Articles with the Tag European Union

No means No, except in Europe

EU "democracy"
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Last Thursday the Irish, as the sole EU inhabitants to get the option, voted to reject the Treaty of Lisbon which was to further centralise and restructure the union. Which means that after three years of navelgazing and rapackaging the quest to establish an EU constitution is once again back at square one. Then it was the French and the Dutch who rejected the constitution and who therefore this time didn’t get to vote on it. If you vote the wrong way you’ve clearly shown not to be mature enough to decide on these weighty matters. For the Irish government it was more difficult to ignore the population, as the need for a referendum on constitutional matters is enshrined in law, so they had no choice but to call for a vote and hope for the best.

but once again these hopes were dashed, and this in a country traditionally quite Europe-minded. Once again it leaves the EU project floundering and once again the immediate response of European politicians and media is to blame the voter, not the treaty. Three years ago the rejection of the constitution led to a “process of reflection” from which emerged this treaty, largely the result of copying the constitution into a new document and doing global search and replace, with some relatively minor concession and symbolic changes. As if making the EU flag the mandatory symbol of Europe was why people objected to the contitution. Doing the same again isn’t feasable, but the process has to move forward so instead we get various European bigwigs like French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner threatening the Irish for their impudence while Gordon Brown amongst others has called for ignoring the vote by going ahead with the ratification in other countries and leave the Irish government to sort out things at their end.

Because the people in charge are convinced of the essential rightness of the constitreaty we don’t get any serious attempt to understand why first the French and the Dutch and then the Irish voted against it, but instead we get whisper campaigns to delegitimise the results of these referenda. For the Irish result the talking point being pushed is that it’s quite undemocratic for one million Irish to decide for 250 million other Europeans (one example). I agree with that, but it wasn’t the no-voters who decide the rest of Europe shouldn’t have a vote. The other way to delegitimise the Irish vote, and one much in evidence three years ago as well, is to disparage the motives of the voters. If you look at this Crooked Timber thread for example you see arguments that the Irish voted no because of their ignorance, their fear of foreigners, because the yes campaign wasn’t good enough, that it was just too complex for ordinary people to understand, and so on.

The common thread in all of this is that yet another no vote should not intefere with the orderly transition to the EU the European political elites want, but their voters are at best lukewarm about. It is brought as a matter of survival, as if the very functioning of the EU is under threat if these changes aren’t made, but we’ve seen how true that is in the three years since the rejection of the original constitution. Yet somehow the EU muddled through. It’s no wonder people are skeptical when all these grand plans are made without their input, their vote is only taken seriously if they vote yes and when they do vote against them their leaders don’t listen and they’re portrayed as xenophobic ignorami.

Long live the European constitution Lisbon Treaty

EU "democracy"
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Michael Greenwell calls out the fundamental undemocratic nature of the European Union:

The rebranding of the constitution has also allowed New Labour to squirm out of its manifesto commitment to a referendum as it promised a vote on the constitution (which it cancelled after the defeat in Holland and France ensured it couldn’t be ratified – all the countries have to agree for something of this sort to be passed) but it hadn’t promised a vote on the treaty.

The people of Ireland will have the chance to have a referendum and it looks like they are going to be the only ones. Myself and millions of others can only hope they say no but given the importance that the leaders in various European countries attach to this treaty I can only assume that every trick in the book will be employed to make them say yes and that a lot of cash will be given to the yes campaign.

If the public had went along with the idea then I am sure panegyrics would have been written about the wonderful democracies we live in. The fact that the public didn’t and don’t want these measures means that instead our (sic) leaders simply change the name, try to do it on the quiet and say ‘fuck you’ to the lot of us (Iraq, trident, nuclear power, GM foods etc etc).

That’s the whole point of a liberal democracy, of which the European Union might just be the ultimate example: the voters are only there to give their consent to the decisions their leaders made for them. If they withhold their consent, they don’t fulfill their part of the contract. Because France and the Netherlands said “no” last time they don’t get to vote this time, as these voters have proven themselves to be irresponsible. If the Irish are so willful as to reject the Treaty, another referendum will be held until they vote the right way. The European project is too important to be endangered by democracy.

An European election

Europe
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I won’t pretend to be an expert on Polish politics, other than knowing that the current ruling party is an Catholic, xenophobic bunch of reactionaries led by the freakish Kaczynski twins playing off the fears of old people to stay in power and that this helped drive a lot of more younger, more liberal Poles out of the country to make their fortunes elsewhere, after Poland joined the EU in 2004. This diaspora has had some unforeseen consequences, as Poles abroad voted in record numbers:

Kaczynski relied on his established voter base but his opponents were far more successful at mobilize fresh support on Sunday. By midday, expatriate voters were queuing up outside the Polish embassy in London to cast their ballots. The line was several hundred meters long. About a million Poles have moved to Britain in search of higher-paid work since Poland joined the European Union in 2004.

The same for the Netherlands, where the embassy expected some 2600 people to turn up to vote. You might call it the first truly European election, with so much of the electorate working in other EU countries. It won’t be the last.

That EU mess

Dutch politics, EU "democracy"
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Some two weeks ago, the Dutch government decided that holding a second referendum about the new European Union treaty was not needed. Balkenende patiently explained, in his own inimitable style how the criticisms levelled against the original EU constitution had all been answered with this new treaty, that it was no longer a treaty anyway and besides, the Netherlands could not afford a second no. The coalition partners agreed, including the PvdA, the party that had championed the original referendum two years ago, but now glad not to have to deal with another no vote or inclined to fight with their partners over this. After all, the criticisms have been met and the treaty is different from the constitution, right?

Wrong.

A very “helpful” British report on the new treaty was published this week, and it turns out it’s essentially the same as the old constitution. Which means most of the reasons the Dutch government gave for not holding a referendum have fallen by the wayside. The only remaining still valid argument is the one that was the real reason all along: that a second no would “damage the Dutch position in Europe”. In the end, the will of the people can not be allowed to inconvienience the progress of the EU project. A referendum is only useful as long as it will endorse the treaty.

But ignoring the problems with the EU doesn’t mean these will go away. For decades the Dutch have been more or less enthusiastic supporters of greater European unity, when it was all still fairly esoteric and dull, not sharing the hangups the British have about surrendering sovereignity. In the last decade or so however, this support has been draining away, as the result of two developments: the metamorphosis of the EU from a trade organisation into something more like a real state and the enormous enlargement of the EU. The euro hasn’t helped either. It has all happened too soon and too fast for people to be comfortable with.

And because there has never been a real debate about the European Union in the Netherlands, as support for the union has long been a given for all mainstream parties, because succesive governments never sought to stimulate debate other than giving people the vague impression European integration was a good thing, a sort of moral stance rather than a political position and granted, also because most people were more than willing not to care overtly much about the EU, we’re now in the position that we cannot afford any debate anymore, because the EU train has to move on and we have no other alternatives. But public support for it has been lost and is not likely to be soon recovered, as more sovereignity is given up for dubious benefits.