Presidency Row Continues
18 June, 2004
Britain is leading the resistance against Franco-German plans to install Belgium's PM Guy Verhofstadt as president of the European Commission.
This is curious: Tony Blair must have a real grudge against Verhofstadt, who went from a "man we could do business with" to a fierce rival overnight when he aligned himself with Paris and Berlin in the build up to the Iraq war.
True, Verhofstadt is famed for his slavish devotion to the Franco-German axis and is guaranteed to give Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder an easy ride over broken EU regulations.
He is an anti-American, and dreams of an EU army to replace NATO. He is also a fanatical federalist, which is reason enough for any sensible person to object to his candidacy. He recently called for aid to be cut to central European nations who refused to raise corporate tax to Belgian levels.
Furthermore, he has the additional bonus of being loathed in his own country, where his party was voted into third place in last week's Euro-elections. Rejection by voters is definitely a job requirement in Brussels - promoting failed politicans like Chris Patten and Neil Kinnock to powerful commission posts demonstrates to voters the Eurofanatic maxim that Brussels always knows better than the public.
But late last month, tied up with negotiations to secure his red lines, Blair appeared to soften his line on Verhofstadt. Appointing a Franco-German puppet to the presidency would seem a small price to pay for British vetos in taxation, foreign policy, social policy, finance and criminal law.
Suddenly Blair has changed his mind once more - even though he claims to have protected his vetos. Foreign minister Jack Straw told reporters today that Britain considered the Verhofstadt campaign over - and had even offered Chris Patten as a candidate.
Chirac Attacks Britain
18 June, 2004
As EU constitution negotiations reach a climax, French president Jacques Chirac has launched an extraordinary attack on Britain's unwillingness to sign up for an EU superstate.
Speaking at a press conference in Brussels, Chirac fumed that "one country" stood in the way of full agreement on the constitution:
"The ambitions foreseen are reduced, especially on tax and social security, by the clear position of the United Kingdom. This will be a real problem, which will have to be discussed tomorrow (Friday)."
Chirac's outburst comes amid rumours that Germany and France are planning to block or at least attempt to claw back concessions Tony Blair won on Britain's national vetos. Earlier this week, the Irish presidency of the EU presented Britain with a draft treaty which preserved two of Britain's red lines and installed murky "emergency brakes" on several other contentious items.
Constitution Conference Begins
17 June, 2004
Europe's top ministers are in Brussels today for final negotiations on the EU constitution treaty.
The mood among supporters of the constitution is said to be optimistic: UK insiders are claiming that Tony Blair's negotiating team have secured deals to protect Britain's "red lines" on taxation and employment laws. However, some wonder what he has had to give away in return, in what The Sun described yesterday as a "damage limitation exercise" for British sovereignty.
Elsewhere there are doubts that some new member states, particularly Poland, will be able to agree on voting rights.
Reader's Comments
17 June, 2004
The Independent, obviously rattled by the scale of Britain's anti-EU vote, published a list of how the UK would suffer if we were to withdraw from the European Union.
EURSOC reader Jon Livesey saw through some of the Indie's points right away: The Independent's claims in Italics, Jon's in plain text below.
History In The Making
15 June, 2004
Pulling out of Europe is now firmly on the menu of British politics. The implications could be far and wide.
Thanks to the meteoric rise of the UK Independence Party, the unthinkable has suddenly become a real possibility: Leaving the European Union has become an option for Britain.
Both Tony Blair's Labour and the opposition Tories have been caught short by underestimating the hostility to the EU in the country. Worse, both parties tried to rubbish the growing support for the UKIP. This risky strategy backfired - rather than cut off support for the UK IP, mainstream parties created an angry backlash against traditional British policy on Europe.
Europe's New Divide
15 June, 2004
Academics are usually quite slow on the uptake but one Jean-Philippe Roy of Tours University in France has spotted a trend that Eurocrats have tried their best to ignore.
Speaking in the Herald Tribune, he says, "(The European parliament) elections have brought to the fore a new political divide in Europe - the pro and anti-European divide, which transcends the traditional left-right gap."
Roy's comments come as the EU establishment licks its wounds after election results most Eurofanatics agree are dismal. The lowest turnout ever for a European election (continuing a downward trend) saw voters use the poll not to fall behind a grand vision of Europe but to punish national governments for national issues.
The misery was compounded by the vast majority of new member states registering turnouts even lower than the already poor EU-15 average.
Furthermore, when voters weren't supporting mainstream opposition parties, they fell behind Eurorealist parties dedicated to causing even more trouble for Federalists - most spectacularly in the UK.
Sinn Fein Wins Seats
14 June, 2004
With all the fuss about the UK Independence Party, the media has yet to focus on the news that one new member of the European Parliament is backed by its own heavily armed private militia.
Sinn Fein, the political front organisation for the IRA terror group, won a seat in Ireland's EU election and is expected to win another in Northern Ireland.
This cross-border success makes Sinn Fein one of Europe's few parties with seats in more than one country.
Like the UK IP, Sinn Fein ran a fiercely anti-EU campaign. Unlike the UK IP, however, Sinn Fein has a history of backing its demands with dark threats about its armed wing, which it has no connection with, no sirree.
The IRA called a cease-fire ten years ago, though few outside the Sinn Fein establishment accept that the terror group has stopped its activities. To date both Sinn Fein and the IRA have resisted calls to disarm and disband the party's military wing.
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Vlaams Bloc Success In Belgium
14 June, 2004
Seperatist party Vlaams Blok pushed the ruling Liberal Party into third place in Belgium's Euro-vote.
The VB won 14.3 percent of the Belgian vote, against the government's 13.6. The mainstream centre-right opposition emerged as clear winners with over 17 percent of votes cast.
The Liberal Party leader, Guy Verhofstadt, was a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq. Last year he played "Mini-Me" to France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schröder when he hosted the "praline summit" of anti-war leaders.
Chirac and Schröder have repaid his loyalty by naming the federalist anti-American as their chief candidate to succeed Romano Prodi as EU commission president. However, after falling to third in the polls in his own country, Verhofstadt's democratic credentials are suspect.
Not that this matters in Europe, where as British MEP Daniel Hannan noted, the system contrives to be non just undemocratic but "anti-democratic" by awarding jobs to characters rejected by voters such as Chris Patten and Neil Kinnock.
Voting is compulsory in Belgium, though as EURSOC restrict last month, the establishment is awfully keen to restrict choice to approved parties.
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The Iraq Effect?
14 June, 2004
Some commentators claim that governments have been punished by voters for supporting the war in Iraq. Governments in Denmark, Poland, Britain and Italy experienced downturns in support. In Spain, the newly-installed Socialist government consolidated its gains in March's general election. Prime Minister Zapatero still appears to be basking in the glow of public affection following his orders for a hurried Spanish retreat from Iraq. Even Britain's Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott blamed the Iraq war for his party's drubbing in the local election polls, held on the same day as the UK's Euro vote.
But this simplifies the situation considerably.
Labour, Tories Drubbed
14 June, 2004
This week's EU parliament elections have been bad for most governments and good for Eurorealist and Eurosceptic parties.
In Britain, both Tony Blair's ruling Labour Party and the Conservative opposition lost ground to the UK Independence Party, a new grouping determined to pull Britain out of political union.
At the time of going to press, the UK IP had won 16.8 percent of the vote - double their score in the previous Euro election. The Labour party, with 23 percent of the vote, looks like getting its worst results since before the First World War. The opposition Tories, who expected to rout Labour, managed to win 27 percent of the vote: The Conservative's lowest share of a national vote since 1832.
The fanatically pro-EU Liberals slightly increased their vote but dropped into fourth position behind the UK IP.
EU Gets Diplomatic Corps
12 June, 2004
A European diplomatic service has been created in a last-minute addition to the EU constitution text.
The corps, to be known as the European external action service, will serve under the EU foreign minister already proposed in the constitution text.
According to the Guardian, the creation of the service is designed to give the EU a greater voice on the world stage. Ireland, current holder of the EU presidency, wrote the clause into the treaty this week. It is expected to be agreed at the Brussels summit on Thursday.
The corps is to made up of Eurocrat civil servants and diplomats posted from national offices.
It is difficult to see how an EU foreign minister and service could function without wasteful reproduction of work already undertaken by national diplomatic services. Will the new foreign minister and his minions have power over Britain or France's foreign services? How will a diplomatic service balance the rabid anti-Americanism of some countries with the pro-Atlantic views of others?
European nations could face the absurd situation of Washington diplomats speaking to British, German or Polish foreign services while freezing out the EU foreign minister if he happens to be anti-US.
The creation of the corps is another victory for Brussels federalists. In time, it is fully intended to muscle national services off the world stage.
Retention of independence in foreign policy was one of Britain's red lines - national vetoes Tony Blair and his government demanded be put in place if Britain is to agree to the constitution text.
However, the prime minister's office has already started backpedalling on this one: The Guardian reports;
"British diplomats said that this was not a "red line" issue for Tony Blair, unlike his insistence on maintaining the national veto on tax, social security and defence."
That will be like the other red line which wasn't a red line after all, criminal justice. In early June, Blair softened his position on the creation of an EU-wide public prosecution office. His U-turn was accompanied by protests from diplomats that the EU public prosecutor was never a red line.
This leaves taxation and finance as the only red lines Britain retains.
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Europe Goes Dutch
11 June, 2004
It's European elections week. On Thursday, Britain and the Netherlands went to the polls. Today, it's Ireland and the Czech Republic's turn.
But the Dutch are already causing headaches for Eurocrats.
The Euro-friendly Dutch are usually among the EU's most docile voters: Nevertheless, a series of recent upsets have rocked Holland's image as Euro-fantasist paradise.
Howard Defends EU Stance
09 June, 2004
British opposition leader Michael Howard has tried to define his party's position on the EU, in what many will see as a desperate attempt to avoid another Tory split.
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