Majorityrights Central > Category: European Union

Maggie Thatcher said it of the Poles back in the late 80s: “When people are free to choose, they choose freedom.”

Alone in the EU, the Irish people had the constitutional right to choose whether to acquiesce in the drive to a European superstate or to make a stand against it.  Just as they did seven years ago in the first of their two votes on the Nice Treaty, they have made their stand.  Declan Ganley and his rag-tag assortment of no-sayers, including Sinn Fein, have won.  The political, business and media elites of Ireland have been humiliated.

The European elites, meanwhile, have received a resounding slap in the face.  The very manipulations they made to render the Treaty impossible to read for anyone other than a constitutional lawyer have backfired on them.  Many sturdy voters said they would not endorse a Treaty the meaning of which they did not understand.

Now the elites have a thorny problem.  Despite the speculation that they would simply forge ahead and ratify the Treaty without Ireland, they cannot legally do so.  No member state can ratify the Treaty unless all 27 do.

Will we see a repeat of the Nice “solution” when the Irish electorate was bought off, and an initial vote of 54% to 46% in favour of the No Campaign was turned into a 63% to 37% triumph for the Yes men?  The voting split yesterday was about the same 54% to 46%, so opt-outs on sensitive issues such as business tax harmonisation and abortion rights may well be in the offing.  It pays to be cynical about anything to do with EU integration.  But it will take an awfully shameless Irish politician to force the electorate back into the voting booths this time?

In any case, the elites’ response is for tomorrow.  Today we raise a glass to the health and good sense of the Irish.

Today I came across a video slice of a Henry Kissinger interview about the troubled and troubling process of European integration.  The interview was conducted by Peter Robinson for National Review Online, and it’s dated 22nd April 2008.

Kissinger was an academic connected to the Council on Foreign Relations in the late 1950s while the Treaty of Rome was being planned.  His specialism was security, with reference to nuclear weapons.  Obviously, one of the major strands in the European project was the prevention of a third 20th Century war, so he may well have contributed to the CFR’s adumbrations on the subject, and the somewhat royal “We” he employs in the interview is more than likely justified.

In any event, at one minute in, the old thaumaturge relieves himself of the following remark:-

Did we make a mistake?  Probably not, because Europe was strained by two world wars, and the European nation state was no longer in a position to carry out the global responsibilities which used to be characteristic of Europe.  We over-estimated, however, what could be achievable.  We thought you could transfer the loyalties of the nation state to the greater organisation that was being created, and that has turned out to be wrong or not feasible.  So Europe, in a way, is now suspended between its past, which it has partially given up, and it’s future which it hasn’t yet reached - and maybe never reach.

Next Thursday 12th June, the Irish electorate will go to the polls as the only member nation of the EU to vote on the Lisbon Treaty.  Last week the Irish Times published an opinion poll which showed the swashbuckling “No” Campaign ahead for the first time:-

35% No (up 17%)
30% Yes (down 5%)
35% Don’t Know (down 12%)

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The Eurosceptic UK national dailies have been banging on today about Gordon Brown signing away our control of immigration.  “Buried in the Treaty’s small print is a ruling that gives new rights to EU leaders to overturn decisions made by Britain’s Immigration and Asylum Tribunal,” claims the Daily Mail.

Here, drawn from the Draft Treaty dated 3rd December 2007 (pdf) are the significant references to immigration:-

ARTICLE 63

1. The Union shall develop a common policy on asylum, subsidiary protection and temporary protection with a view to offering appropriate status to any third-country national requiring international protection and ensuring compliance with the principle of non-refoulement. This policy must be in accordance with the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 and the Protocol of 31 January 1967 relating to the status of refugees, and other relevant treaties.

2. For the purposes of paragraph 1, the European Parliament and the Council, acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, shall adopt measures for a common European asylum system comprising:

(a) a uniform status of asylum for nationals of third countries, valid throughout the Union;
(b) a uniform status of subsidiary protection for nationals of third countries who, without obtaining European asylum, are in need of international protection;
(c) a common system of temporary protection for displaced persons in the event of a massive inflow;
(d) common procedures for the granting and withdrawing of uniform asylum or subsidiary protection status;

ARTICLE 63a

1. The Union shall develop a common immigration policy aimed at ensuring, at all stages, the efficient management of migration flows, fair treatment of third-country nationals residing legally in Member States, and the prevention of, and enhanced measures to combat, illegal immigration and trafficking in human beings.

2. For the purposes of paragraph 1, the European Parliament and the Council, acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, shall adopt measures in the following areas:

... (c) illegal immigration and unauthorised residence, including removal and repatriation of persons residing without authorisation;

And from the Protocols section:

Article 9

PROTOCOL ON ASYLUM FOR NATIONALS OF THE UNION

22) The Protocol on asylum for nationals of Member States of the European Union shall be amended as follows:

(a) the preamble shall be amended as follows:

(i) the first recital shall be replaced by the following:

“WHEREAS, in accordance with Article 6(1) of the Treaty on European Union, the Union recognises the rights, freedoms and principles set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights”;

(ii) the following new second recital shall be inserted:

“WHEREAS pursuant to Article 6(3) of the Treaty on European Union, fundamental rights, as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, constitute part of the Union’s law as general principles;”;

There follow some abstruse substitutions in former treaties, the meaning of which is totally open-ended from our lay perspective.

It is, I think, clear both that the competence of the European Court of Human Rights has been extended to immigration and asylum, and the common policies which will flow from the Treaty will supercede member countries’ immigration and asylum laws.  The usual rain of Brussels directives will fall upon this new ground.

One should not be surprised.  The elite cult of internationalism abhors nation - and nationalism, of course.  Europe’s nations are not intended to survive.  It is not too dramatic to say the same for Europe’s peoples.

Since the May 1st 2004 Enlargement, the European Union has been operating something called a European Neighbourhood Policy.  This is its purpose:-

... we aim to avoid new dividing lines between the enlarged EU and our neighbours to the east and on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean.  We invite these neighbours, on the basis of a mutual commitment to common values, to move beyond existing cooperation to deeper economic and political, cultural and security cooperation - strengthening stability, security and well-being for all concerned.  The new feature is that we go beyond cooperation to include economic integration, for those ready and able.

Economic integration, no less.

The “neighbours” committed to common values with, of course, no dividing lines include Algeria, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine Authority, Syria and Tunisia, as well as a clutch of eastern European or at least Christian countries.  Each is allotted an ENP Action Plan that sets out how “cooperation” - meaning mutual manipulation - can be pursued.  To be honest, I cannot see what priceless gifts are to be mined from the Islamically-inclined on the list - nothing yet from some of them because they are still to be inducted into the cooperation process.  But Israel is past all that, of course, and is already making good use of the bureaucratic channels open to it.  And guess what:-

Experts from the European Union and Israel met Thursday in Brussels to exchange experiences on combating racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism.

The one-day seminar, which took place at the European Commission headquarters, was organized in the framework of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).

Under the ENP EU-Israel Action Plan endorsed in 2005, the European Union and Israel agreed to work together to combat anti-Semitism as well as racism and xenophobia.

The seminar examined policies and best practice on combating racism in the European Union and in Israel.

It looked at how statistics are collected, how anti-discrimination policies are put in place and how mutual understanding can be fostered.

Sessions were also devoted to fighting racism through education, how penal legislation can be used to treat racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism as a crime and how to combat hate speech in the media.

The European experts came both from the European Commission and from the Member States of the European Union.

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The European Defence Agency employs a number of analysts whose function is “long vision” - looking into the future of Europe from a defence perspective.  The IHR circularised this summary by EU Business of one of these guys’ reports.

There’s nothing in the demographic aspects of it that aren’t familiar fare to MR readers.  But, of course, the EDA reports directly to the highest echelons of European political life.  EU Business, meanwhile, is well-read by corporate and financial Europe.

These two sectors - fundamentally, the European political Establishment and European finance and capital - don’t get their opinion from VDare or Amren.  But they are getting the raw facts.  What they make of them, however, is another matter.

Here’s the first half of the text from the EU Business article:-

The European Union will become older, poorer and increasingly vulnerable to wide-scale immigration from its neighbours, according to a new European Defence Agency report.

The agency also highlights the problems of increasing unemployment and desertification in its 32-page “long-term vision” for European defence needs which will be presented to EU defence ministers meeting in Finland on Tuesday.

The document, described by one diplomat as “pretty bleak”, is the result of a year’s work identifying the main trends for EU member nations and their defence needs.

The overall picture is of an aging, less prosperous Europe surrounded by regions—Africa, Middle East, Russia—“which may be struggling to cope with the consequences of globalisation”.

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I am posting Martin Hutchinson’s latest Bear’s Lair piece, which addresses what, currently, is the hottest European potato: the conflict between the grand ambition of EU enlargement and the practical difficulties it poses.  It is dated today, 2nd October, and is published on the Prudent Bear website.

GW

The EU Tuesday finally agreed to admit Bulgaria and Romania on January 1, 2007, but expressed deep concern about the level of corruption in both countries. Is this a problem that affects only the countries concerned, or might it affect the EU economy as a whole, bringing it new diseconomies from EU enlargement?

The political arguments for and against EU expansion are clear.  On the one hand, the EU wants to take in its poorer neighbors, to include them in a greater European federation that can pull its weight in world affairs and produce prosperity for its people.  On the other hand, as the EU goes further East and South, it comes to countries which are either exceedingly poor (hence possibly a burden on EU social funds and other programs) or culturally sufficiently different from the European majority (for example, primarily Moslem) that their assimilation might prove difficult.  There is no hard dividing line – Bosnia is a Moslem country that is historically well within the European heartland, while Armenia is a Christian country whose history has little connection with Western Europe. Nevertheless it’s clear that politically, while the absorption of culturally close entities such as East Germany and Hungary was supported by the great majority of EU citizens, expansion beyond the European heartland poses progressively more difficult problems.

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Today, as the peoples of Europe blink with amazement at last week’s momentous referenda, the political elite of the continent are mulling over their options.  The bottom line takes just six words to summarise: don’t let the British change things.

In Berlin tonight Chirac and Shroeder – one who challenged his people to consent to the Constitution and lost, and the other who dare not challenge them at all – must contemplate the awful cost of political failure.

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In a seven-minute televised address yesterday President Chirac responded to the people’s resounding rejection of the EU Constitution.  There are three (not unpredictable) threads to his response.

1. The direction of Europe will not be fundamentally affected by the May 29 vote.  Chirac said quite specifically, “It was not a rejection of the European ideal. It was a demand to be heard, a demand for action, a demand for results.”  The people – as all elites averr when it suits them – were not answering the question put before them.  They were voting on the French economy.

2. As a rejection of French unemployment the vote was also a rejection of the Anglo-Saxon economic model (code for market discipline) with which the Constitution was, apparently, heavily imbued.  You might consider this perverse and an egregious conflation.  But Chirac is an opportunist, like all politicians, and the referendum vote provides an opportunity to rein in British influence in Europe.

3. The French governmental predeliction for paternalism and elitism sails on unaffected.  Chirac explained his Prime Ministerial appointment of Dominique de Villepin as a response to “worries” and “expectations” about, basically, unemployment.  Quite what “action” and “results” a career diplomat, gris eminence and would-be man of letters who has never once stood for election will be able to effect (and through “The French model”) remains to be seen.

Plus ça change …

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