The Wisdom of the Irish

Last year, those loveable Eurocrats at the EU Superstate-in-waiting decided it was time to enlarge their borders and make it that little bit more difficult for individual member states to influence future policy making. So, they got together and drafted a document that was content-free as far as liberty was concerned and called it the “Nice Treaty”. That’s “nice” as in the playboy resort on the Riviera in the South of France, not “nice” as in pleasant – anything but pleasant (these "servants" of the people sure pick some dingy places to meet).

Referendum

With dutiful obedience, government after government ratified it. Then it was the turn of the Irish to do as they were told. However, this government was obliged to ask their citizens about it and held a referendum. The Irish said “No!” by 54% to 45% and, as the Americans are wont to say, kicked Eurocrat ass all the way back to Brussels. Quite an intelligent bunch, these Irish folk. The sweat beads are now forming on the brows of power-seeking politicians, as the Nice Treaty will formally lapse if all 15 EU members do not ratify it by the end of the year. For those interested, the Nice Treaty is designed to open up the way for enlarged membership of the European Union and has these main points:

  • Reweighting votes in the Council of Ministers
  • Increasing the ceiling on the European Parliament from 626 to 732 in 2004
  • Capping the size of the European Commission at 27
  • Extending majority voting on some issues (but not taxation and social policy)
  • Allowing groups of eight or more countries to forge ahead with closer co-operation in certain areas
  • Laying groundwork for rapid reaction force.

The ultimate aim is a superpower of 27 member countries, making it potentially more powerful than the USA but more socialist and diverse in its culture than the USA. These two important differences will be its eventual downfall.

The keywords to Irish voters were “veto” and “enlargement” as Slovenia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Estonia waited in the wings for membership. The Irish (and others who were not given the choice of a referendum) saw the danger here of firstly massive wealth redistribution towards these poorer and more economically unstable countries still coming out of the shadow of Communism. Secondly, extension of majority voting would deny the Irish an assured veto on issues sensitive to their culture and economy. The argument being that ratifying the treaty would force Ireland to participate in the EU’s 60,000-member Rapid Reaction Force, thus infringing on the country’s traditional neutrality. The stakes are potentially very high.

Democracy

That was then, but this is now. You see, “No” was the wrong answer. The correct answer was “Yes” as far as totalitarian Eurocrats were concerned. So, later this year, another referendum is to be held asking the same tedious question and the Irish are expected to conform. Let us hope the Irish stick to their guns for if they do, the European Union is heading into uncharted waters. Referenda have rejected EU issues before, the Danes voted against the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 but when forced to vote again one year later with various sweeteners and opt-outs attached, they relented. The EU is obviously hoping the Irish will swallow their proposed concessions on neutrality and give them their toys back.

So much for the glories of democracy, I thought to myself. When the Statists have made their mind up, democracy can take a back seat. In fact, democracy is shown up for what it really is, just an impotent rubber stamp to the aggrandisements of the neo-politburo of Europe. The political euphemism "The will of the people has spoken!" is not the correct sound bite on such an anti-State occasion.

Corruption

Before the Irish reconsider their answer, they should ruminate upon some news items that came out of the Euroland recently. In a further proof that democracy is the poodle of oligarchy in Euroland, the President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, stated that any future election of his post should be decided by suffrage of the national parliaments and the European Parliament. In other words, EU citizens are not allowed to have a say in this potent political positioning. I think he must have had the rebel Irish voters in mind when he concocted this piece of political horse-trading.

A further and more worrying item is the whistle blowing of former chief accountant of the European Commission, Marta Andreasen. Enron and WorldCom can take a distant back seat here as the sacked Andreasen claimed that the commission’s treasury department had not been audited for ten years and was open to massive fraud and abuse. I think the operative phrase is "subject to massive fraud" rather than "open to massive fraud". I say that in the light of the resignation of the entire Commission in 1999 over the abuse of expenses and this timely warning should come as no surprise. With an annual budget of over $95 billion, who says it is the CEOs of multinationals that are the paragons of corruption?

Secession

So what about secession from a federal union of European nation states? If the corruption and unaccountability reaches nauseating levels, what is a member state to do? When the citizens tell their leaders that "this is another fine mess you have gotten us into", how do they get out? In mangling the words of somebody that was not too keen on secession, is it written in the skies of Europe that the free shall be slaves?

As much as I scoured the Internet, I could find no reference to secession rights of EU member states. I can only conclude that there is none because we have not reached a stage of European integration that demands a treaty that finally fuses EU nation-states into a federal union. Such a treaty would be the EU equivalent of the US Constitution.

How would such a secession clause be worded? For example, one study suggests that a member state should, by a qualified majority vote of their population, be able to leave the European federal constitution to revert back to independence. However, should the political procedures for the secession be precisely fixed in advance with a transition period of a considerable length of time (e. g. 5 or 10 years) implemented? Or should the notice period be set according to factors inherent in the Member State itself such as size and economic factors? If an EU member state fails to reach such a qualified majority, should the next attempt be possible after 20 years or less (assuming the Member State doesn't descend into civil war over it)? Such parameters are open to discussion during the initial constitutional convention.

But whatever the fine print may say, secession must be there if we ever approach the undesirable threshold of Superstatedom. After all, secession, or the threat of it for tactical purposes, represents the ultimate tool through which the encroaching powers of a European federal government might be checked. In the absence of the secession sanction, the federal European government may, by overstepping its constitutionally assigned limits, extract surplus value from the citizenry almost at will, because there would exist no effective means of escape.

Conclusion

If the political class currently being wooed by the EU cannot see this due to their intoxications, then they are consigning their progeny to economic and social slavery. For if history teaches one thing, it is this. All political institutions decay and corrupt with time, and to be inextricably associated with such a huge entity when the endgame is finally played out is a prospect I would not wish even on my enemies’ descendants.

August 10 , 2002