Eurotrash – The latest from Brussels
WORKERS, APR 2006 ISSUE
'Confidence' trick
French president Jacques Chirac wants "to help restore the confidence of the French people in the EU" after they, and the Netherlands, rejected the EU constitution last year by creating an EU President and foreign minister, a European border guard and an EU energy policy. All were in the rejected Constitution!What's a little legal weakness?
The EU energy green paper, published in March, includes plans for the Commission to negotiate energy policy for member states in future. The Commission insists that national choices have "an impact on the energy security of their neighbours". Commission president Jose Barroso admits there is no legal basis for a European energy strategy, designed to liberalise the energy market, but insists that political will and sense of urgency are more important than legal weakness.
'Democratic' to ignore votes
A survey of European politicians, business leaders, NGOs, journalists and senior officials showed broad support for implementing the EU Constitution's core institutional elements – despite rejection by voters in France and Holland – without further public approval; 70% said to do so would not be "undemocratic".
Speaking at the London School of Economics in February Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French President and chief drafter of the EU Constitution, said people voted No out of an "error of judgement" and "ignorance" and that using referendums to ratify the Constitution was a "mistake" that needed to be "corrected".
Direct taxation from Brussels?
Tax commissioner Laszlo Kovacs wants a special tax to fund the EU budget. He argued that funding the EU budget through taxation "would offer a better solution to the financing of the EU...because the focus would no longer be on the contribution of member states but on what kind of EU policies should be financed." Kovacs acknowledged that tax harmonisation would be controversial, complaining that "tax sovereignty is treated in some member states as a kind of sacred cow."