Posted on 12/06/2005 4:30:30 PM PST by Leifur
Czech President Vaclav Klaus and British Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan are about to revamp Europe. Unlike Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt they want to do so by putting forward a democratic alternative to the European Union which corrects the wrong principle on which the EU, with its concept of the “ever-closer union,” has been built.
Today and yesterday, 70 people from 28 countries (including Canada and the US) gathered in a conference room of the Paul Henri Spaak building of the European Parliament in Brussels. They were invited by Daniel Hannan, an MEP and a regular Brussels Journal contributor, for the first meeting of the “Congress of Brussels.”
“The leaders of the European Union may still deny it, but last Summer’s ‘No’ votes to the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands have changed everything,” Daniel Hannan said.
“We should be bold in our thinking. Let us go back to first principles. The US was founded on Jeffersonian principles: the idea that decisions should be made by individuals in preference to the government, and by the states in preference to the federal authorities. The EU was founded on precisely the opposite principle: the Treaty of Rome commits its signatories to form ‘an ever-closer union’ and establishes the ‘occupied field doctrine,’ whereby EU jurisdiction is deemed to be established forever in any area in which it has once legislated.”
It is this “ever-closer union” that the peoples of Europe are rejecting because they correctly perceive that the primary democratic unit should be the sovereign state. Only within such sovereign states can the principles of personal freedom, private property, parliamentary democracy and the rule of law be upheld.
This is also the opinion of Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, whom Mr Hannan has asked to patronize the Congress of Brussels. Because the Czech President could not be present in Brussels he had an address delivered to the participants by his chief of staff, Mr Jiri Weigl. According to the President the Dutch and French referendums “revealed the wide gap between the centralistic and bureaucratic project of ‘ever-closer’ Europe, which was pushed forward by the Brussels political elite, and the genuine interests and preferences of the EU member states’s citizens.” He said it is time to halt the “ever-growing regulation of all spheres of life, protectionism, artificial harmonization and unification of everything and gradual dismembering of the sovereignty of the nations.”
Daniel Hannan told the BBC that he hoped future historians would write that “the seeds of the way Europe eventually developed were planted at the Congress of Brussels, 2005.” The participants, from a wide variety of parties ranging from the British Conservatives to Poland’s governing Law and Justice (PiS) and Mr Klaus’s Civic Democratic Party (ODS), also included non-politicians such as journalists and representatives from various free market think tanks.
They agreed that the European Union should not be allowed to become a “Greater Belgium” and that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) should be prevented from becoming the European equivalent of the US Supreme Court. Mr Martin Howe QC warned that the ECJ is already usurpating legislative powers. “By expanding the scope of EU powers, the Court necessarily narrows the scope of the powers of the member states. It reduces (in its own words) the sovereign rights of the member states. It thereby reduces the scope of national law-making where there is a direct connection between the votes of electors; and transfers powers to the EU law-making process where there is no such connection.”
There was also a delegation of Americans at the first “Congress of Brussels.” As Daniel Hannan stressed:
“The anti-democratic and centralising tendencies of the EU are not simply a problem for Europeans – Brussels also exports its ideology. Few people in Washington have thought, from first principles, about what kind of Europe would be in American interests. While the US favours democracy, the EU favours stability. There is no hypocrisy here: the EU is not especially keen on democracy within its own borders, either. It is happy to disregard inconvenient referendum results or even – as when Austria admitted the FPÖ into government – to challenge national general elections.”
The second day of the conference coincided with the election of David Cameron to the leadership of the British Conservative Party. Mr Cameron has pledged to pull his party out of the European People’s Party. The EPP is the group in the European Parliament which consists of the various national Christian-Democrat parties plus the British Conservatives. The EPP favours the concept of the “ever-closer” EU. As an EPP member Mr Hannan could not formally book a conference room in the European Parliament to hold his “Congress of Brussels” because EPP members cannot make room reservations through their group for meetings of a so-called Eurosceptic nature. As a consequence, the gathering could only be held in the European Parliament because the room had been booked by an MEP who did not belong to the EPP group.
If the British Conservative Party leaves the EPP, it can form its own parliamentary group, with the Polish PiS, the Czech ODS and other like-minded parties, to promote the ideas formulated at the Congress of Brussels. This would entail a major realignment of a number of political groups within the EP.
Yes, I am a woman and I admire beautiful specimens, though not in the same way as men do, I suppose.
Please tell me what books that where, I would be interested to read them. But you know that the EU uses huge amounts of money to promote itself, they have their own Göbbels foundations to create propaganda. And this every citizen in EU countries has to pay for, also those that are against the Union.
It is not only in Iceland where Eurosceptisism is on the rise, here it is just mainstream, in all layers of society, instead of only amongs the powerless masses in the member countries. And I say powerless, because the system and the political elite does not have to take their opinion into consern.
Actually I beliewe their ,,commitment" to the less developed countries is counterproductive. It only leads to to much buildup of government (socialistic) institutions in those countries and makes them used to get money from the other countries, just like the welfare state money makes people lazy, it makes the countries more lazy. The EU is one big welfare package for countries.
Also it closes these countries off from their neighbours that are not within the EU for commerce and trade and thus cuts old bussiness ties. And closes off market access for countries outside of it. It is the German (and French) dream of unifying Europe coming through, but this time not under a stealth aproach.
About our ladies, one of the Icelandic girls, was just beeing chosen as Miss World. She isn´t blond though, but with blue eyes...
I have had a long relationship with a family in the Netherlands, as I was an exchange student there in 1960. I visited again in summer of 2003. Life is prosperous, but too much uniformity for me. Even though my contemporary has done graduate work in history, neither she nor anyone else is thinking. she seemed very surprised that I have my own confident thoughts, but I am PhD, and that is my job. These people with their own proud history and culture are trying to keep their identity while being European. American umbrella of protection is getting oppressive, I think. Then there is the bit about hedonism. that has never been the most respected philisophy, but that is what they are pushing. It seemed to me that people lacked meaning in life. It was summer and they all rode bikes.
the things I would change is to privatize the media and withdraw American troops so they have to think about their own defense. Welfare makes people babies, as you say, and NATO has become a kind of welfare.
I doupt you would find that uniformity there any longer, as in the 60´s. They have gone way to far into multiculturalism and completely failed to assimilate the countless immigrants (mostly muslims) they have imported to their old capitalistic, rich land.
Although not knowing enough about Holland/the Netherlands I would guess they have less welfare system than here in the nordic countries or many other European countries, due to their old richness and long tradition of capitalism and Calvinism. Am I right about that in your opinion?
Of course they are trying to keep their identity, but the EU wants to destroy their national identity and replace it with a European identity, this pan-Europeanism is the basis for the EU.
Pleace explain to me better what you mean by their inability to have confident thoughs? Are they not thinking at all about social issues or only according to political correct thinking or opposed to your views?
It is one of the mantra of the Euronationalists/Pan-Europeanists that the US is oppressing and a evil empire and thats way the EU needs to challange it as a single country with better economy and later as a better military. I and other right wingers in many European countries oppose that and trust the US better than the Brussel powers.
Hopefully the US will not leave us on the mercy of the Brussel powers, but rather ally us in building our own nations as independent units again with their own military and independence, participating freely in the cooperative allience of NATO.
People are lacking a meaning to life because of breakdown of cultural norms and christian ethics. People don´t beliewe any more generally. I don´t understand your reservations about bikes, I wish my city was better planned so we would not need the car as much.
Maybe you are correct partly about the US protection beeing a form of welfare, but that is only partly true as the NATO is a cooperative allience and most of the countries are pulling their weight although they propaply could do more. But it is not only a protection, as the US has a mutual gain in this also, and it is better like I said here abowe to have the NATO than a EU with their own military like they are trying to create now.
Likewise, I was mystified by the opposition to GM food. However, I got a chance to watch a discussion on the BBC, and I was surprised at how shallow and insubstantial it was. Finally, American politicians and public alike resisted Kyoto and have demanded more in depth research. That is producing new agreements and technology, and that is good, since Kyoto doesn't seem to be working.
Of course, Europe had a long history of absolutism. Sometimes, their committment to democracy seems weak. The French politicians are all trained at the same university and never have a new idea. But I think the seniority system for PM's also discourages innovation.
I am interested in your referance to your link to European conservatives. How does that movement work together, and what are its main issues?
I am not opposed to bikes. I have one too. You would just have to see it to believe it. Dutch on bikes is a little like seeing the snow geese fly south in formation.
What’s the general feeling in Iceland toward the EU now?
Well, the parties that won last elections, won it on a platform of stopping the EU entry-adjustment process. The last poll I find is with 63% against joining. Maybe it is a little less now, because the anti-independence crowd is always misleading people with talks about checking the package, that is seeing what kind of a deal we would get, instead of acknowledging that this is not a deal but an adjustment process, of our laws towards theirs.
The problem is though that the EU is always trying to rule more and more things through the EEA deal, which becomes a case for pro EU folks for us to join so we could affect that. The debate is pretty much about how much our control would increase by that and how much we already have had to take up of EU laws and regulations.
But I won´t see ourselves joining, but I am afraid that it could change if we get more and more economically linked to and stuck in the EEA area. We need freeer trade to the rest of the world, especially the US and the western hemisphere.
I’m surprised, with the economic state of the EU and Iceland’s history with bankers, that there are still Icelanders pushing a ‘good deal’ by joining. What kind of person there supports this thing? As an Icelander, I expect you’d be able to discern things that wouldn’t be in any news reports. Is it the same kind of malcontents that complain about anything even remotely conservative, or the kind of self-serving opportunists that have no reservations about manipulating all and everthing to their benefit, or a bit of both?
It is selfserving folk that see it as a great career path, and ideologists that see it as a socialdemocratic mission of peace and prosperity and bigger is better kind of mentality. With a bit of self-loathing added to it, you can find something of all these in the typical EU enthusiaist.
Who has been teaching Icelanders to loathe themselves? It’s not as if Icelanders suppressed any indigenous population, had colonies, or started wars.
Exactly, but I guess leftist see how useful self loathing has been in other countries and are thus trying to introduce it here (albeit probably not conciously). They tried to build up a loathing for bussiness and the can do attitude, saying that we had been building ourself to high and thus when it all came crashing down, we should be ashamed, instead of pick us back up and begin anew. Classic socialliberal self loathing like you see everywhere in the west today.
The signs were there early, but has there been a greater disappointment among current ‘world leaders’ than David Cameron?
Some people aren’t happy unless others are as miserable as they are. God help them.
And I think that’s what it has really always been about, not about colonies, nor indigenous people, nor who started what war.
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