cadmus said:
Yes but even that legislation is proposed by the Commission which is both approved and accountable to the Parliament. The only bit of legislation which is entirely in the hands of the Council is the CFSP (Common Foreign and Security Policy) and JPC (Judicial and Police Cooperation). These two are anything but the cornerstone of EU legislation which is predominantly about economic issues.
I absolutely agree changes to the EU are necessary. However, it's exactly these changes that were voted against in France and The Netherlands.
Commissioners loyalties are to the EU. MEPs opposed to the EU are in a small minority and the public doesn't even know how any MEPs vote, and even those in the supposedly eurosceptic Tory party
still sit with the most federalist grouping in parliament despite Cameron's pledge to pull them out months ago. The Constitution was an integrationist's treaty, and unacceptable even with its concessions to democracy. And the CFSP and the JPC are areas of huge importance, with no effective opposition offered by the useless Tories.
"
The experience begs the question of whether it was ever appropriate to submit the EU Constitution to a lottery of uncoordinated national plebiscites...The rejectionists are an odd bunch of racists, xennophobes, nationalists, communists, disappointed centre left and generally pissed off" Andrew Duff, MEP, sounding a little disappointed himself. His attitude is not uncommon amongst Brussels elite.
Informed opponents to the Constitution and the EU are not usually racists or xenophobes, though they might be communists or nationalists. But he is right in that most of us are pissed off with the EU and our own politicians.
cadmus said:
This is exactly why an EU criminal justice system should be in place. Fraud occurring on a supranational level can only be dealt with on a supranational level bcos the national systems lack resources
.
But the EU already has the power to act against fraud in its own institutions. Its criminal justice system gives it power over all of us. What is the point of giving it more power when it does not have the will to use the power it has in its citizens' interests? It has fine words about citizens rights, but for an entity that cares so much about its citizens it is giving itself a great deal of power over those citizens.
cadmus said:
The ECJ does not have the authority to overrule British decisions. It's only authority is to be the first and last interpreter of EU law. The ECJ has no power to enforce its will on national courts. The national courts ask for interpretation and the ECJ provides it so they can follow it. The ECJ never rules on national law, only on EU law. This is bcos if national courts would be allowed to interpret EU law, different courts would interpret it differently and the whole system would be pointless.
The ECJ decides on cases where national law conflicts with EU law. Long ago it said its rationale was to allow "
community interests enshrined in the Treaty of Rome to prevail over the intertia and resistance of the member states." Its duty is to uphold the treaties and anyone who has read them knows they handed a lot of authority over to Brussels. There are no appeals against its decisions ... and the Constitution enhances its powers.
cadmus said:
goneforlunch said:
Not many people in Britain are happy with EU policies, even though most don't understand that they are EU polices.
I think this is by far the biggest problem of all and the most important failure of the EU - it's become way too complicated for people to be able to understand it. The constitution failure is the perfect example.
You are much more polite than Mr Duff. But in, imo, the EU fails to listen to its people. When people lucky enough to be allowed to have referendums on treaties have voted 'no' they are invited to vote again with even more propaganda and pressure to get the 'right' answer. In a recent opinion poll in Finland, a majority of people said they would like a vote on the Constitution but were denied by their own politicians who ratified the treaty anyway. To suggest that they, or the French or Dutch, would have voted for the Constitution had they understood is by no means certain, and reflective of the high handed attitude of our own politicians. I hope we get our own referendum, and with a more honest debate than that which preceded the last one too.
cadmus said:
I fully support QMV bcos the fight against crime on EU level has to become more efficient. As the situation stands now, borders are open to criminals but closed to prosecutors. The single market is criminogenic and there's no other way to fight it. One of the recent newbies - the European Arrest Warrant - proved extremely beneficial for the UK in its fight against terrorism in the case of Hussain Osman. This would have not been possible without the EU's criminal system.
QMV covers all sorts of things that are nothing to do with crime, or terrorism, or fraud. The powers the EU has given itself could work against any of us as its defininitions of "terrorism" and "racism" and "xeonophobia" are so ill defined. For example, if a person should decide they wished to protest against the EU, such protest could be said to be "xenophobic" and possibly branded a criminal. Under a benign government this would not happen, but in the future the EU might not be so. It will certainly have the legal procedures in place to control its citizens.
cadmus said:
goneforlunch said:
And the EU is working very hard to bring about a "single European people" in all sorts of ways.
Not quite. The EU has adopted the german approach of peoples (nation defined thru Volk) rather than the american approach of people (nation defined thru citizens). The EC Treaty mentions that the Parliament represents the peoples. It's hard to argue the EU is trying to impose either a single people or a single state.
Nation defined through the people? Only in a lip service sort of way in the EU's case. The EP doesn't in reality represent the people very well at all imo (it is the weakest of all the main EU bodies) unless they actually want to live in a federalised EU. The EU is about rule from the centre but using its regions to apply its policies with a "top down" approach. It is acting in subtle ways to break up the nation states, things like
- setting up its cross border regions; parts of Kent and Sussex are part of a 'border region' that includes part of Northern France.
- to the revival of regional languages like that spoken in Cornwall
- to more obvious ways, like allowing all EU citizens the right to live anywhere in the EU
- the creation of the EU emblem and anthem
Some of these changes to make us feel more 'European' work for individuals that take advantage of them (as I have) but they are a part of a deliberate ploy to create a single or federal state. And the EP is a very poor representative for the peoples of the Union.
cadmus said:
To wrap up my involvement in this discussion: there's a lot of valid criticism of the EU which i fully support. It's lacks certain "checks and balances", it's very remote and overly bureaucratic, it needs simplification and reforms to cope with growth and deeper integration.
However, there's much more criticism which is a result of complete lack of information, missconceptions and prejudice. A considerable number of EU opponents have very very little knowledge about it. In the case of the UK there's also an additional anti-europe bias and exceptionalism as such which makes debate extremely difficult.
I'm glad we have some common ground, but the lack of information and resultant misconceptions is due to a policy from successive governments to keep the people in the dark. An obvious continuation of this policy ...
"
The people must be led slowly and unconsciously into the abandonment of their traditional economic defences, not asked " from Peter Thorneycroft, who later became a senior Tory Cabinet minister, in 1947.
Cadmus said:
There's an abundance of rights stemming from the basic freedoms of movement of goods, service, people and capital which didnt exist before. I understand that this "reversed" process is strange and unnatural to the common law mind but that doesn't necessarily make it wrong - the whole continental Europe works according to this principle of "creating rights".
These posts are hideously long so it's my last one of the sort
I agree that these posts are hideously long, and this one is especially so, so I'm going to leave Single Market issues for another day. And I won't claim a victory in the debate by default as you don't wish to carry on.
But when I made this comment ...
goneforlunch said:
What rights do we have now that we didn't have before? Most of our new rights are so banal or so obvious as to not need stating, that we never even knew our 'right' to do these things was ever threatened.
... I was thinking of our newly acquired "rights" to things such as marriage and opinions and life. And the Common Law mind as you put it, understands that the Common Law system of justice gives us rights like to a trial by jury and habeaus corpus, etc. It gives the people much greater protection from abuses of power by the representatives of the state than EU's Corpus Juris does.
