Civil Service over 150 years ago. The eastern EU countries have been trying to do so over the past decade or so. Do we really want to go back to a system of administration based on currying political favour like in the USA or Russia?
As to Mr Ganley's Libertas movement, he has some very strange bedfellows in Europe, including rabidly nationalistic, ultra right wing minority politicians in France and Poland who happen to be virulently anti-EU. It would therefore seem that the Libertas movement or party is just a bunch of frustrated failed politicians and lobbyists.
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Mikewarsaw: let's drop this pretence that the Commission is a civil service. That is even worse than Mathiasons claim that the EU is only concerned with transnational issues.
The EU Commission has the monopoly on legislative initiative (proposals for all new EU law or changes to that law). This remember is a body of law that is superior to national law, and which if approved by one-time votes requires 27 national parliaments to PERMANENTLY remove any conflicting national law no matters how 490 million voters in those 27 countries might vote again at ANY election in future. That is the constitution of a dictatorship. No civil service in the world has such power. No president in any presidential system in the world has such power. And even prime ministers do not hold a monopoly on legislative initiative in parliamentary systems.
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Lisbon treaty Article 249A: "The ordinary legislative procedure shall consist in the joint adoption by the European Parliament and the Council of a regulation, directive or decision on a proposal from the Commission"
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# 33
You are rewriting my name and my words thus in the latter case changing the meaning. I cannot say it bothers me a lot; It is clear that you are not reading very attentively.
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Freeborn-John wrote:
"Democracythreat: I would certainly support more direct democracy than at present within the nation-state but i also think that representative democracy has merits that should not lightly be discarded. The challenge is to marry the best of the two while retaining a system capable of effectively governing. "
Yes, that is exactly right. Direct democracy is the magic cure for every ill in society, and by itself it is woefully limited.
In Switzerland, for example, you still have representatives and executives who make informed decisions, and who inform the public on issues. And there are still political parties, and there is still sponsorship by business in the political process.
The question is not "which system do we choose, to the exclusion of the other?". It is rather, as you rightly suggest, "What is the best conglomeration of procedures and powers, in order to allow society to operate most effectively?"
Direct democracy, or specifically the power of publicly initiated referenda, is only one part of the puzzle. It is, however, a crucial part. It is the power of veto, whereby corruption and corporate control of representation can be exercised from the body politic by the people themselves. It is also a superb means of engaging the people with their own political system, and thereby creating a very real sense of community participation and responsibility.
One of the reasons Switzerland has almost zero crime, it is said, is because people in Switzerland feel they are breaking their own laws if they break laws. There is no sense, among the working classes, that property laws exist for the benefit of the rich only.
I understand that California also has direct democracy in the form of the initiative process, and that that society also benefits from large scale social participation in the politics of the society. And California, like Switzerland, is a hugely successful economy, and a society with advanced human rights laws.
However (Maybe marcus can say more about how California works in detail) there are clearly problems in California that do not exist in Switzerland, such as structural budgetary problems. So it would be curious to see how the californians propose to reform their system, and why, especially with reference to the Swiss model.
So, direct democracy is not magic. It doesn't do everything well, it isn't a one stop solution shop. But it does do certain things very well. Most notably, given the state of voter apathy in the UK and in europe generally, it engages the people in their own society, and it creates informed dialogue across the spectrum of social classes. People have real power, a real veto on what happens in their name. It makes the representatives remember who they ultimately represent: the people, and not the corporations who sponsor their party.
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#33
Oh dear. Here we go again. The Commission can propose all the laws that it likes (in the same way that national civil services can make all sorts of legislative submissions to their Ministers) but under the Co-decision procedure any legislation proposed by the Commission will go nowhere if it is not supported by Parliament and Member States. The Commission knows what legislation is likely to fly and what legislation is not likely to fly, so why would it waste its time making proposals that will either be rejected or amended out of existence? The Commission, like any civil service, has no vote in the final process. That is a matter for the elected governments and MEP's.
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"An assembly of all citizens lacks the necessary legal expertise and the citizens would not be able to devote sufficient time to the deliberations to be able to come up with a coherent body of law. What can work though is an ability for citizen-initiated votes to strike down anything outrageous that emerges from the the legislature. This is my understanding (possibly an incorrect one) of how direct democracy works in Switzerland."
This is also my understanding, but with one curious proviso:
The Swiss do have the power to initiate legislation. Yes, it is the power to veto bad law that makes the system so effective, over time, however it is not accurate to say that the Swiss system ONLY gives the populace this power of veto. They also have the right to initiate law.
What is so historically curious is that they never use it. Or rather, laws that are suggested by the public never get passed. This is a very curious characteristic of the Swiss system. Historically, the populace use their power to veto bad law, but they never use it to make good law. They have always left the law making to the experts. Now that isn't a rule. It has been an historical choice. Plenty of people has written laws and put them to the people, but the people have always rejected them. The people, it seems, are sensible enough to leave law making to the experts, and they seem to listen to expert advice.
The history of referenda in Switzerland is extremely interesting for these reasons. It strongly suggests that people are much, much wiser than they are given credit for. Given power, the people do not go crazy and do crazy things. In fact, the people are extremely thoughtful and conservative. When given power, they take it seriously.
So what you are saying about the value of expertise seems to be true, but it is absolutely wrong to therefore imply that it is dangerous for people to be given the power to make law. It is absolutely wrong to associate ignorance with recklessness and stupidity. therefore it would be wrong for some self appointed expert and ultra wise "guardian of the people" to come out and state that a constitution MUST protect society from the ignorance of the people. That argument is just "the people are stupid and must be told" with different clothes on.
The people can protect themselves from their ignorance, and in Switzerland they do. I guess it is rather like the engagement of legal counsel, on an individual level. We all understand that only a fool chooses to represent themselves when competent counsel is available, however none of us would accept a system whereby the state took away our right to choose our own counsel, and the power to instruct counsel. We want expert advice, but we don't want to be told. We want the ultimate power to make decisions about our own future. That is what we call freedom.
I think that is why the POWER of referenda is so crucial to a free society. If the people have this power, they feel free. They are free.
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BP
The EU a democracy? What a joke. Is that why they wrote a 400 page Constitution in a way no ordinary person could understand and then gave most of the people it would affect no direct option to reject it? Is that why when among the few who were given a chance to vote and two did reject it, the EU has spent years trying to work around its earlier promise that approval in such matters would have to be by unanimous agreement? Is that why what were in essence nothing more than 5 year deferrals for Britain deliberately mislabeled as red line opt outs? Is that why the Constitution was reformulated as a treaty that became even longer and more complex to avert even the formality of a rubber stamp approval by the PM's majority party in that farce of a Parliament Britain has? Perhaps in Bringlish, the word democracy means the same as the word dictatorship means in the American language.
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#21 - Threnodio "The old joke about the US turning up late for world wars is just that - a joke. There was no logical reason for the States to become involved in 1939. Only when they were attacked by an Axis power did it assume any logic." Not only was there no logical reason to get involved in 1939, there was a significant financial reason not to. Hitler's rebuilding of Germany in the 30's was achieved through (mainly) US and Multinational financing. The US was also supplying munitions to all sides in Europe under the guise of impartiality. The US cares not about the political situations in any of the places where their financial interests lie only that their interests are protected. In the case of Iraq this meant that even though contracts had been signed with European Countries for the distribution of around 30% of the Total Worlds Oil Reserves this did not protect the financial interests of Halliburton et al. and so their "security arm" (the Pentagon) was called in to ensure a "fairer" (in US terms)distribution of these assets.
To MarcusAurelius11 - You're quite welcome to take your redesigned Rugby ball home and play by yourself if you want, the rest of the world plays real football, you call it "soccer"
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#35
"One of the reasons Switzerland has almost zero crime, it is said, is because people in Switzerland feel they are breaking their own laws if they break laws."
That's funny, but not true like so much else here:
"Over many years, crime in Switzerland has been a subject of controversy. For some observers, Switzerland was almost a crime-free society, others saw it as a society with the usual crime rates but with better ways of concealing them, and many more saw it as a safe haven for economic and financial crime. Research conducted over the past 20 years has clarified many issues. Switzerlands crime levels are probably below the European average, although not unusually low, but have seen the usual increase over recent decades."
http://euc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/1/2/257
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#33 - Freeborn-john The European Commission (EC) does not write national laws, it produces Directives outlining the purpose and intentions of the Directive. The National Governments write or modify the laws where National Laws do not already conform to the Directive. One of the UKs biggest problems is that most of the Legislation is based on Common Law principles, whereas much of the rest of Europe has Civil Law as its basis. Same destination, different path.e..g. This is why "reasonably practicable" is essential to enable discretion in enforcement in the UK and meaningless to the majority of EU members
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DemocracyThreat: Two things indicate to me that the EU is deeply flawed as a model of international democracy. These problems cannot be fixed by electing EU officials.
The first is that Switzerland could not join the EU without sacrificing its direct democracy. EU law is superior to national law, and Swiss referendums can only influence Swiss law. There would be no point in holding a referendum in Switzerland to initiate a national law that conflicted with Brussels law because Switzerland would be required to remove that national law. Nor could a citizen-imitated Swiss referendum strike down any EU law. Brussels law would remain binding on the Swiss until the EU institutions change it, which could only begin with a proposal from an EU Commission that is under no obligation to listen to the result of any national vote, including even a referendum result, and would require the support of many other states and MEPs.
The second disturbing symptom that something is wrong with the EU is the attitude of its supporters to enlargement. They are against Turkey joining (population 72 million) and would be against Russia (population 141 million) joining and also against the US (300m) or India or a democratic China joining. There are only two explanations for this hostility to enlargement. The first is xenophobia. The second is that even EU supporters recognise it to be a coercive means of forcing countries to do what they do not want to do, which they would not want to fall into the hands of more populous nations that might turn this coercive tool against them. I believe the second explanation is the real reason that EU politicians oppose enlargement.
That is why i say that any successful form of international democracy must be capable of including both a democratic giant like the US (without disturbing other members) and be able to include Switzerland without crushing its direct democracy.
A couple of years ago i designed an alternative to the EU Constitution (Google for 'alternative EU Constitution' and you will find it on the Adam Smith Institute site) which would be safe for the US and Switzerland to join. It includes some elements of direct democracy, for example an ability for citizens to initiate national referendums to strike down the application of some EU law on their territory, e.g. that EU law which does not address real transational issues where some issue of cross-border harm is at stake. And an ability for pan-EU referendum to be initiated to strike down all other EU law.
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As for Libertas I won't be voting for them as I don't know what they stand for or what their message is. Sometimes they act as if they genuinely want to improve the EU and other times they sound like the BNP. Libertas opposes the Lisbon treaty even though it will make the EU a bit more democratic. However ultimately the only way the EU will attain a form of democracy that would satisfy most eurosceptics is for EU leaders to give the power they have to the people. This would mean major change within the EU something only the heads of government in the EU can do. Ganley also hasn't satisfactorily addressed the issues surrounding how Libertas is funded.
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ivanpope wrote:
#35
"One of the reasons Switzerland has almost zero crime, it is said, is because people in Switzerland feel they are breaking their own laws if they break laws."
That's funny, but not true like so much else here:"
Ivanpope, did you read what that reference actually says?
Switzerland is said to have lower crime rates, the article suggests, because fewer things are considered crimes. So smoking pot is not a crime that the police go around enforcing in order to clock up their convictions and get promotions. And raising revenue. Heroin addiction is considered a health issue, and once again the police do not go around being heros and saving the children from the evil smack addicts.
And the government generally does not raise revenue by criminalizing behavior. Tax disputes between citizens and government, for example, are a civil matter. You are not a "criminal" because you dispute your tax liability. You are just someone who is discussing business with your government.
Likewise, it is impossible to be convicted of concealing financial information from the government in Switzerland. You have privacy laws here, and the government cannot simply demand that you incriminate yourself and suffer crazy stress by being forced to provide evidence of your entire life to the tax office.
Now it is easy to see the reverse angle to this concept of governments making crime by defining it.
Do you know how much crime goes on in North Korea, of China?
If speaking ill of your local party member is treason, how many people in society are criminals?
So, crime is very much something the law defines. It is not objective behaviour. In any hard core repressive society, everyone is criminal all the time. That scenario allows the police, and their political masters, to do whatever they want, to whoever they want, whensoever they want.
As someone who has dealt extensively with the UK tax office, in a legal context, I can certainly say that most of the Uk are criminals who do not get prosecuted. That doesn't mean they are bad people. It just means they do not get prosecuted for crimes defined by the state.
And if you read the article you cite, you'll realize that this is precisely the charge against Switzerland: they have low crime because people are not charged and convicted for crimes. Now that is false, because the author is defining crimes under the UK system, and presuming them to be objective crimes that apply everywhere.
In fact, it is the UK who has massive levels of unreported crime, not Switzerland. This is because the UK law makes nearly everyone criminals, whilst the Swiss law does not. The UK does this to raise revenue, and to allow a hugely inefficient tax department to gather revenue by intimidation.
So, you have to be careful when discussing crime. It is very far from an objective concept, and if you are someone who thinks the police are an intelligent bunch of folks who know what they are doing, you can easily end up making apologetics for the gulag and the death camps.
Now I would say Switzerland has an extremely low rate of crime BECAUSE I LIVE HERE. Not because of articles written by some guy in England. Not because of any theoretical reason. I live amongst the Swiss, and they are exceedingly peaceful and honest people.
If you really want to get a feel for the difference between UK society and Swiss society, go to the schools and deal with the children. In Switzerland the teenage children are very polite, they wait their turn, they do not bully each other. If they drop rubbish, they pick it up.
London, by contrast, is a zoo. The teenagers their have no respect for each other or for society. Now I am told London is a special case, and that in the countryside one can still find English teenagers who are respectful and well mannered. And I have reason to believe that.
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Instead of Free Trading Europe, we are headed for one Federal Republic unequivocally. In is indeed the new USSR in many ways than one.Its primary raisondetre is to end the predominance of the English speaking World. And replace it with the new Holy Roman Empire. No coincidence that 75 % of the EU will gladly accept the Bishop of Rome as the unelected Head of this new USSR.If we want to get sucked in as its Belarus, the people of UK must decide. We were allowed to choose when we joined the EEC in 1975. That was a mere 6.0 on the Richter Scale. Now we are confronted with a 10.0 - threatened with change in currency, change in language, change in Head of State (elected and unelected), potentially threatened with 75 % majority Catholicism. To prevent this madness, the time to vote is on June 4. Say NO TO THIS NONSENSE BY NOT VOTING FOR ANY OF THE MAJOR THREE BUT FOR THE UKIP.
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"A couple of years ago i designed an alternative to the EU Constitution (Google for 'alternative EU Constitution' and you will find it on the Adam Smith Institute site) which would be safe for the US and Switzerland to join. "
That is an interesting document, however I think you claim far too much when you say it would be "safe" for Switzerland to join.
Switzerland is not a country that is defined by a central constitution. It is not the result of a magic document. It is a true federation of independent states: the cantons.
See, in your document you isolate one characteristic of the Swiss system: direct democracy. Now how that works is very unclear from the constitution you have written, and it would be possible for parties to circumvent the provisions that enshrine the principles. I suggest that you need to do more work on the practicality of how direct democracy would work within such a large federation as Europe. I am not saying it isn't possible, just that this document doesn't explain how it works.
But there is a fundamental characteristic of the Swiss confederation that you do not isolate and deal with: The independence of regions within Switzerland to raise their own taxes and to make their own trade laws.
Indeed, your constitution does exactly the opposite. It borrows the established economic doctrine from the current EU, and promotes the idea that regional and state governments MAY NOT change their economic rules to suit the wishes of the people in that area.
Now in Switzerland, this is absolutely the case. Not only regions (cantons) but also villages of 100 people can vote and make trade rules that affect not only the rate of tax, but also where that tax is raised.
So each community makes rules that affect the "freedom" to trade. Each canton and each village has a different tax rate for companies and for individuals. Some have very high taxes (Geneva), whilst some have very low taxes (Obwalden). Some towns charge almost nothing for electricity, in an effort to encourage industry and reduce household costs. Other towns charge a large tax on electricity, to fund local infrastructure projects, such as a new school building.
The whole point is that LOCAL communities make their own tax rules, and therefore trade rules. Taxations and trade policy is not visited upon the people by a central government.
In fact, federal government in Switzerland only gets 7.8% of your wage. The rest of your tax goes to canton and local governments. So with that limited revenue, the federal government must do all the things it is required to do on a federal level. Now note that federal government DOES NOT get the whole lot of the tax revenue and then distribute it to the regions. No way. They never get their hands on the local and cantonal money. That tax is paid directly to cantonal and local government bank accounts. Trust between government bodies is not a feature of political life.
This has curious results. I recently had a client who was based in Graubunden, a high tax zone. Now he was paying a lot of tax (for Switzerland) and my advice was for him to move to Obwalden, which is god's own country. Obwalden is home to the white book of Sarnen, and was one of the first cantons to join up and create the original old confederation. It has very low taxes, and great skiing. Anyway, my client decided to take my advice and move his company here. This did not please Graubunden canton, and they have refused to help Obwalden with the paperwork required for the move. Now they can;t stop it, but they are still not happy, and so the result is that these two regional governments are fighting between themselves for my clients tax revenue.
That is how it should be, in a perfect world. Government provides a service, and when you have competition for a service, the quality of that service goes up whilst the price for the service goes down. That economic rule holds true for coffee, for milk, for ski lift tickets, for ammunition and for government. It is axiomatic economic theory of supply and demand. When you have a lot of different government regimes competing for people who are free to move, they have to provide services at a competitive price.
Now as it happens, Graudbunden with the high taxes also suffers from under development. And so, last year, they dropped their taxes in order to attract more business. But not enough, in my view.
So Switzerland is not a land where the freedom of the people is gifted from a massive central government, and protected by a central system of law. Rather the opposite. The central government is kept small and weak by the regions, all of which are deeply suspicious of their central government. The federal government operates by the favour of the regions, not the other way around.
And that is why I submit that your constitution needs to be re-thought. It seeks to gift liberty to the people from the centre, rather than building a legitimate centre from the people. It presumes that a massive central government can do good, instead of presuming that a massive central government must first do no harm to regions and communities who are helping themselves, thank you very much.
And I further submit that without this power over taxation revenue, voting in elections and in referenda becomes side tracked and meaningless very quickly, and very predictably. Remember that the soviet union had elections and voting. Lots of it. So does the current EU. It is just that the things people must vote for are not important, and do not affect their lives.
If you want a really democratic civil society, people have to be able to go down to their local town hall and have their say about things that matter in their local environment. In a swiss village, local problems are discussed and SOLVED at a local level. If money is required, the people agree to pay more tax TO THEMSELVES. Not to some far away committee in the capital city. If taxes are too high, and killing industry and forcing the lawyers to move elsewhere, people vote and reduce them. And all these decisions are made and discussed on a local level.
So Switzerland may seem like a cohesive and wonderfully efficient federal state, but that is an optical illusion, a case of westerners seeing things in familiar terms. We see a strong federal state, because our own federations are strong. In fact, Switzerland is strong because the local governments and the cantonal governments are strong. Cantons do not get bogged down with local problems because local people fix them themselves. The federal government gets by with 8% tax because it is not always dealing with cantonal problems, because the cantons solve their own problems. The only problems the federal government is ALLOWED to solve are the problems the cantons and the local governments decide to give tot he federal government. It is not the other way around, where the federal government decides what competence the local government and regions are competent to deal with.
So i think your constitution needs a rethink, on a fundamental level, if it is to be "safe" for the swiss. Remember that in Switzerland, the people do not trust their government. Nobody here cares if the government doesn't trust the people. The freedoms here come from the people, historically and practically. They are not the gift of government to the people.
But, I am hugely impressed that you wrote that alternative constitution. You have earned my admiration. You have taken my admiration from me, as it were. Well done, and please keep thinking and writing about these issues.
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#45
"Instead [../xenophobic, anti Roman Catholic, rant/..]"
What's the temperature like on Mars at this time of year? :-)
"We were allowed to choose when we joined the EEC in 1975."
Err, if you are referring to the UK we joined on the 1st Jan 1973, the UK decided to stay in the EEC in 1975. Funny, that, the country has already been asked about the countries membership, why can't the euro-sceptics just accept that "yes" means "Yes"... [/irony]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/1/newsid_2459000/2459167.stm
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EU PAYBACK TIME IS ERE AT LAST LETS VOTE UKIP SAVE BRITAIN FROM BEING AN EU SLAVE.MARK GET READY FOR THE PUBLICS FATUAL NEWS.
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DemocracyThreat: The word 'taxation' does not occur in the document I wrote, meaning all money would come from nation-states with no central power to raise revenue. I make a distinction between binding ('law') and recommended legislation with all spending programs being 'recommendations'. By this I mean that each national government could decide to opt-in or opt-out of any 'recommended' item and only pay for those programs it takes part in. Also I also included citizen-initiated referendum to reject the application of any 'recommended' legislation or spending program. So no central spending could be imposed on either a national government or their voters (like we are with the CAP today).
My document is certainly not for a federal state but a voluntary association of sovereign states. Switzerland (despite still being called a confederation) has been a federal state for quite some time which I do not consider acceptable in a multinational context such as that which exists across Europe or the West. However there are certainly admirable features of bottom-up democracy that could in theory help to fix the EU problem if EU supporters would acknowledge this is a problem that needs fixing. Unfortunately, the prevailing mentality that exists in the most EU countries is one where public opinion is an obstacle to be overcome.
Therefore, as I said before, I have concluded that if democracy-compatible international governance is ever to established it will not include those countries most responsible for the EU. The English-speaking countries and some few others with a deep-rooted democratic tradition such as Switzerland could do it perhaps building a competing democratic system in parallel to the EU which would attract some EU nations over time.
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# 47 : No xenophobia intended. Matter of fact realities on the ground. 75 % is a huge and absolute majority. In the USA, with much smaller numbers, the biggest divisive issues originate in differences over matters like abortion. The potential for divisiveness when you have 75 % is huge. The minorities have to simply accept. In UK's history we all know how much consternation has been caused by the issue. Hence, it is important to be cognizant of this reality.
The 1973 vote (stand corrected) was to join a trading community called EEC and not the Federal Republic of Europe. As things appear now, this is the new USSR. The original USSR ended in 1989. The new USSR - ie the Federal Republic of Europe - is clearly determined to end the dominance of the English speaking countries.
June 4 is an opportunity to register opposition to anything but a trading community period. I believe there are a large number of people who would like to choose to remain part of EEC only , no to FRE.
Since the leadership is in no mood to listen to the voice of the people, one way is to send UKIP as the largest party to Strasbourg on June 4.
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There is poll in tomorrows Telegraph that have Labour in 3rd place.
Conservative 26%
UKIP 18%
Labour 16%
Lib Dem 15%
Green 10%
BNP 5%
It really annoys me that so-called Liberal Democrats are on 15% when they broke their promise in their 2005 manifesto to support a referendum on the EU Constitution! Real liberal democrats trust the people. British so-called Liberal Democrats say one thing before an election and do the opposite after the election!
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Congratulations Planetenglish.
I thought that Freeborn-John, Max-Sceptic and Aurelius had the "continentals hell bent on the destruction on the british/anglosaxon way of life" phobia corner covered quite well...
But I'm Impressed. The pope as the head of a new EU holy Roman Empire? You should phone Dan Brown and get him to take down your ideas...
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FAO #51 Freeborn-John
Yes, the Lib' Dem' party (and the Labour party) lied about holding a referendum on the Constitution (Lisbon) Treaty. I believe that the Tory party will also lie about holding this (Lisbon) referendum as they enter Government in the UK this Summer. Their excuse will be that they are awaiting the Irish referendum result which they know will be 'yes'. The game will then be over.
Actually, The Irish 'revote' will probably be the last referendum ever held by a single Nation in the EU. Referenda (referendums) scare the hell out of 'EU Elite'and the Irish NO vote last Summer came as a shock.
This will not be allowed to happen again. It is quite evident here in Ireland that our government has pulled out all the stops to make sure a YES result wins the day, this Autumn.
I was hoping that the UK would be big enough and forceful enough to shout stop but I now realise that the 'EU Elite' already has the most 'important' British politicians and media people in its pocket.
You see, it's all about strengthening 'democracy' in the EU, we are told.
So,, we must do what we are told.
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Reform of the "EU" does seem to be impossible.
I can just about remember the end of 1972 just before we joined the "Common Market" and early 1973 just after we had joined. On a number of occasions British politicians said that the Common Market would have to change. It has, but in the wrong direction. In the 70s in Germany I frequently heard Germans say that the Common Market/European Economic Community should be ripped down and they should start again. There was an excellent book called "Skandal Europa" in Germany in the 70s.
BUT there has been no worthwhile change.
It cannot be reformed, or at least it would appear so. It is certainly not worth hanging around to find out if it can be.
There is no point in voting for Libertas.
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50. At 9:39pm on 03 Jun 2009, PlanetEnglish wrote:
" ...
The 1973 vote (stand corrected) was to join a trading community called EEC and not the Federal Republic of Europe. ..."
We joined the "Common Market" in Jan 1973. The vote was I believe in 1972.
One housepoint to me.
It was later changed to EEC i.e. European Economic Community. Presumably this was all part of the manipulative plan to sort of "forget" the "Economic" bit and change it then to the European Community.
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50. At 9:39pm on 03 Jun 2009, PlanetEnglish wrote:
" ...
Since the leadership is in no mood to listen to the voice of the people, one way is to send UKIP as the largest party to Strasbourg on June 4."
You sure are right there, Brother!
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47. At 7:33pm on 03 Jun 2009, Boilerplated wrote:
"...
Err, if you are referring to the UK we joined on the 1st Jan 1973, the UK decided to stay in the EEC in 1975. Funny, that, the country has already been asked about the countries membership, why can't the euro-sceptics just accept that "yes" means "Yes"... [/irony] ..."
Because we was lied to in 1975.
Even if we had not been lied to we would still have the right to change our minds.
And people who were not able to vote then, maybe because they wasn't alive, would have the right to think differently today and vote accordingly.
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#57
Surprisingly a Euro sceptic delivers arguments for a new Irish referendum: The Irish have the right to change their mind too.
The result of the first Irish referendum on the treaty was no chock. Eire had said that it had to make a referendum according to its constitution, and everybody knows it can be a "no", of course.
To those voting today I wish a good election day. We will have our on Sunday.
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