EU constitution: referendum now!
WORKERS, JUNE 2003 ISSUE
ACCORDING TO a poll in the Sun newspaper, 81% of the British people have not heard about it, but 84% want a referendum about it. The Daily Mail says it will hold its own referendum. Peter Hain, the Minister for Europe (an apt title), says this is ridiculous, that it’s just a little tidying up.
The answer to the second question is straightforward. The European Union appointed for this task a select band of trusties, chaired by Valery Giscard D’Estaing, a man who as prime minister of France made off with some rather large diamonds. It called this cabal the Convention on the Future of Europe, and will present its proposed constitution to governments on 20 June.
The EU’s governments are due to finalise it at an Intergovernmental Conference in December, and they plan to ratify it as early as next year. The several hundred pages of draft Treaty articles can be found at the Convention’s website, european-convention.eu.int.
What will it do? The Treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice all tightened the noose around member nations’ sovereignty. The new constitution aims to place a permanent lock on the noose. The aim is to ensure that once in, no one can escape.
The unprecedentedly far-reaching measure of a new constitution, "A Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe", as the convention calls it, would definitively set up a single European state for "an unlimited period" (Part 3, Article H).
Without in any way consulting the British people, the Blair government has already agreed in principle to this constitution. It claims that this is "just another treaty", involving "no significant change", merely "tidying up past EU Treaties", or a "mere revision of club rules", as Foreign Secretary Jack Straw would have it.
A constitution is of course far more than any treaty: a constitution establishes a body’s sole source of all legal authority. Under this constitution, the EU itself would be that sole source, unlike under the existing EC and EU Treaties, in which ‘the High Contracting Parties’, i.e. the member nations, are each the sole source of legal authority in their countries.
What would this constitution mean? Under its Article 1, "This Constitution establishes a Union [possibly called ‘United Europe’], within which the policies of the Member States shall be coordinated and which shall administer certain common competences on a federal basis." It moves the EU from being based on intergovernmental cooperation to supranational imposition.
The EU would no longer be based on agreements between sovereign member states, but on a single authority, unaccountable to and above its members. There would be a single EU authority, responsible to nobody. It would be a new executive power under a new, unelected President, more like Charles I’s government than anything seen since in Britain.
Article 9(1) says, "The Constitution, and law adopted by the Union Institutions in exercising competences conferred on it [sic] by the Constitution, shall have primacy over the laws of the member states." EU laws would override nations’ laws.
The constitution would transfer power from national parliaments to unaccountable European judges. It would incorporate the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. We would all be obliged to carry out the edicts of EU bodies.
Almost all policy areas would be subject to Qualified Majority Voting, where no nation would have a veto. The EU would have exclusive competences over the movements of capital, goods, services and persons, including a common asylum and immigration policy, over competition policy, trade policy and fisheries.
There are also ‘shared’ competences, where member states "shall exercise their competences only if and to the extent that the Union has not exercised its" (Article 10(2)). These include monetary policy for the Eurozone; the internal market; industrial policy; R&D; space exploration; freedom, security and justice; policing; agriculture; transport; energy; social policy; economic and social cohesion; environment and public health; and the EU "shall" (not "may") "coordinate economic policies".
These "shared" competences would leave member states only tiny, diminishing and residual powers.
Crucially for British workers, the EU would decide industrial and employment law (Article 5).
The Constitution also provides for state funding of pan-EU political parties (Article 35a of Title VI), to assist the breakdown of national identity. Under Title VII, the EU could raise its own taxes levied on all of us, even if we disagreed with their purposes.
Under Article 10, "The Union shall have competence to define and implement a common foreign and security policy, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy." This would include EU control over "armaments capabilities", i.e. over EU members’ defence industries, including the B ritish defence industry, our last great reservoir of engineering skills.
Under Article 14, we are told, "Member States shall actively and unreservedly support the Union’s common foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity. They shall refrain from action contrary to the Union’s interests or likely to undermine its effectiveness."
The draft Constitutional Treaty would yet further diminish democratic control and accountability of EU bodies. It would end trial by jury and habeas corpus, and impose on us the Greek legal system, so beloved of British plane-spotters. It installs the "free movement of judgements", meaning that we could be arrested here, to be jailed in Greece.
As if all these powers were not enough, Article 16 would allow the EU to take "appropriate measures" to enforce the constitution’s aims even where "the constitution has not provided the necessary powers".
The proposed constitution is fundamentally opposed to Britain’s interests, to our sovereignty and independence. Every European nation and every working class must act against this threat to their nation’s sovereignty. Each nation should decide its own constitution, taxation, defence, foreign affairs, jurisprudence, economic and monetary policy. Democracy and sovereignty are indivisible.
We do not need to be part of this EU bloc, or of any other bloc. The EU is becomi ng an ‘anti-US’ bloc, risking a build-up to war between rival capitalist and imperialist powers. We seek friendly relations with all nations, but subordination to none. Blair would sell us to the highest bidder.
There must be no more dithering between the EU and US blocs — we must say No to the EU, and No to the USA! We need to pull out of the EU, and reject subordination to the USA.
Surely if democracy and a referendum on its proposed constitution are good enough for Iraq, they are good enough for us! France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Italy, Holland, Denmark and Ireland are having referendums on this matter: they can decide our future, but we can’t — not least, we are told, because we are too ignorant and stupid.
If Blair tries to force through this unprecedented change, a Labour–Liberal Democrat alliance could vote this constitution through parliament despite popular opposition. If we allowed this to ha ppen, parliament would once again — as over the unpopular and illegal attack on Iraq, and the proposed foundation hospitals — prove itself irrelevant and unrepresentative.
We the British working class must assert our sovereignty, say No to the euro, and No to the EU Constitution, Yes to Britain, and Yes to sovereignty and independence. We have to take responsibility for Britain and for our future.