Eurofile: Aviation safety agency taking off with stealth

Brussels is resorting to a stealth procedure to create a powerful new agency, circumventing the veto of member states and taking over more of Britain's regulatory apparatus.

The proposed European Aviation Safety Authority will regulate airport operations, as well as design, production, and operation of aircraft. It will have investigative powers and an L18 million budget.

A related scheme, the Single European Sky, is intended to establish a European Union air safety control body, overseeing British air traffic services even after part-privatisation.

The idea is to turn EASA into a direct counterpart of the US Federal Aviation Authority. It is part of a conscious EU policy of mimicking the structure of US federal institutions across the whole range of government.

Similar moves are under way to create an EU food safety agency and an EU maritime safety agency. Under the original 1998 proposal, the creation of the EASA would have required ratification of every member state.

That would have been a problem, as the European Commission admits in its own documents. It said: "There was no guarantee that this text could be ratified because of political uncertainty about the willingness of national parliaments to accept the wide delegation of powers it envisages.

The commission has now found a more "practical way forward". This is an EU regulation, which does not have to be transposed into national law. It acquires force automatically once ministers have reached agreement.

Such a regulation cannot be blocked by any member state because the national veto over transport policy was abolished by the Single European Act in 1986. It is now subject to qualified majority voting.

Romano Prodi's plans for reform of the EU system, presented to the European Parliament this week, call for wider use of regulations in all policy areas to advance the cause of integration.

He also proposes a switch from use of new EU legislation, which can often be vetoed by member states, to a more aggressive use of existing law to force through policy changes.

This means that EU lawyers and judges will decide what a law means, and what member states must do to comply. If the European Court of Justice seizes on this as a license for promoting a highly "federalist" agenda there would be little that Britain could do about it. The court is the final authority.

It is part of a conscious EU policy of mimicking the structure of US federal institutions across the whole range of government

The race is on! Who will be slaves first, them or US!

Molon Labe!

Notice how the Commission "realized" it could use a 1986 law to create all these bureaucracies without any input from the member countries? Just....here's the new regulation, here's what will happen to you if you don't obey, and there's no one to appeal to.

Having had our own little problems with secession - what's the EU supposed to do if one of it's feifdoms decides to up and take a walk?

In the event that UK ever rediscovers a spine - would France get to slap them with a fish or just shout silly insults?
Would Germany get a second chance?
Would they blockade the chunnel?

Or would some future prime minister find himself kidnapped, leg-ironed, and answering questions in the Hague?

Why is this a surprise? The EU is the victory of socialists. Since they are Europeans, these socialists also believe that they, personally, are entitled to a disproportionate dipperfull from the public trough. The bureaucracies is the EU will increase exponentially as more of these guys, most of whom will have scuzzy, scraggly beards, build profitable sinecures for themselves, their relatives, and their friends, including their dentists. This agency has nothing to do with aviation. It is about building a rationale to steal from government monies. There will be meetings, congresses, regulations, reports, and it will be ten years before the costs will begin to level out.

I think they probably monitor closely any potential threat to their squat on the power seat. Murder would be okay. Prodi is filthily corrupt, everyone knows it, and he's proven untouchable.

I agree with you. It just seems the socialists are becoming less concerned about public opinion while making these obvious power-grabs. The EU, the UN and it's "conferences"....the Communists and Nazis (socialists, in fact, of every stripe) are d***d open about their power grabs and assaults on free countries these days.

Socialism isn't an ideology. That's the first lie. It's an agenda, and the agenda is total control, power and money, a two class system.....elites and helots.

Kind of my point.
Absent the eighty years it took the USA to trash it's constitution and create a monolithic federal domain there seems to be little in the nature of legal actions that would hold the new structure together.
If they cannot hold member nations (sic) in line other than by functionally criminal means there is no way the confederation will not fragment.
Most probably merely over hurt feelings rather than substantial policy issues.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.