NO to the EU!
WORKERS, APRIL 2004 ISSUE
The European Union and Blair want further liberalisation of goods, services, labour and capital markets. Their Holy Trinity is free movement of goods, capital and labour, but the greatest of these is capital.
It all sounds a bit vague and remote from our lives as workers. But we must scrutinise everything the EU and Blair get up to: both have already taken us to the cleaners on a number of occasions and are now planning even bigger theft.
Blair has welcomed the EU's proposed new code for services, which it defines widely, covering many industries too. This code was devised by the European Services Network, a lobby that represents 50 firms like Goldman Sachs, Barclays and HSBC Holdings. It aims to liberalise the services market, worth $1.2 trillion a year.
The EU demands that all its trading 'partners' across the world end all restrictions on foreign ownership, all controls over foreign accounting firms and advertisers, and all rules over repatriating profits. They aim to end all national control of key industries and services like water, energy, sewerage, telecommunications, postal services and financial services. This is a direct attack on the sovereignty and national economies of all the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and threatens our ability to trade freely with them.
The Commission has ruled that governments must end their golden shares in former nationalised industries, such as the British Airports Authority, British Airways, utilities like the National Grid, and defence and engineering companies.
National control
The all-too-small amount of national control given by golden shares breaks the EU's rules on the free movement of capital. Getting rid of golden shares drastically reduces nations' ability to defend these national industries against hostile foreign takeover. The Blair government welcomed the ruling. Blair also welcomed the EU's new code for company mergers, which imposed a single European market for financial services, making mergers and closures easier. It also reduces firms' ability to fend off hostile takeovers.
The EU's planned enlargement is scheduled to cost one trillion euros. To pay for this, the EU wants more of our money: it wants to end our £2 billion a year rebate. EU enlargement means that people from the ten new accession states will be able to work legally here from 1 May. The Blair government favours this uncontrolled immigration, this "free movement of labour", which will without doubt drive down our wages and conditions. Every other EU member, except Ireland, is putting some controls on this inflow.
The EU has many more schemes for us:
To force through its agenda, the EU wants to impose a new Constitution. This, despite government claims, is not a Treaty, an agreement negotiated between independent states. The proposed EU Constitution purports to legalise the creation of the single new centralised European state, to end the separate independent existence of its member states.
- It wants to end all national vetoes and opt-outs, especially Britain's opt-out from Economic and Monetary Union; we could be forced to join the euro.
- It wants the Stability and Growth Pact -- which delivers neither stability nor growth -- to be strengthened. The Pact is splitting the EU: the European Commission is taking France and Germany to court because of what it deems their excessive spending.
- It wants greater control over member nations' budgets, to control how we tax and what we spend it on.
- It wants to have its own budget, paid for by its own taxes, paid by us.
- The Commission wants state funding of EU-wide political parties; they want us to pay for pro-EU parties that we do not support and that oppose our interests. The 'Party of the European Left' and 'Respect: the unity coalition' deserve no more support than the right-wing European People's Party: they all want to get on the EU gravy train.
- It wants to end all Made in Britain labels. All goods produced by EU member nations must in future be labelled Made in the EU.
Further, a fixed constitution is reactionary in essence. Under the USA's written constitution, the Supreme Court can only make its judgements by harking back to the Founding Fathers' presumed intentions, and to presumptions of what they would have thought if they had to face today's new circumstances. 1776's standards of thought determine judgements for 2004 and for ever. How reactionary is that?
So far the EU has not been able to agree a constitution, partly because it is so unnatural to force together independent, sovereign nations, and partly because of the huge scale of popular opposition.
But to get its way, the EU is still breaking up states' internal democratic structures to make them conform to the shape of the proposed new state. For Britain, this means imposing an unnecessary tier of regional government, devolution, a subordinate legal system and an emasculated local government. These changes are EU-driven, not democratically driven, though taking advantage of some people's misdirected aspirations for local democracy.
Parliament?
What is parliament doing about all this? Can we rely on it to defend our sovereignty? No. Ever since we joined the EEC, parliament has failed to defend its own powers against European institutions. It will happily sell our interests and committing suicide as an independent legislature, creating powerless sinecures for its members. But remember -- we only ever lent it its powers. On Britain's sovereignty, the last word belongs to the British nation. If parliament betrays, we the people must make sovereign decisions on our own behalf to save Britain.
What are we doing about the EU's unprecedented attack on our democracy and sovereignty? We have increasingly opposed the EU in our trade unions and in the country at large: every poll has shown at least a 2-to-1 opposition to the EU and all its works. But it is too little — our position is being undermined by the daily exercise of EU powers and government preparations for regionalisation, entry into the euro, etc. If our response remains passive, the EU and its quislings will get their way.
For a start, we must ensure that the Euro-elections on 10 June see the lowest turnout in history. To vote for any of the candidates standing in the Euro-elections is to accept the legiti macy of those elections. This is why the government has been so desperate to impose all-postal votes in four regions despite opposition from the independent Electoral Commission.
- Don't vote — register our opposition to the EU!
- We must ensure that our trade unions uphold British sovereignty and oppose membership of the euro.
- The demand for referendums on the euro and the Constitution must continue, so that we can say YES to Britain, NO to the EU