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Saturday 16 June 2007

EU CONstitution

I wrote a few weeks back about the return of the EU Constitution.

Here's an update...
It looks as though the result of next week's EU summit will be that Angela Merkel will announce that an Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) be called to discuss a new treaty. This will take the power of agreeing to the treaty (so far as the UK is concerned) away from Tony Blair and put it onto Gordon Brown. Any treaty has to be agreed to unanimously and there may well be problems getting this past the Polish government for one look set for an argument with Germany over the allocation of seats in the EU Parliament.

As I pointed out in my earlier article, the "Treaty" will bring into existence most of the Constitution. This includes a change to the primacy of European law over the UK. Currently EU law takes precedence over UK law but only by the "will" of the UK Parliament, if the "Treaty" comes into being then EU law will have primacy over UK law. Does that seem like a major change in the nature of the relationship between the EU and its member nations?

Apparently Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have "spelt out their "red lines" - the issues on which they insist they will not compromise - ahead of next week's EU summit in Brussels." These points "are: labour and social legislation; the common law system, police and judicial process; foreign and defence policy, including Britain's seat on the UN Security Council; and Mr Blair will also oppose any plan to make Britain change the "cost, scope and financial structure" of its social security system." I seem to remember a UK politician guaranteeing that the UK would not lose its seat on the UN Security Council to the EU, I will see if I can find out who that was.

Interestingly I found out today on EU Referendum that although the Constitution did not come into being, thanks to the French and Dutch people, some aspects have been brought into being "without any legal rationale. The European Defence Agency and the European Space Agency that were supposed to be set up only through the new treaty, have been set up, quite illegitimately. And that Charter of Fundamental Rights is already being used as a reference point in all legislation that comes from the European Union and cannot be rejected by Parliament. What are we going to do about that?" Well what are we going to do about it? What are you going to do about it?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What do do? I have voted Yes at www.FreeEurope.info for Free Europe Constitution - this is a real good first step in the right direction.