European Union - Rule by the unelected
WORKERS, DECEMBER 2009 ISSUE
|
In a procedure apparently copied from the Vatican for choosing a Pope, 27 people in Brussels have chosen who is to fill the two biggest jobs in the EU. The 500 million citizens they are supposed to represent had no say. These posts will carry the huge, open-ended powers given them by the Lisbon Treaty/Constitution.
Never again will the EU’s leaders need to risk calling a referendum. Never again will the EU’s leaders need to show their hand by passing a treaty.
Herman Van Rompuy, the new EU President, has the most federalist agenda of the EU’s leaders, which is why they chose him. He is a Flemish-speaking member of the centre-right Christian Democrat party, who secured Belgium’s entry into the eurozone. He will be paid £320,000, making him one of the highest-paid leaders in the world, and will pay just 25 per cent income tax. He will have a staff of 22 press officers, assistants and administrators, and ten security agents. And he will have access to a £5 million reserve fund to dip into as his job ‘develops’.
Baroness Ashton, the new EU Foreign Minister, has never been elected to anything in her life. She steered the Lisbon Treaty through the House of Lords, cancelling the referendum on it that all three parties had promised. Brown then appointed her to the European Commission, to avoid a by-election. She will have a staff of 7,000 diplomats and will get a salary of €216,000, an annual entertainment allowance of €11,000 and an annual accommodation allowance of €32,500.
This is an attack on democracy, especially on British democracy. The EU has revealed its true face by forcing on us these two unelected, unaccountable, unrepresentative rulers. Why do we allow our country to be ruled by this foreign dictatorship?