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The Irish Government lines up with Brussels against the Irish people

Posted on 20 Meán an tSamhraidh, 2008 by NationalPlatform.Org

* Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Minister Michael Martin give in to Franco-German and EU Commission pressure to permit the remaining Lisbon ratifications to continue, when they could have stopped these by saying that Ireland cannot and will not ratify the Lisbon Treaty, as the Irish people have rejected it.

* The Irish Government lines up with Brussels against the Irish people rather than stands by the people’s democratic decision of last week to defend it vis-a-vis Brussels – so as to bring about a 26/1 situation by year’s end with which to bludgeon Irish voters in a referendum re-run.

* Talk of “respecting” Ireland’s vote turns out in practice to be a cover for setting out to overturn it in a referendum re-run, with Brian Cowen’s, Michael Martin’s and Dick Roche’s full support – and behind a thick barrier of hypocrisy, spoofing and lies.

Friday 20 June 2008

* These are the three principal lies Irish Government Ministers and the EU people are telling to hide their first steps towards preparing this Lisbon referendum re-run:

* LIE NO.1: That the nine EU States that have not yet ratified Lishon have a “right” to do so irrespective of the Irish No. There is no such right under either EU law or customary international law. Brian Cowen could stop any further ratifications by saying to his EU partners that he respects the Irish No, that because of that there is no question of trying to overturn it by re-running the referendum, and that therefore Lisbon is dead because Ireland cannot ratify it and there is no point any other ratifications continuing, for Lisbon cannot come into force unless all 27 ratify it. British Foreign Secretary David Milliband underlined this point last weekend when he said that it depended on Brian Cowen whether Lisbon was alive or dead.

* LIE No. 2: Minister Dick Roche was up to this usual spoofery on “Morning Ireland” today when he attacked Patricia McKenna for saying that the French and Dutch Governments stopped further ratifications of the EU Constitution in 2005 after their peoples voted No in their referendums. Minister Roche said that Luxembourg held a referendum on this Treaty after the French and Dutch No and in his usual gentlemanly fashion accused Ms McKenna of “telling lies”. In fact, as the Minister is well aware, the Luxembourg referendum was held shortly after the French and Dutch referendums but BEFORE the French and Dutch Governments decided they would not re-run them, and therefore that they could not ratify the Constitutional Treaty – which led the remaining EU States, including Ireland, to abandon further ratifications at that time.

Messrs Cowen, Martin and Roche are spoofing like this, with their EU confreres helping them, to try to cover up the fact that the Irish Government is urging the nine remaining EU States to continue with their ratifications so as to bring about a 26/1 situation which can then be used to pressurise the Irish people to turn their No into a Yes in a second Lisbon referendum.

It is Messrs Cowen, Martin and Roche who are failing to “respect” the Irish people’s No vote by effectively telling the other EU States not to respect it either, but to continue with their ratifications. Why should the other EU States respect last Thursday’s referendum result when the Irish Government does not respect it, but sets out rather to subvert it, as they decided to do even while the voting tallies were being counted on Friday morning last?

Remember Foreign Minister Martin saying at luncthtime on the day of the count that “of course” the remaining ratifications would continue. Remember Commission President Barroso’s at his press conference held before the count was even finished, following a phone chat with Taoiseach Cowen, saying the same thing.

If Messrs Cowen, Martin and Roche had a scintilla of the political courage and statesmanship of the founder of their Party, they would be telling their EU counterparts that they had no alternative but to open up Lisbon and work out a better Treaty for Ireland, for Europe and for a more democratic EU, instead of the supranational EU Federation, with laws made on a population basis, which is what is on offer in Lisbon.

* LIE NO.3: That the other EU States can go ahead with the Lisbon Treaty provisions under the rules for “enhanced cooperation”. The barrack-room lawyers of the Irish media are speaking here. It is the enhanced cooperation rules of the EU Treaties as amended by the Nice Treaty that currently apply. It is nonsense to suggest that the enhanced cooperation provisions of one Treaty, viz. Nice, can be used to bring into force the far wider provisions of another Treaty, viz. Lisbon.

* NB: The number of EU Commissioners must be decided unanimously.
Under the current Nice Treaty(Protocol on the enlargement of the EU, Article 4), a reduction in the number of Commissioners to fewer than the number of Member States must be decided unanimously in 2009. Under the Lisbon Treaty(Article 17.5 TEU) the number of Commissioners must be reduced by two-thirds from 2014, “unless the European Council, acting unanimously, decides to alter this number.”

At their next summit meeting in October or December the European Council of Prime Ministers and Presidents will make a “European decision” that when it comes to allocating EU Commissioners in 2014 in the post-Lisbon EU, Ireland and all Member States will be permitted to retain a permanent Commissioner, although in practice there may be senior and junior Commissioners. Because both the Nice and Lisbon Treaties lay down that arrangements for the Commission require unanimity, a commitment on these lines can be given without opening Lisbon.

Taoiseach Cowen will present this as a triumph for Irish diplomacy, while his EU colleagues will smile cynically to themselves. Then various Declarations will be given – to meet Irish concerns on company taxation, human rights, neutrality etc. – which will be tagged on to the Lisbon Treaty, but wll not alter a jot or tittle of its contents.

What threats or implicit threats will be needed to go with these promises? The most obvious one is that Irish voters will be told, as they were not told over the past months – that the Lisbon Treaty aims to establish a constitutionally new Federal Union and that the Irish must decide whether they want to be members of this or not, or do they want to keep the present EU as it stands under the Nice Treaty rules.

The other Member States still cannot ratify Lisbon and establish this new Union without Ireland’s agreement. But the hope will be that this mix of promises and implicit threats will suffice to overturn the Irish people’s No in Lisbon One and turn it into a Yes in Lisbon Two.

A peaceable democratic popular revolt in Ireland and across the EU is needed to prevent this happening and to prevent the anti-democratic Lisbon Treaty-cum EU-Constitution being clamped on most of the peoples of our continent.

– Anthony Coughlan

(Secretary)

Filed under: Anthony Coughlan, EU & Democracy, Lisbon Treaty, Myths & Misrepresentations | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

Irish Times article: Lisbon would turn Ireland into a province

Posted on 21 Bealtaine, 2008 by NationalPlatform.Org
Irish Times  article, Friday 16 May
VOTE NO TO LISBON AND REJECT EUROPEAN FEDERAL STATE
Lisbon would  turn Ireland into a province or region of an EU superstate and make us citizens of it first rather than of the Irish Republic
by Anthony Coughlan
 
The push to turn the European Union into a superpower with many of the features of a Federal State goes back to World War 2, when the continental imperial powers, France, Germany, Italy, Holland and Belgium, experienced the trauma of defeat and occupation.  After 1945 they found themselves much diminished in a world dominated by the USA and USSR.
One response of their political elites was to decide that if they could no longer be Big Powers individually on their own, they would seek to be a Big Power collectively. This is not the full story of European integration, but it is perhaps the most important part of the story.
The Lisbon Treaty is the constitutional culmination of the federalist project which has been the political dynamic of European integration ever since the Schumann Declaration of 1950 proclaimed the European Coal and Steel Community to be “the first step in the federation of Europe”.
The EU commemorates that Declaration on  9 May each year – Europe Day.  Fifty years later, in 2004, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt proclaimed the EU Constitution to be “the capstone of a European Federal State”.
When the French and Dutch rejected the EU Constitution in their 2005 referendums, the Prime Ministers and Presidents decided to give the EU the constitutional form of a Federation indirectly rather than directly.
This the Lisbon Treaty does by amending the two existing European Treaties instead of replacing them entirely  by a formally titled Constitution. But the legal-political effect is the same.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT WE WILL VOTE ON 
The first sentence of the Amendment which the Government is asking  to insert into the Irish  Constitution provides that the State may ratify the Treaty of Lisbon and ”may be a member of the European Union established by virtue of that  [Lisbon] Treaty.“
This sentence shows that the European Union which would be established by the Lisbon Treaty, although having the same name, is constitutionally and politically a different Union from that which we are currently members of, which was established by the 1993 Maastricht Treaty.The second sentence of the Constitutional Amendment would then give the constitution of this post-Lisbon Union supremacy over the Irish Constitution:–


“No provision of this  [Irish] Constitution invalidates laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the State that are necessitated by membership of the European Union referred to Š or prevents laws enacted, acts done or measures adopted by the said European Union or by institutions thereof, or by bodies competent under the treaties referred to in this section, from having the force of law in the State.”
This post-Lisbon EU would have the constitutional form of a supranational European Federation – in effect a State – in which Ireland and the other Member States would have the constitutional status of provincial or regional states.
From the inside the Union would look like something based on Treaties between States. From the outside it would look  like a State itself.  This constitutional revolution in both the Union ands its Member States would be brought about by four legal steps which are set out in the Treaty, as they were in the previous EU Constitution:
Firstly, Lisbon would give the post-Lisbon Union full legal personality separate from and superior to its Member States, so that it could act as a State in the international community of States, sign Treaties with other States in all areas of its powers, have its own political President, Foreign Minister(High Representative), diplomatic service, embassies and Public Prosecutor, and make most of our laws.Secondly, Lisbon would abolish the European Community which we joined in 1973 and which still exists as part of the present EU, and replace it by the new Union (Art.1 TEU).

Thirdly, it would give the new Union a unified constitutional stucture so that all areas of government would come within its aegis either actually or potentially(Art.4 TEU, Arts.1-6 TFEU).  The only major feature of a fully developed Federation which the EU would then lack would be the power to force its Member States to go to war against their will.
SUBORDINATING THE IRISH CONSTITUTION TO THE EU CONSTITUTION 
Finally, Lisbon would make us all real citizens for the first time of this post-Lisbon Union, rather than our being notional or honorary EU “citizens” as at present(Art.9 TEU).
One can only be a citizen of a State and all States must have citizens. As real EU citizens we would owe it the duty of obedience to its laws and loyalty to its authority over and above our obedience and loyalty to Ireland and the Irish Constitution and laws.
We would still retain our national Irish citizenship, but our new dual citizenship post-Lisbon would not be citizenship of two different States, but rather of the federal and regional/provincial levels of one state, as is normal in such classical Federations as the USA, Federal Germany, Switzerland and Canada.
The Irish Constitution would remain – just as the various states of the Federal USA still retain their constitutions –  but it would be subordinate to the EU Constitution in any case of conflict between the two.
One indicator of the constitutional change which Lisbon would bring about is that Members of the European Parliament, who under the present Treaties are “representatives of the peoples  of the Member States brought together in the Community”, would become “representatives ofthe Union’s citizens“ in the post-Lisbon EU(Art.14.2 TEU).
Another is that the European Council, the summit meetings of Prime Ministers and Presidents, would become an EU institution for the first time, legally bound to forward the interests of the Union, not of the national Governments or electorates concerned, so that its acts or its failing to act would be subject to judicial review by the EU Court of Justice(Art.13 TEU).
Couple these constitutional changes with the power-political changes which Lisbon would bring about and it is clear that the Lisbon referendum confronts the Irish people with a momentous choice.
The most important power-political change is that Lisbon would base law-making in the post-Lisbon Union primarily on population size.
 This would double Germany’s relative voting strength on the Council of Ministers from its present 8% to 17%. It would increase the voting weight of France, Britain and Italy from their present 8% to 12% each and it would halve Ireland’s weight from 2% to 0.8%.(Art.16.4 TEU)
As well as our being deprived of a voice on the EU Commission, the body which proposes all EU laws, for five years out of every 15, a little noticed feature of Lisbon’s provisions is that when it comes to our turn to have an Irish Commissioner, we would  lose the right to decide who he or she would be. Henceforth Ireland would be able to make “suggestions” only, for the new Commission President to decide(Art.17.7 TEU).
It is surely a major historical moment by any standard: this attempt to turn four million Irish people and nearly 500 million Europeans into real citizens of a real EU Federation, without most of them being aware of it, and without any but us Irish being allowed to have a direct say on it.
If Lisbon is ratified it is bound to lead to major democratic reactions across Europe when people discover that their national independence and democracy have been filched from them. That is why the best course for the Irish people is to vote No to Lisbon on 12 June, as the French and Dutch did to its virtually identical predecessor, for their own sakes and for Europe’s.
_______
Anthony Coughlan is secretary of the National Platform EU  Research and Information Centre, 24 Crawford Avenue, Dublin  9;  Tel.: 00-353-1-8305792;   Web-site: nationalplatform.org

Filed under: Anthony Coughlan, Lisbon Treaty | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

[10/04/2006] Review: The most important book ever on the EU

Posted on 10 Aibreán, 2006 by NationalPlatform.Org 
Christopher Booker and Richard North, "THE GREAT DECEPTION: CAN THE
EUROPEAN UNION SURVIVE?"; revised paperback edition, 2005; Continuum
Publishers, London and New York;ISBN 0-8264-8014-4; Euros 14.60 or £10
sterling Web-site: www.continuumbooks.com; E-Mail:<info@continuumbooks.com>

Reviewed by Anthony Coughlan

This is the most important book ever to be written on the European  Union.
It is a detailed 600-page account of the European integration project from
the first mooting of the idea in the 1920s to the rejection of the proposed
EU Constitution by the voters of France and the Netherlands in summer 2005.
This paperback edition contains substantial revisions of the widely
acclaimed hardback, which sold 10,000 copies when it was first published
three years ago, as well as much new material on the EU Constitution debate.

Europhiles as well as EU-critics will find the book illuminating. Its
production by leading British political analyst Christopher Booker and
economist Richard North is likely to be seen in time as itself a
significant event in the history of the integration project, for no one who
reads it will ever be able to look in the same way at the European Union
again. The book is relevant to  the people of every European country.

Meticulously researched and packed with revealing quotations, "The Great
Deception" not only gives new insights into EC/EU history, but it analyses
the EU's administrative structures and such key policies as the monetary
union, the farm and fisheries policy and the EU's foreign and military
ambitions. It gives fact and instance on the corruption and scams of
Brussels.

The authors show that it was the US Government's insistence on German
rearmament in 1950 to meet the needs of the Cold War that precipitated the
European Coal and Steel Community, the foundation of European integration.
The pooling of coal and steel under a supranational High Authority, the
precursor of the Brussels Commission, was crucial in overcoming French
hostility to this step.  Jean Monnet, America's man in the affair, saw it
as a way of pursuing the project for a supranational Europe that he had
been nurturing since World War 1.

There followed the  scheme for a European Army and  Defence Community in
1952.  At the time Monnet and Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak
wanted the Coal and Steel Community and the proposed Defence Community to
be over-arched by a European Political Community and a European
Constitution. The rejection of the Defence Community scheme by France's
National Assembly in 1954 forced Monnet and the European Movement, still
well funded by CIA money, to change their tactics. Thereafter they dropped
their open espousal of federalism and an EU Government and concentrated on
economic integration by a series of gradual steps during the following
decades. Now that that has been achieved, the European Constitution has
been produced again as the political dome to top the economic edifice.

The "Great Deception" of the book's title has been the pretence to the
citizens of the European countries concerned that successive treaties
embodying economic integration were needed to give more jobs and economic
growth, when the real agenda throughout has remained political integration,
the construction of a Federal European Superstate under the joint hegemony
of France and Germany.  The promised extra jobs have proved a chimera also
for the larger EU countries.

The book shows that the fundamental reason why France's President De Gaulle
kept Britain out of the EEC during the 1960s was his concern to have the
financial arrangement for the Common Agricultural Policy established first,
whereby the EEC as a  whole  underwrote high subsidies for French farmers,
who in 1961 still accounted for a quarter of France's employment as against
only four percent in Britain.  Britain would never have agreed to the CAP
if she were already an EEC member. Once the CAP funding was settled,
British membership of the EEC became a matter of French interest, and De
Gaulle's veto was abandoned.  As a condition of her membership Britain cut
her imports of cheap food from around the world and replaced them with more
expensive French and continental products. At the same time the levies she
paid on what foodstuffs she imported from outside the EEC were
automatically transferred to Brussels to subsidise French and other EEC
farmers. The recent agreement on the EU budget up to 2013 shows that
continued subsidies by other countries for her farmers remain central to
France's EU policy.

Britain took on  this burden in the hope of preventing France and Germany
dominating the EC/EU together, or hopeful that they would co-opt Britain to
run it as a triumvirate. The book shows how these hopes turned to ashes.
The authors  describe sardonically  how successive British  governments and
the supposedly "Rolls Royce minds" of Britain's Foreign Office continually
deceived the British people, in the process often deceiving themselves, as
to what the  EU was really all about.

This reviewer would have liked more coverage of the role of the European
Round-table of Industrialists and UNICE,the EU Employers Confederation, in
being the first advocates of all new EU treaties since 1986; but even 600
pages cannot cover all aspects of this long and complex story. Hugo Young's
book, "This Blessed Plot", has been the best-known general history of the
EU/EC up to now. Booker and North expose some significant historical errors
in that work, which their own book undoubtedly supersedes.

The authors write: "Behind the lofty ideals of supranationalism in short,
evoking an image of Commissoners sitting like Plato's Guardians, guiding
the affairs of Europe on some rarefied plane far above the petty egotisms
and rivalries of mere nation states, the project Monnet had set on its way
was a vast, ramshackle, self-deluding monster:  partly suffocating in its
own bureaucracy; partly a corrupt racket, providing endless opportunities
for individuals and collectives to outwit and exploit their fellow men;
partly a mighty engine for promoting the national interests of those
countries who knew how to "work the system", among whom the Irish and the
Spanish had done better than most, but of whom France was the unrivalled
master.  The one thing above all the project could never be, because by
definition it had never been intended to be, was in the remotest sense
democratic."

The EU's fatal lack of democracy is why the project is historically doomed,
and why it will in time, the authors write, "leave a terrible devastation
behind it, a wasteland from which it would take many years for the peoples
of  Europe to emerge."

If ever there was an organisation that is trapped in its own history,it is
the EU. In order to understand it one must know its origins and
development. "The Great Deception" enables one to do this.

This is a powerful new weapon in the struggle for national democracy and
independence. Everyone who cherishes these democratic values and who is
opposed to the institutional monster that has grown up in Brussels should
spread news about this book, ask for it in their bookshops, write to
editors suggesting they review it, and try to get it translated into their
own languages if these are other than English.

Filed under: Anthony Coughlan, Review | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

[26/05/2005] EU Constitution & Vaclav Klaus

Posted on 26 Bealtaine, 2005 by NationalPlatform.Org 
EU Constitution:   Anthony Coughlan's lecture in Prague under the
chairmanship of  President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus ...Full text
of lecture below for your information:-

__________________.

THE NATIONAL PLATFORM EU RESEARCH AND INFORMATION CENTRE
24 Crawford Avenue
Dublin 9

Tel.:+00-353-1-8305792

Thursday 26 May 2005

Below for your information is the text of the lecture on the proposed EU
Constitution that was given by Irish economist Anthony Coughlan in Prague
last week under the chairmanship of President of the Czech Republic Dr
Vaclav Klaus.

The lecture was sponsored by the Centre for Economics and Politics, Prague,
which was established by Dr Klaus some years ago when he was Czech Prime
Minister. The Centre recently published 14,000 copies of a booklet on the
EU Constitution by Anthony Coughlan, with a foreword by President Klaus.

The lecturer is secretary of the National Platform EU Research and
Information Centre, Ireland,and Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Social Policy
at Trinity College Dublin

The lecture, which was given in the Czech Automobil Klub on Thursday
evening last, 19 May, was attended by a crowded audience which included
representatives of all the political parties in the Czech Republic, by  MPs
and MEPs, by several foreign ambassadors and by the Czech and German media.
It was followed by an hour and a quarter's question-and-answer session
which was moderated by Dr Klaus.

President Klaus, who had received the speaker in his office in Prague
Castle the day before, said in his concluding remarks that while he usually
had points of criticism or disagreement with speakers at Centre for
Economics and Politics seminars, on this occasion he was glad to say that
he found himself entirely "ad idem" with what Anthony Coughlan had said.

One new idea which Dr Klaus said he he had got from the Coughlan lecture
was the political cleverness of those pushing the EU State-building project
in recent decades. Thus the 1992 Maastricht "Treaty on European Union" had
introduced the name "European Union" and the notion of a kind of honorary
EU citizenship  to get everyone used to those terms. This meant that people
would not notice the difference, or think that anything much was happening,
when the constitutional-legal-political essence of  the European Union
itself and of EU citizenship was being changed fundamentally, as was now
proposed in the "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe".

This constitutional revolution by stealth was being brought about by the
proposed Treaty-cum-Constitution, which aimed to establish what would be
constitutionally, legally and politically quite a new European Union in the
constitutional form of a supranational European Federation.

One can only be a citizen of a State, Dr Klaus said, and the new Treaty
would make us real citizens of this new EU State for the first time, and
would impose on everyone the normal obligations of citizenship, which would
be to obey this new EU's laws and give it our prime loyalty and allegiance.
The proposed constitutional Treaty would therefore be the real "Treaty OF
European Union", whereas the title of the 1992 Maastricht  Treaty was the
"Treaty ON European Union", for the latter did not set up a real Union in
any meaningful sense.

The present EU, unlike the proposed  post-Constitution EU, does not  have
the form of Statehood or even legal personality, and people are not
citizens of it in any real sense. That would all change however in the
post-Constitution European Union if this treaty should be ratified.  The
meaning of EU citizenship would be decisively altered by the proposed
Constitution, as people would in due time discover.

President Klaus went on to say that he thought it quite inappropriate that
politicians from other EU countries should be intervening in the French and
Dutch referendums in favour of the Yes side. This was against all the
traditional norms of democratic behaviour between States. Citizens of  a
country should be allowed to debate and determine these matters amongst
themselves and should not be hectored, cajoled or implicitly threatened
from outside.

The EU elite, the people who  liked to breakfast in Rome, have lunch in
Stockholm and go to bed the same night in Dublin, were desperate to get
this treaty ratified, for it would benefit them hugely, give them more
personal power and make them feel more important.  But trying to turn the
25 EU Member States into one supranational Federal EU State was not  in the
interests of the 450 million people of the present EU. It was not the kind
of Europe they wanted. They wished for and deserved  a different Europe.

President Klaus said that he had just learned that Czech Prime Minister
Jiri Paroubek had visited France to speak at  a Yes-side meeting the day
before, and the Prime Minister's photograph sporting a "Oui"  badge was
carried in the newspapers. He presumed that this gave himself a license to
say publicly that he hoped very much that France's voters would vote No in
their impending referendum for the sake of  France itself, of  a sensible
future for the European Union and to maintain democracy in all the EU
Member States.

N.B. President Vaclav Klaus refused to go to Rome last October to sign the
Treaty Establishing  a Constitution for Europe on behalf of the Czech
Republic,  something the Czech President normally would have done, as he
was fundamentally opposed to the Treaty. This caused the Social Democrat
Czech Government to send its Foreign Minister to sign the treaty instead.

_________

Enquiries re the Centre for Economics and Politics, Czech Republic, may be
made to its Director, Dr Petr Mach, Politickych veznu 10, 110 00 Praha  1;
Tel: +420 /222 192 406 ; E-mail:<cep@cepin.cz> ;  www.cepin.cz

Enquiries to the Office of the President, Czech Republic, may be made to Mr
Jiri Brodsky, Political Department,119 08 Praha-Hrad; Tel.: +420/224 373
582;

****************************
TEXT OF LECTURE ON THE EU CONSTITUTION by Irish economist Anthony Coughlan
***************************

WHAT THE "TREATY ESTABLISHING A CONSTITUTION FOR EUROPE" WOULD CHANGE
-  10 smaller things and one Big Thing

"The EU Constitution is the birth certificate of the United States of Europe."
-  German Minister for Europe Hans Martin Bury, Die Welt, 25-2-2005

"The Constitution is the capstone of a European Federal State."
-  Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian Prime Minister, Financial Times, 21-6-2004

"Creating a single European State bound by one European Constitution is the
decisive task of our time."
-  German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, Daily Telegraph, 27-12-1998

"It is only natural that the eastern part of the continent will become our
preoccupation for years to come, because Germans see this as a matter of
historical destiny. The most fundamental priority we have is trying to
integrate all of Europe. But for France the underlying issue is all about
coming to terms with its loss of influence in the world."
-   Dr Immo Stabreit, former German Ambassador to France, International
Herald Tribune, Sat.- Sun., 11-12 September 1999

____________

The "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe" consists of 448
Articles, 36 Protocols and 48 attached political Declarations. The most
important thing about it is that it is a Constitution as well as a Treaty.
The proposed Constitution would do many things, including:

1. ABOLISHING 70 OR SO FURTHER NATIONAL VETOES on top of the existing
treaties and transferring law-making powers in relation to them from
National Parliaments and citizens  to the EU Commission, Council of
Ministers, Court and Parliament. Over half of the national vetoes abolished
would be in new areas of  EU law-making. The rest would replace unanimity
by majority voting for making EU laws. These would cover civil and criminal
law, justice and policing; border controls, asylum and immigration;
implementation decisions in foreign policy; diplomatic and consular
protection; trade in  services; public health; energy; tourism; sport;
culture; intellectual property etc. The Constitution does not propose to
repatriate  a single power from the EU to its Member States, although that
was suggested as a possibility by the Laeken Declaration which established
the Convention that drafted the Constitution. (v.Part III)

2.  GIVING THIS NEW EU THE POWER TO DECIDE OUR HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS:  It
would give the 25 judges of the EU Court the power to decide our personal
human and civil rights in    the wide range of policy areas covered by EU
law. This would mean a new tier of lawyers and judges between citizens and
those with final power to decide our rights.  There are wide differences in
human rights standards between EU countries that make a common standard
inappropriate in such areas (v. Part II of the Constitution, Arts.II-61 to
114).

3.  GIVING MORE POWER TO THE BIG STATES IN MAKING EU LAWS:  It would
introduce a mainly population-based system for making EU laws, which means
there would be more of them. It would  increase the influence of big States
like Germany and France, who usually combine together, as well as populous
countries like  Romania, Turkey etc. when they join, in deciding the laws
that we would have to obey as citizens of the proposed new EU. (Art.I-25)

4. CREATING AN EU PRESIDENT, FOREIGN MINISTER AND PUBLIC PROSECUTOR: It
would create a permanent EU Political President by abolishing the present
six-monthly rotating EU presidency, as well as an EU Foreign Minister and
diplomatic corps, and an EU Public Prosecutor's Office.(Art.I-22; Art.I-28;
Art.III-274)

5.  NO NATIONAL COMMISSIONER FOR EVERY 5 YEARS OUT OF 15:  It would reduce
the number of EU Commissioners by one-third, so that individual Member
States would go unrepresented for five years out of every 15 on the body
that proposes all EU laws. (Art.I-26).

6. AMENDING THE EU CONSTITUTION WITHOUT FURTHER TREATIES:  It would enable
EU law-making in most areas to be shifted from unanimity to majority voting
by consensus amongst the 25 Presidents and Prime Ministers, without need of
further treaties  or referendums. (Arts. I-40.7 and I-55.4;
Arts.III-210.3; 234.2; 269.3; 274.4 and 422; and Arts. IV-444 and 445)

7. COMPLYING WITH A SUPERIOR EU FOREIGN POLICY: It would make compliance
with a common EU foreign policy constitutionally mandatory, would replace
most of the treaty-making powers of the EU's Member States and pass these
to the new Union based on its own Constitution, and would significantly
militarize this new Union. (Arts.I.16; I-13.2; III-23; I-41)

8. A CONSTITUTIONAL REQUIREMENT TO ABOLISH NATIONAL CURRENCIES:  It would
make the adoption of the euro-currency constitutionally mandatory by
providing that "The currency of the Union shall be the euro"(Art.I-8), even
though 13 of the 25 EU Members still retain their national currencies, and
by including Protocol 12 on the Euro-Group, which is an integral part of
the proposed Treaty-cum-Constitution, agreed to by all 25 EU Member States,
and which lays down special arrangements for the eurozone countries
"pending the euro becoming the currency of all Member States of the Union".

9. ESTABLISHING AN IDEOLOGICAL CONSTITUTION: It would erect an extreme
ideological neo-liberalism into mandatory constitutional principles for 450
million people, implemented by an intrusive regulatory apparatus. This is
mingled with the corporatist economic traditions of Big State Germany and
France, which would have greater influence under the new population-based
voting system. A proper Constitution by contrast lays down rules for State
policy-making, but leaves the content of public policy to political debate
between parties of the Centre, Right and Left. Under the heading Economic
Policy, Art.III-178 of the Constitution provides: "The Member States and
the Union shall act in accordance with the principle of an open market
economy with free competition, favouring an efficient allocation of
resources." The Constitution would make mandatory for the indefinite future
the deflationary and monetarist economic policy of the European Central
Bank, which has contributed to the current high unemployment levels of the
core EU economies(Art.III-185). It would make "liberalisation"  of services
constitutionally mandatory(Art.III-147) and  would permit the EU to decide
the boundary between public and private services, which could imperil
publicly-provided health, education, transport and cultural services in the
Member States (Art.III-122).  These are properlymatters  for public policy
debate and contention, not for Constitutions.

10. EURATOM TO CONTINUE INDEFINITELY:  It would continue the European
Atomic Energy Community in being indefinitely. The obligations of the
Euratom Treaty, which favours nuclear power, would be made constitutionally
mandatory on all 25 EU Member States.

BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THE PROPOSED CONSTITUTION WOULD DO WOULD BE
legally to abolish the European Union and European Community that we are
currently members of and establish in their place quite a new Union in the
constitutional form of a supranational European Federation - while still
using the same"EU" name and transferring existing European laws and
institutions into the new Union.

Giving this new EU the constitutional form of a State would, by corollary,
reduce the present EU Member States to the constitutional status of
provinces or regional states within a superior Federal EU. This new EU
would not yet have all the powers of a fully-fledged Federation.
Historically it takes time for these to develop. It could not yet impose
taxes or force its members to go to war  against their will. But apart from
these two, a post-Constitution Union would possess all the main features
and powers of a supranational Federal State, and the Constitution's
advocates are confident of obtaining these remaining powers in time.

THE FIVE STEPS THAT WOULD MAKE US REAL CITIZENS OF THE NEW EU STATE:

The "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe" would give what would
legally be quite a new EU the constitutional form of a supranational
European Federation and would make us real citizens of such a State for the
first time in five logical legal steps:-

1. ABOLISHING THE EXISTING EU AND EC:  Art.IV-437 would repeal all the
existing treaties and thereby abolish the present EU and EC: "This Treaty
establishing a Constitution for Europe shall repeal the treaty establishing
the European Community, the Treaty on European Union and Š the acts and
treaties which have supplemented and amended them."

2. CREATING A NEW EU BASED ON ITS OWN STATE CONSTITUTION:  Art.I-1 would
replace the existing EU with what would be constitutionally, legally and
politically quite a new European Union: "Reflecting the will of the
citizens and States of Europe to build a common future, this  Constitution
establishes the European Union."  Clearly this would be a different Union
from the existing one. Simultaneously, Art.IV-438 of the Constitution would
transfer the existing Community laws and institutions from the present EU
to the new one.

3. GIVING THE NEW EU FEDERAL STATE POWERS: Art.I-6 would assert the primacy
of this new EU's Constitution and laws over the national Constitutions and
laws of its Member States: "The Constitution and law adopted by the
institutions of the Union in exercising competences conferred on it shall
have primacy over the law of the Member States."  In addition, Art.I-1 of
the Constitution  would give the new Union a coordinating federal  power
over all the policies by which the Member States aim to achieve the
objectives they have in common. These are set out in Art.I-3 and are about
as wide and all-encompassing as could be. Art.I-1 provides: "The Union
shall coordinate the policies by which the Member States aim to achieve
these objectives (i.e. the objectives they have in  common) and shall
exercise on a Community basis the competences they confer on it."
Convention Chairman Giscard d'Estaing has explained what exercising EU
powers "on a Community basis" means: "It wasn't worth creating a negative
commotion with the British. I rewrote my text with the word federal
replaced by communautaire (i.e.'on a Community basis') which means exactly
the same thing."

4. GIVING THE NEW EU LEGAL PERSONALITY LIKE OTHER STATES:  This would
enable the new EU to speak with one voice, to conduct itself as a State in
the international community of States, sign treaties with other States,
have a President, Foreign Minister, Public Prosecutor etc., as well as its
own currency and State symbols, flag, anthem and annual public holiday,
just like other States. Art.I-7 provides: "The Union shall have legal
personality."  The EU's State symbols would be given a proper legal basis
for the first time by Art.I-8 of the Constitution.

5. MAKING US REAL CITIZENS FOR THE FIRST TIME OF THIS NEW EU FEDERATION:
Art. I-10 would then make us real citizens of this new EU Federation,
established by the previous four steps, which would  become our new legal
sovereign and ruler, and to which we would owe the prime duties of
citizenship, namely to obey its laws and give it our loyal allegiance:
"Every national of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union Š
Citizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights and be subject to the duties
provided for in the Constitution."  This is real citizenship, not an
honorary or "pretend" EU citizenship as at present, for one can only be a
citizen of a State. The pre-Constitution EU does not have real citizens or
citizenship, for the present EU does not have the constitutional form of
Statehood. It does not even have its own legal personality.  The
post-Constitution EU  however would have both. The pretence that we are
already EU citizens in some vague honorary sense is  designed to mislead
people into thinking that the EU Constitution would make no real change to
their legal-political  status, whereas  it would change it fundamentally

The establishment of a supranational European Federation may be judged a
good or bad thing, realistic or misguided, but it would be ludicrous if the
educated, politically sophisticated peoples of Europe were to consent to
turn their countries into provinces or regions of such an entity, and
themselves into real citizens of it - not just honorary or "pretend"
citizens, as with the present EU - without their realising that this is
what they are being asked to do.

Supporters of the "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe" argue
that in the new EU it would establish, the Member States would still have
primacy of authority because it is they that would have conferred powers on
the Union, under the so-called "principle of conferral"(Art.I-11). They
ignore the fact that this is how the classical Federal States have
historically developed: by smaller political units coming together and
transferring powers to a superior.  The best example is 19th-century
Germany. Others are the USA, Canada, Australia.  Where else after all could
Brussels get its powers if not from its Member States, just as the Federal
States whose capitals were 19th century Berlin, or today's Washington,
Ottawa and Canberra did before it?  In the latter cases however the
political units that came together to form Federal States belonged wholly
or mainly to one nation or people, with a common language, culture and
history once their populations had settled.  That gave these States a
popular democratic basis, and with it a natural legitimacy and authority.
This contrasts with the EU's attempt to establish "a new country called
Europe" organised in an EU Federation, despite the real Europe consisting
of many nations and peoples who desire to make their own laws and elect
their own rulers. Member States would still retain their national
constitutions under the EU Constitution, but they would no longer be
constitutions of sovereign States but of provincial states, just as Texas,
California and New York still retain their own state constitutions within
the Federal USA.

Unfortunately, most of the political leaders of the 25 EU Governments take
a wholly uncritical view of the proposed EU Constitution, because the more
national powers are transferred to Brussels, THE MORE PPOWER ACCRUES TO
THEMSELVES PERSONALLY as they make supranational laws on the 25-member EU
Council of Ministers for 450 million people -  with 150 million more
expected to join them in due time.  Fundamentally, the EU is run by a small
number of top politicians and bureaucrats. The more powers are transferred
to Brussels, the more power these people obtain as individuals.  However
citizens lose thereby their power to decide their own laws in their elected
National Parliaments, their right to choose their own rulers and with that
their national democracy and independence. There is no European people or
"demos" that could confer democratic legitimacy and authority on such an EU
Federation. Which is why this proposed EU Constitution is fundamentally
misguided and why if it should come into force it could not possibly last.
That is why it is sensible  to reject it now.

POSITIVE THINGS IN THE EU CONSTITUTION

There are some positive things in the proposed EU Constitution, although
their importance is much exaggerated by its supporters:

(a) It is proposed that the Council of Ministers should meet in public when
deliberating and voting on draft EU laws, although this would be likely to
be a formality for the TV cameras. The negotiating and bargaining leading
up to those laws, the activity of Brussels' 15,000 corporate lobbyists that
seek to influence EU law-makers, would all still take place in
private(Art.I-24.6);

(b) The Constitution would require National Parliaments to be formally
notified of new laws the Commission proposes. If one-third of the 25
Parliaments thought these laws went too far and violated the so-called
principle of subsidiarity, they could object. The Commission would then
have to review its proposal, but could still decide to go ahead with
it(Protocol 2). Supporters of the Constitution claim that this is a
significant new power for National Parliaments. Yet the provision is not
new, for the Parliaments can object already. It is not a power, for they
can object all they like and the Commission can go on ignoring them.  What
National Parliaments get in this provision of the Constitution is a new
right to be ignored. A proposal in the drafting Convention that if
two-thirds of national Parliaments objected, the law proposal would have to
be abandoned altogether, was dropped;

(c) One million EU citizens could petition the Commission to propose a new
EU law to the Council of Ministers in furtherance of the Constitution, but
neither the Commission nor Council need accede to any such
petition(Art.I-47.4);

(d) The Constitution provides that a Member State could withdraw from the
new Union. Such a provision has featured in other Federal Constitutions.
For example it featured in Josef Stalin's 1936 Constitution for the USSR.
The procedure proposed in the EU Constitution would tend in practice to
discourage withdrawals(Art.I-60).

These are positive proposals, but they could all be introduced without
setting up a new EU in the constitutional form of a European Federation, as
described above, abolishing 70 further national vetoes, giving the EU Court
a wide-ranging competence over our basic human and civil rights, and
creating a much more centralised, undemocratic and militarized  European
Union than the EU that currently exists.

THE ALTERNATIVE TO THE EU CONSTITUTION

If the proposed Constitution is rejected, the present EU will continue on
the basis of the Nice Treaty.  That Treaty was "sold" to citizens across
Europe as being the EU enlargement treaty; whereas now the Constitution is
being sold again as necessary for the "efficient" running of the enlarged
EU.  The voting system agreed in Nice was drawn up with the enlarged EU of
25 or more States in mind and is closer to the notion of the Member States
as equal "partners" than the population-based scheme proposed in  the
Constitution.   The Convention on the Future of Europe which drafted the
Constitution failed to do the job it was mandated to do by the Laeken
Declaration that established it. Before it came together there was
absolutely no discussion in any of Europe's democratically elected National
Parliaments on the principle of whether the EU should have a Constitution
at all, on whether deeper EU integration was desirable, or on what kind of
future relations the peoples and Parliaments of Europe wanted with the EU
or between their States.  By rejecting the EU Constitution citizens can
force a proper debate on the kind of Europe they really want. They would
certainly prefer a more democratic and less centralised EU, with the
restoration of significant powers from Brussels to the Member States, as
mooted in the Laeken Declaration.

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