Eurotrash - The latest from Brussels
WORKERS, JULY 2007 ISSUE
In?
European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet called on Britain to join the euro. He said, "...the single market to which [the eurozone] is tightly linked can only fully function with a single currency. Imagine for a second that you are the United States and that the currencies differed between Massachusetts, California, Florida and Alaska – what would you really see: a single market in the United States? My argument is no more complicated." But isn't the United States a single state, unlike the European Union?Out?
The Lords have just rejected a proposal for a Select Committee to report on what withdrawal from the EU would mean for Britain. The intention was to assess the positive and negative effects of partial or total withdrawal, something the ruling class has never risked doing. "We consider that such a Committee would not be timely in view of the current Inter-Governmental Conference on the draft Constitution for Europe... and we doubt whether it would be possible to isolate the Committee's deliberations from wider political considerations," said their lordships. What can they be frightened of?
What's it all about?
Interior Ministers have agreed to allow police forces across the EU to access other member states' fingerprint and DNA databases. The proposals have been criticised in Britain because Britain's DNA database is much larger than others. It also contains DNA details of over a million innocent people arrested but not charged; many countries rightly destroy this information. Critics question whether free access to DNA and other databases will have sufficient security safeguards after the measure was rushed through by the German EU presidency in under six months.
Taken to the cleaners
The EU is investigating Commission employees alleged to have provided false contracts worth £30 million over four years for cleaning services never carried out. The allegations follow recent arrests, including a Commission official, in a case of suspected corruption involving building contract tenders.