Brussels In Putsch For New Powers

For once, the BBC are nice and open in their headlines:

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"Brussels in push for new powers"

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Says it all, really.

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The President of the Commission Jose Manuel Barroso has told the BBC that this is not a power grab but an attempt to make Europe a safer place.

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Rephrase that. The EU wants sweeping powers, so naturally, Europe will end up worse off. No-one's actually too sure how exactly getting rid of the national veto will improve public safety. It will simply mean that Britain can be easily outvoted in Council if France and Germany agree. The Balkan states can be relied upon to toe the Commission line every time, so their support is unquestionable for everything.

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The Commission also argues that giving the European Court of Justice a big new role would force governments to implement agreed legislation.

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Reality check here. NOTHING will force the French to comply with EU legislation they don't like.

But I like this bit:

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But the Finns who are taking over the Presidency on 1 July are enthusiastic about the plan, as are the French, who say they first proposed it.

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We now know who to blame when the whole idea goes pear-shaped after implementation.

The EU Has A (Rather Poor) Sense Of Humour

I'm not sure if this is intended as a joke from the EU enlargement commissioner:

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Serbian prime minister Vojislav Kostunica criticised the EU earlier this month, arguing the bloc's "policy of constant setting of conditions" towards Serbia was "deeply wrong" and counterproductive.

But EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn replied by saying the Serbian government should stop blaming Brussels for its own failures.

Mr Rehn indicated he was "grateful that Prime Minister Kostunica stopped short of putting responsibility on the EU for Serbia-Montenegro's 6-0 defeat against Argentina in the World Cup."

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If it is a joke, then har har, most amusing. If it isn't, then it shows us how much responsibility the EU wants to take for its actions in pumping money to Serbia, viz, none at all. Glad to see a Prime Minister of a country call EU policy "deeply wrong." If Blair did that, he would be denounced by the horrified people in Brussels.

Of course, I would prefer the EU not to have any money of its own to spend in Serbia, but it has, so we must live with that.

A Lack Of Environment Policy

A member of the commission has finally realised why the EU is not meeting its climate change commitment:

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"Despite the various policy initiatives, this report highlights that the trend is still going in the wrong direction. Europe must implement all planned policies and measures relating to reducing greenhouse gas emissions", she added.

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Oh no. The EU has planned policies? Having looked on the environment website, the policy area merely states their kyoto commitment, instead of having policy. This is probably a radical idea for an EU policy area.

I would like to amend the statement above. Instead of "despite" the various policy initiatives, it should read "because" of the various policy initiatives. Because the EU spends more time consulting and putting together proposals than what it should be doing - allowing the actual countries who signed the kyoto treaty the freedom to solve their own problems.

The Euro Is A Must - First We've Heard

I pity these poor new member states:

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Out of all ten new EU member states, Poland is the least prepared to join the eurozone, a move all newcomers are legally obliged to make.

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We kicked up a huge fuss, so we do not get the euro, but the new states had it forced upon them before they joined? Hard luck.

Brussels now has the power to force its failing currency upon unsuspecting member states. They say that they have learned from their past mistakes in introducing the euro. I don't believe them. Long gone are the days when the EU actually did anything well. This is a case of Brussels furthering its superstate aims. Remember that we once were promised that "the threat of a monetary union is now passed..." Labour leaders have a record of lying to the public.

If I were them, I would not be prepared for a good few years yet. Just until the currency collapses, taking with it the wealth and livelihood of either 22 countries or 1 superstate.

An Illegal Referendum

Suicide by referendum is about to take place if certain players in the game of the EU have their way:

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The Austrian chancellor has reiterated his view that a pan-European referendum on the constitution is the only way out if the institutional impasse.

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To paraphrase, because individual referendums aren't giving him the right answer as people are voting against the constitution, he wants to make a huge europe-wide one so that the europhiles in Germany and Spain can outvote the eurosceptics in Britain. Is it me, or do only countries have referenda?

He has also realised the point of national referenda:

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He added that a series of national ratifications - like the current system which has been stalled since the French and Dutch rejections of the constitution last year - are "rather dangerous".

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They are to stop idiots like him from trying to bulldoze over the wishes of Britain. To be sure, we will have the old "but its designed for 6" argument, but this is irrelevant, because it can still work with 25 if we don't get ridiculous legislation that needs a veto.

I thought that the law said that international treaties had to be ratified by individual states. If europe as a whole ratified it, but individual countries, i.e. Britain, France, Ireland voted against it, what a sticky legal mess we will find ourselves in.

Like the parrot: Dead, Deceased and No More?

Tony Blair has done his normal blatant lying over Europe:

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Mr Blair said deciding whether it was dead or not "depends not simply on me but all the other countries in Europe... it cannot be proceeded with unless there is an overturning of the French and Dutch votes".

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The constitution needs all 25 states to ratify it. If Blair declares it dead, it cannot carry on. So deciding whether it is dead or not does depend simply on him, as he is leader of the most intensely (60%) eurosceptic nation. All I can say is I hope that the leaders string out a referendum until 2008!

He then states the obvious - that repeat referenda must be held. This is EU 'democracy' at work.

He doesn't realise what he's saying sometimes.

Leaders Of Europe

There's a new EU debate worth looking at. It's rather euphamistically called Leaders of Europe, and the members debating are the now discraced Chris Davies, Chris Heaton-Harris and Nigel Farage.

All members of the European Parliament, and is directly biased against us Eurosceptics. All nice questions get asked to the Liberals and Tory members, but Farage gets leading questions designed to make him seem europhile and disown his euroscepticism. But he acquitts himself marvelously.

It should be fun to see how this develops in the future. I'll keep you posted.

Self-Righteous Proclamations

After the EU furore over British beef, (they are apparantly our closest trading partners yet they were the first to ban it on the discovery of BSE), those selfsame EU countries with the snobbish "this can't happen in our country" attitude, and the "they are british, they no cook good food" Mr. Chirac attitude have a problem of their own. Eggs.

Salmonella has been found in eggs from across the EU, although mainly from the Eatern Bloc. A survey measured the number of eggs containing dangerous strains of salmonella, and proclaimed British eggs one of the safest across the EU. Now there's a surprise. The Newsnight preview says that:

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The report shows that, while British farms are doing well with only 8% showing contamination with the most dangerous strain of salmonella, other countries have far higher levels. The Czech Republic is shown to have levels of 62%, Poland 55% and Spain 51%.

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Not surprisingly, the BBC want you to watch their programme, so they are not letting on much.

They wrecked our beef industry by banning it. I very much doubt that the egg industry will be similarly banned from the offending countries, but never mind. That's EU politics.

Change of Address

Those eagle-eyed among you will have noticed a slight change in the URL of this blog. I am now broadcasting live from the awardspace servers, and very happy I am too.

I have to confess that the move is entirely a crass promotional act on my part. I want to use Google Sitemaps and see if it does me any good as far as google goes. Of course, you need access to your own files to do this, so I figured that this was the best move.

I also figured that it wasn't entirely lawful to use flickr in the way that I was (see T and C s)

The blogspot address will continue to function, pointing you without haste to the site. The RSS feed is still in the same place (feedburner). If this is a success, I may think about migrating Conservative Comment in a similar way.

Enough of the geeky "master of my own site" webmaster talk. Let me know what you think. New features will be rolled out once I've finished my exams!

European Central Sightseeing Tours

Turns out that the European Parliament isn't the only organisation to do the touring circus trick:

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The latest ECB decision was made in Madrid at the headquarters of the Bank of Spain, one of the two times each year that the ECB holds its rate-setting meeting outside of its Frankfurt hometown.

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For ECB read European Parliament, and for Bank of Spain read Strasbourg, and we have another example of an EU institution that has no power over Britain using British taxpayer's money to pay for a pointless tour of Europe.

Lets see those people at euromyths (previous post) try to wheedle their way out of this one. My only worry is that how much more of this is there waiting to be discovered?

Euromyths? They've Fooled Us So Far

Had a poke around on this (very funny) EU site called... Euromyths! It turns out that they admit half of the euromyths actually are true, and they use lots of trickery to wheedle out of the others. They leave out the embarrassing ones, that is, the ones that they know are true. The blurb says that it has: "the most up-to-date rebuttal of press error and bias." The press isn't where the error and bias happens, people.

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The European Union cannot force the British Government to give criminals the right to vote in elections. The European Court of Human Rights is not an EU institution but part of the Council of Europe, which was founded in 1949 and is an intergovernmental consultative organisation consisting of 46 countries.

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The trickery here is that the EU cannot, because it doesn't have the power. But the court of human rights can, set up by...

the very same people that set up the common market. Rebuttal of press error my foot.

Make a Song and Dance of It

There is a rather bizarre piece on EU Referendum:

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"We have big plans to make the EU more punter-friendly," one EU official is reported to have said. "The intention is to heighten people's awareness and make the EU fun. We intend to use the 50th anniversary of the Union in 2007 as the vehicle to drive the initiative."

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Having a huge song-and-dance party appears to be the EU's idea of livening things up. Not surprisingly, the ex-communist eastern european countries have already compared the idea to the rallies the communists held, and a fear that people will dance because they have been told to. Not ideal for a good PR campaign.

Of course, we all know what we intend the 50th anniversary of the EU to be: a celebration of all the waste and corruption that has existed in Europe from day one. It's an ideal opportunity to show the europhiles what they really support.

Single Seat Racing

The leader of British Conservatives in the European parliament has put his name to the petition supporting the following statement:

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It costs European taxpayers approximately 200 million euros a year to move the Parliament between Brussels/Belgium and Strasbourg/France. As a citizen of the European Union, I want the European Parliament to be located only in Brussels.

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The petition is located here. I particularly like the use of the .eu domain name to do something that the EU doesn't agree with.

I have put my name to it already, and would recommend anyone else to do the same. The figure is unreliable, as it is the figure before EU enlargement in 2004. However, the up-to-date figure will be a lot larger. Hold your pride about the citizen of the EU bit, but it is for a good cause, as they say.

In the (rejected) constitution, all petitions that get more than 1000000 signatures would be discussed by the European Parliament. They want the constitution, so they should allow this clause as well. It's time to put their words to the test.

Effective? EU?

Some more willing suspects have been found by the EU:

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The bloc's finance ministers will gather in Luxembourg on Wednesday to debate the report by the European Commission on Slovenia and Lithuania's bid to join the eurozone in 2007.

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Apparantly Lithuania has too high inflation. The commission can talk. Things aren't a bed of roses inside the eurozone either.

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Plans to create an EU diplomatic service will once again feature this week when commissioners are due to discuss measures to improve the EU's effectiveness in foreign policy.

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Perhaps having a foreign policy that made sense would be a start. The EU said no to the Iraq war, yet they are trying to raise their own batch of armed forces. If they are pacifists, then why do they need an army?

Democracy is at work again. I thought the diplomatic service got rejected, along with the rest of the constitution.

What is "European"?

The EU have got an unusual take on the word referendum:

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"Proponents of the EU constitution across the bloc hope that the Dutch elections, scheduled in May 2007, will produce a government that will ratify the constitution after all."

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One government failed to ratify the constitution in a referendum, so they hope that when the next government comes along, they will reverse the decision. This will basically turn the dutch election into a referendum on Europe. Should be interesting to see who wins.

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"During the referendum debates it emerged that the public has a need for clarity: what will be "European" and what won't? The government had to continuously speak reassuring words: our drugs policy, our gay marriage and our euthanasia practice would not be harmed [by the EU],"

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I'm not a big fan of dutch policy, but I can say without fear of contradiction that the EU has never answered any of the dutch queries. It poses an interesting question though.

What will be "European" and what won't?
What will: A disdain for democracy.
Imposing ridiculous laws on a fed up electorate with no way out.
Wastage and fraud to the tune of £5bn a year.
An institutionalised prejudice against the UK.
Any more?

What won't: Capitalism.
Governmental freedom.
Accepting that other people might be right.
Any more?

Sounds like a thrilling choice for the dutch people.

Lib Dems Speak Out

The Lib Dems have some strong words on Europe:

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"Now that David Cameron wants to marginalise the Conservatives in the European Parliament and Tony Blair no longer makes any mention of Europe at all, the Liberal Democrats in Brussels are well placed to frame the argument on the future of Europe."

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Cameron wants to pull the tories out of a federalist bloc that does not share core Tory values. Blair, agreed, doesn't mention Europe. But this is the best piece of Lib Dem propaganda. The speaker says that they are well placed to frame arguments, but she doesn't say that she will actually make any arguments.

My recollection of the Lib Dems in Europe is a set of people madly waving through every piece of EU legislation they can find. Remember, they are for both the euro and the EU constitution, although opportunism crept in, and they campaigned for a referendum.

Wrong on two counts out of three, which is rather good for a Lib Dem.

France's Ridiculous Strasbourg Policy

Strasbourg, despite being in France, is central to Germany as well?

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"Paris considers the location as a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation and a matter of national prestige."

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I find it worrying that Chirac is equating national prestige with wasting £140m every year.

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"It ought to be the European Parliament who decides where they should meet!" - Margaret Wallstrom

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The European Parliament cannot decide anything at all, and anyway, all the members get lavish expenses for turning up to Strasbourg as well as Brussels. They aren't going to want to give up Strasbourg without a fight.