Elmar Brok: Bid to repatriate powers is a Tory pipe dream
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Independent Minds
David Cameron was right to declare yesterday that, with Czech ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, a British referendum is no longer an option. The Conservative leader's new warning, however, that he will seek to "repatriate" powers from Brussels to London is no more realistic than the referendum he has just given up on.
The division of legal competences between the European Union and its 27 member states is laid down by the EU treaties. Any change in the relationship would formally require a modification of those treaties, which means that this would first have to be unanimously supported by all EU member states.
We would then have to organise comprehensive renegotiation on the nature, scope and the modalities of these new EU reforms. We would be forced to organise a new convention of the kind that preceded the Lisbon treaty, a framework for all the debate on a new draft reform treaty.
After long-lasting negotiations, we would once again have to ensure the full ratification of this treaty by all 27 EU states. Unfortunately for Mr Cameron and his election campaign, I do not see any chance of passing even the very first step of such a process.
The entry into force of the Lisbon treaty concludes nine years of hard work and negotiation. The aim of all this was to adapt the EU institutional structure to enlargement, and more generally to the challenges of the new global order. We have now achieved this.
The EU will, as a result, be more democratic, more capable of acting and more transparent, because the treaty will strengthen the principle of subsidiarity as well as the role of national parliaments. This is the biggest paradox of Mr Cameron's stance: the Lisbon treaty will actually massively strengthen the role of Westminster.
The process that has led to the Lisbon treaty was democratic and transparent; it involved at every stage representatives of the UK government, parliament and British members of the European Parliament. It was in no way a technocratic process conducted by Brussels as Eurosceptic politicians allege.
Now those that are complaining about unending EU discussions and decisions are trying to relaunch the institutional debate we have just completed, instead of concentrating on the concerns of ordinary citizens.
Again this will not be the only paradox surrounding the view of Britain's Conservatives on Europe. We should remember a very simple fact: the biggest transfers of British sovereignty to the EU were made with the Single European Act and the Maastricht treaty – under the Conservative leaders John Major, and Margaret Thatcher.
Elmar Brok, a leading German Christian Democrat, is an MEP and former chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs
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Comments
I am not insulting anyone, and believe, just as Winston Churchill did, that a United States of Europe is a good idea. The British are not Europeans, never have been. We are islanders with our own way of life. We just don't want to be run from or by Brussels, it's that simple.
Fact: the treaty was not created by common consent or bargaining, it was largely created by Jacques Chirac.
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The Open University offer an excellent course DD200 "Governing Europe" which I can highly recommend and which will give you all the information that you need and don't have at the moment.
Mr. Chirac has not, and could not, dictate to the other 26 member states, and their heads of state, the content of the Lisbon Treaty. Or are you saying that Mr. Blair and all the other heads of state were just wimps who were forced to accept this treaty, or as far as previous treaties are concerned, even Mrs. Thatcher?
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The British are not Europeans.
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You also seem to have some difficulties with English History and Geography. Let's see: there were the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, the Normans. Or did the latter three groups not come from what you see as Europe and who settled in England?
And why is it that so many other countries want to join the EU? They obviously seem to think that there are more advantages than disadvantages in joining.
We are not Europeans for the same reason that the Japanese are not Chinese. Ethnic or racial background are not as relevant as history and geography are. I have no difficulty at all with English History and Geography. I'd like them to continue to be English. Look at the history of island nations around the world, they nearly always do better as independent countries. Singapore, for example, struck an uneasy alliance with Malaysia, but it was dropped by mutual consent.
I have no problem with other countries joining the EU (they mostly get money out of it - which we put in). For us there are more disadvantages than advantages. Simple as that, really. But then the English don't mince their words, unlike the Europeans, who rattle on about things long windedly.
And the English are Europeans. They are a germanic people, like the Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians. They descent mainly from Ango-Saxons (Germany) and partly from Danish and Viking settlers.
No country in Europe, including Britain, would be what it is without the other Europeans.
The influences of the roman culture, christianity, the Rennaissance which started in Italy, bookprint and the establishment of a press that was discussed in coffee houses in London, Vienna or Antwerp, Humanism, Philosophy etc. have shaped european culture as we know it today.
If it wasn't for many ideas that have come from the Continent Britain would be an unrecognisable place today.
The englisg language has partly germanic roots, partly latin roots, since the Normans (originally people from Scandinavia, men from the north) brought their adopted language french to this island.
Great things that Newton came up with, but he only could base his work on work done previously by greek astronomers, polish Kopernikus and others.
Your aristocrats are all imported.
The english did not fall from the sky, they are as european as every other nation in Europe. Unfortunately the stubborn, cranky ones.
That does not do you a favour.
http://www.indemgroup.eu/fileadmin/user
Let's give UK its independence back, let's oust an unwilling UK from the EU. There are many challenges to face which need a unted Europe, we have already lost enough tiime with a country whose only goal is to stop the european making.
I suspect not because France and other EU nations know that the EU has no army, has no policemen and has no bailiffs to collect fines or punish rule breakers. So tut-tutting from other EU leaders is all that the EU can do British leaders. No one has clean hands in the EU as all the politicians do dirty deals in secret and lie to their electorates about advantages that are straw men of no substance that never materialise.
So any Government within the EU can turn blind eyes to whatever it likes in its national interest, secure in the knowledge that the EU is powerless to a thing about it other than turn off the tap in respect of net recipients of EU money. As a net contributor, the UK can turn the tap off and wait for minds to change. Do you think Maggie just waved her handbag to get a rebate? She made it clear that we would get the rebate, agreement or no agreement, or nasty things would happen... the nastiest being Eurocrats would have to get paid by countries other than Britain at the end of the month.
People are so naive about the EU. The UK holds all the cards. Europe needs to trade with the UK and kicking Britain out will involve howls of protest from exporters to Britain, and foreign fishermen. Making life difficult for Britain works both ways: life can be made very difficult with nothing coming into the EU budget from Britain until its demands are met. What is astonishing is that the German and Dutch taxpayers are so keen to keep the bloated rotten edifice afloat - every EU bureaucrat duplicates one in a nation state without any cost benefit whatsoever.
Sometimes pipe-dreams end up happening when people see that the EU project is an anti-democratic self aggrandising gravy train for a political class that thinks it know better than the rest of us to rule Europe. The EU will end in tears as does every "empire" built on falsehood and subterfuge. We have been lied to by our politicians over and over again on Europe, and eventually those lies will even be too large for the Germans to swallow when the money runs out subsidising phoney Greek olive groves, Romanian motorways, Italian tomato mountains and the pensions of superannuated politicians who lied to us the most.
One of the reasons Eastern Europe toppled communism was that their policemen and soldiers didn't want to shoot people who said what everyone knew: the regimes lied about everything and the leaderships were only in it for themselves. The EU leaderships of the net contributing countries have lied about everything and most of them are in it for themselves as they are certanly not working for their national interest. Electorates have a pact with those in charge: rule us well and don't sell us down the river for your own personal gain. MPs have been shown up to have ignored this pact. what happens in the EU makes the fiddles of MPs look like petty cash. It's time we called their bluff: concessions will follow once the money ceases to flow.