European Constitution - an update

More has emerged regarding the EU Treaty since my last post on the matter. That ost was following PMQs when Gordon Brown just ignored David Cameron's questions about what percentagw of the Constitution he felt was in the Treaty, preferring to bang on about David Cameron returning to the "old agenda". Unfortunately Parliament is in recess at the moment so there are no PMQs for quite a while, it would be interesting to see how Gordon Brown would react to the following.

The European Council (not the Council of Europe) is the body that meets at what the press call "summits". It is comprised of the Head of Government of each of the EU member countries (or their representative) and has been the place where much debate over EU budget and structure has taken place over the years. The European Council was one of Jean Monnet's ideas, he being one of the French architects of the European project in the 1970s. His idea was that the European Council be the "provisional government of Europe". However, as the European Council was a forum for the individual government heads it fell outside of the EU structure. June's meeting of this body when they adopted the Treaty decided that the European Council become an "institution of the Union". If you examine the various parts of the Treaty that pertain to this European Council then you discover the following:

1. Presiding of meetings, instead of the host Head of Government as previously, will be a new President of Europe (serving a five year term), also present will be the High Representative (the new title for European Foreign Minister)

2. The Heads of Governments have previously been at these meetings to represent their own governments. Following implementation of the Treaty and the body becoming a "Union institution" their first loyalty must be to the Union and as such their primary aim will be to "promote its values, advance its interests, its objectives, serve its interests."

If you look at those parts of the Treaty that set out the "objectives of the Union" you will see how far they extend so as to encompass most of European life including foreign policy, defence policy, economic policy and taxation. Even more worrying is the clause that allows the EU to take any further powers that it sees fit (but that are not specifically authorised to do by the Treaty) so long as the new power is in accordance with the "objectives of the Union".

This Treaty is a takeover of the individual countries of the EU by the EU and is as big a transfer of powers as was envisaged by the EU Constitution - there must be a referendum.