Eurotrash - The latest from Brussels
WORKERS, SEPT 2007 ISSUE
Little red lies
The government has privately admitted its claim that keeping a veto over taxation as one of its "red lines" was "purely presentational": it was never up for negotiation. Yet Gordon Brown still says that the government will ensure that its "red lines" are defended in coming negotiations over the final form of the new European Union treaty.Brown claims this treaty is not a constitution, but slipped up in a comment after talks with the Irish Prime Minister: "We have discussed the European Constitution and how that can move forward over the next few months."
The Treaty is the Constitution
Other EU politicians are more direct. Chancellor Merkel of Germany said, "The fundamentals of the Constitution have been maintained in large part." Politicians from many of the EU countries have all said the same in one way or another. The Danish Prime Minister said for example, "All the symbolic elements are gone, and that which really matters – the core – is left."
After the constitution was rejected, Jack Straw (then foreign secretary, now justice secretary), set out a simple test for any new treaty: if the treaty had a president and a foreign minister then it would in essence be the constitution. The new treaty has those posts.
Intentionally unreadable
The new EU reform treaty will not be as clear as those comments suggest. The text was deliberately made unreadable for ordinary citizens – to defeat calls for a referendum, according to one of the key people drafting it. A single text was rejected only because it would look too much like the constitutional treaty.
Worse still
The EU has effectively now abandoned its inter-governmental and treaty obligations. New treaties in the EU should be negotiated by the member states' governments and their representatives. But in June the European Council, which is an EU institution, issued a mandate to the inter-governmental conference; that breaks the EU's own rules. In effect the European Council says that member states no longer have the right to decide what will be in the coming treaty.