Posted on 12/18/2004 9:16:14 PM PST by bruinbirdman
So-called Euroskeptics in the United Kingdom have lost faith in the process of European integration and resent what they see as rule from Brussels. They believe the British Parliament has been relegated to simply endorsing laws made outside the country. They trust neither the new European Constitution nor the European Commission. What's more, the results of a recent survey seem to confirm that most Britons feel the same way.
According to a survey by Britain's ICM polling institute, conducted for the European Foundation, 58 percent of Britons would like to see European Union treaties renegotiated, reducing them to simply trade and association agreements. The sentiment is even higher -- 68 percent -- among those aged 18-24 years.
Malcolm Pearson is an independent Conservative member of the House of Lords. Pearson says he has opposed the European project since he read the text of the 1957 Treaty of Rome, the pact that created the European Economic Community. He calls it a "terrifying and very misguided project."
He says the worst thing is the loss of sovereignty suffered by the British Parliament: "All of our industry and commerce, all of our social and labor policy, all of our environment, agriculture, fish, and foreign aid, are already decided in Brussels, completely bypassing the national parliaments. The national parliaments are a rubber stamp for all those areas. And, furthermore, if the governments agree unanimously a new law in Brussels, in common foreign and security policy, and in justice and home affairs, Parliament again has to rubber-stamp it."
Pearson believes the recent wrangling over the makeup of the new European Commission exposed the EU's corruptibility:
"The project continues to go in the wrong direction. You have a new [European] Commission with six former communists [and] two former fraudsters. A lady from Latvia [Ingrida Udre] who's in favor of national countries retaining their tax systems being blackballed from the new commission. A decent Roman Catholic [Rocco Buttiglione] blackballed from the new commission. I see absolutely no prospect of the new commission taking the project in the right direction."
Pearson is referring to the new EU commissioner for transport and tourism, Jacques Barrot of France, who was convicted for embezzling party funds, but it was erased from his record by a presidential amnesty. Estonian Commissioner Siim Kallas pleaded not guilty to charges that he was responsible for the disappearance of $10 million from the Bank of Estonia when he was chairman. He was acquitted.
Pearson says political elites in the new member countries have "betrayed their own people's sovereignty," attracted by the enormous salaries in Brussels.
As for Britain, Pearson says the ICM survey clearly shows what needs to be done: "There isn't a European Union that we could accept for the United Kingdom. What we could do is renegotiate our relationship with the single market, down to a free-trade arrangement. Which is what we all thought we were voting for in [the referendum of] 1975 anyway."
In 1975, British voters overwhelming supported the country's continued membership in the European Economic Community.
The UKIP's Williamson agrees that no renegotiation is possible -- other than down to a free-trade agreement -- because the other member countries would oppose it. But an opportunity exists, he feels, if voters say "no" in the planned referendum on the new European Constitution: "Britain is the fourth-largest economy in the world, and the continent makes a profit on their trade with us. So they're not likely to erect trade barriers against us in the event of us withdrawing from the EU. And we can still trade with them."
Pearson says the referendums planned across Europe on the new constitution should reveal the extent of Euroskepticism across the continent.
If you commit a crime in France, said Pascale Robert-David in Paris' Le Monde, it pays to be close to President Jacques Chirac. His longtime crony and presumed successor Alain Juppe has just received a major reduction in his sentence for his role in a political corruption scandal. In February, a court barred Juppe from holding office for 10 years, saying that he certainly knew about, and "possibly helped orchestrate," a scheme in which public money was used to pay seven employees of Chirac's political party, back when both men were municipal officials in Paris. This month, though, an appeals court reduced that penalty to just one year -- which means that Juppe's political ambitions have been revived. Many now think he will run for president in 2007, When Chirac steps down. If Juppe wins, he'll owe the victory to Chirac, who could remain the master behind the scenes.
Chirac is also installing his compromised cronies in the E.U., said Bill Carmichail in Britain's Yorkshire Post. "Without anyh sense of shame," the French president picked a convicted embezzler to fill one of the E.U. commissioner posts allotted to the French. And not just any embezzler. Jacques Barrot is another of the mamy members of Chirac'c entourage given suspended sentences for the party financing scandal. "Very few people in France are even aware of the Barrot scandal, because the French media are banned, on pain of criminal prosecution, from even mentioning it." Barrot, of course, got a presidential pardon.
Hope springs eternal. The EU is a bad idea, getting worse.
That is incredible. How many French have the internet, or even the interest to inquire? We thought Clinton was bad, but Chirac takes the cake.
clinton wasn't bad. He was somewhat foolish and was easially misguided by his advisors. Compared to european politicians he was a saint...
I am going to assume that you are serious (though I find it a hard assumption to make), and I must disagree -- President Clinton was bad.
He was no "saint" of any type. He was personally corrupt, his foreign policy the most dangerous folly since Carter's, he was an embarrassment to this nation, and a discredit to our history. He had as little respect for the Constitution as President Franklin Roosevelt.
If you haven't read Roger Morris's Partners in Power, I would recommend it.
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