EU 2007 24.07.07 to 23.08.07

Gordon Brown has vowed to resist the growing clamour for a referendum on the proposed new EU treaty, insisting that Parliament should have the final say.

Speaking last night after his first Downing Street summit with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor and architect of the new Brussels blueprint, the Prime Minister played down signs of a Labour rebellion over the issue.

Despite another trade union, Unison, joining calls yesterday for a national vote, Mr Brown said he believed the TUC annual congress next month would back his policy and avoid a damaging clash with the Labour leadership.+

Full Telegraph article

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Eight out of 10 'want a vote on EU treaty'

As many as one in four Labour supporters could refuse to vote for Gordon Brown if he denied them a referendum on the EU constitution, a poll showed last night.

The survey also said that more than eight out of 10 of the public as a whole want a national vote on the so-called reforming treaty.

However, the Prime Minister will be particularly worried that 24 per cent of Labour supporters may desert him at the next General Election if the Government persists in refusing a referendum.

The poll also shows that 13 per cent of Labour voters are even threatening to cross over to David Cameron's Conservatives if the Tory leader were to pledge to hold a referendum as one of his first acts as Prime Minister.

The Government went into the last General Election in 2005 promising a vote on the original EU constitution, which was defeated in referendums in France and the Netherlands later that year.

Ministers now argue that the revised treaty is not as far-reaching and no longer requires such a vote.

But the growing campaign appears to be having an effect. An ICM poll, for the Daily Mail, showed that 82 per cent of all voters, and 80 per cent of Labour supporters, want a referendum. Some 24 per cent of Labour supporters said they would be less likely to back the party in an election if they were refused a national vote.

However, if Mr Cameron promised a referendum, 23 per cent of the public would be more likely to switch to the Tories on polling day.

The survey also showed that almost six out of 10 voters believe that the EU already has too much power over Britain.

Stop moaning or leave the EU, Britain is told

Elmar Brok, a centre-Right MEP and close ally of German chancellor Angela Merkel, effectively told Britain to sign up to the so-called reforming treaty or consider pulling out of the EU.

He insisted that the new draft was substantially different from the "old" constitution and that Britain had "got what it wanted" with a series of opt-outs and "red lines".

"Gordon Brown's government has said there is no justification for a referendum and the UK should stick to this commitment," said Brok, the European parliament's representative on inter-governmental negotiations on the treaty.

"It would be very unfair of the UK if, having more or less got what it wanted in the new treaty, it would then turn round and put this to a popular vote."

Brok, a member of the European convention that drafted the old constitution, asked: "The UK got its various opt-outs so what's the problem? How would it seem to other EU member states if Britain were now to hold a referendum? For me, that would undermine the negotiations on the treaty and even go as far as to question Britain's credibility as an EU member.

"Britain is a valued member of the EU but we should perhaps remember that the treaty contains an article which gives any member state the right to leave the EU if it so wishes.

EU treaty is EU constitution by another name

"The wrapping has been changed, but not the content" - Miguel Angel Moratinos, Spanish foreign minister

William Hague condemns EU treaty

The new European Union treaty contains only 10 changes to the 250 proposals originally outlined in the former EU constitution, according to the first authoritative analysis of the English translation published yesterday.

A guide to the treaty, produced by the Conservatives, shows that, apart from presentational changes, the constitution had been brought back with a sweeping transfer of powers to Brussels over 90 per cent intact.

William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said it was "the EU constitution by another name" - after the original version was rejected by voters in France and Holland two years ago.

He quoted Miguel Angel Moratinos, the Spanish foreign minister, who reportedly said: "The wrapping has been changed, but not the content", while Bertie Ahern, the Taoiseach, said: "Thankfully, they haven't changed the substance - 90 per cent is still there."

According to the Tory analysis, the new treaty will create an EU president; an EU foreign minister in all but name with a diplomatic service; a single legal personality, enabling the EU to sign treaties; new powers for the European Commission, Court of Justice and European Parliament and 60 vetoes lost.

Mr Hague said the Government's so-called "red lines", protecting vital national interests, were badly holed. Foreign policy protection was based on a declaration, which was not legally binding and might be meaningless.

The charter of fundamental rights might still be applied by via judgments by EU judges. The EU would gain powers on criminal law, including a European arrest warrant, and a European "FBI".+

EU treaty threat to Britain

...the Foreign Office listed 50 different areas where member states will lose their veto if the treaty is agreed.

Euro treaty is a threat to Britain, warns Labour MP who wrote it

The revived EU constitution will pave the way for the first European 'government' with sweeping powers over Britain, one of its original architects warned yesterday.

The Prime Minister would be forced to represent the interests of the union rather than the UK under the terms of the deal, said former Labour minister Gisela Stuart.

Her warning came as the Conservatives claimed the agreement would see the biggest sacrifice of Britain's rights to block EU proposals in a single treaty - and could even allow Brussels to seize control of North Sea oil and gas reserves.

In a Parliamentary written answer, the Foreign Office listed 50 different areas where member states will lose their veto if the treaty is agreed. These include transport, energy, tourism, civil protection, space, research and common commercial policy.

Eurosceptic backbencher John Redwood, who tabled the question in the Commons, said the EU was grasping the power to force the sharing of North Sea oil and gas in the event of a crisis in energy supply.

"It's easy to envisage circumstances of scarcity when the rest of the EU says this ought to be a
common resource," he said.+

EU to grab more power over citizen's lives than national governments

...emerging is nothing less than the grand design whereby Europe is to be given a new form of supranational government...

If Gordon Brown forces this EU treaty on us, you can kiss goodbye to democracy

For more than 60 years, there has been no more potent symbol of the central part Britain played in shaping the architecture of the post-war world than the fact that we are one of only five countries with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

As much as anything, this has allowed Britain to continue playing a key role at the centre of global politics.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that there has been widespread dismay at the revelation that Gordon Brown's highly influential new Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown cannot wait to see Britain giving up that permanent seat at the UN in favour of a delegate representing the European Union.

Lord Malloch-Brown, until recently the UN's deputy secretary-general, declares himself a 'big fan' of Britain's seat being handed over to the EU.

And this, in itself, is just part of the plan proposed by the new EU constitutional treaty - that the EU should have its own foreign minister (or 'High Representative') who will act on the world stage as foreign minister on behalf of all the EU's 27 member states.

In fact, the idea that we should give up the power to make our own foreign policy in favour of an EU foreign ministry, with its own diplomatic service, is not even half of what this new treaty proposes.

Ploughing through its 145 dense pages, what we see emerging is nothing less than the grand design whereby Europe is to be given a new form of supranational government, with far more powers over the lives of the EU's 480 million citizens than will remain with any national government.

Nothing reveals this more vividly than the extraordinary new status to be given at the centre of this new government to a body known as the European Council.

It is this body that has already agreed the exact wording of the new treaty, and which has, in effect, ordered that it should be rammed through in less than three months without a word being changed.

This in itself is wholly without precedent. All the previous treaties which built up the powers of the EU resulted from months of negotiation between national governments.

But on this treaty, governments are given no choice. They are obliged simply to accept what they were told to accept by the European Council in June.

Just 12 weeks to stop Britain becoming part of a new country called the EU

"Time is not on our side. If we fail to come together, we will have failed those who look to us for a lead in restoring democracy,..." - Paul Sykes

Millionaire urges unity in EU referendum fight

A multi-millionaire businessman has issued a rallying call for members of all parties to unite in a campaign to force Gordon Brown to hold a referendum over the new European Union treaty.

Paul Sykes said that the British people had just 12 weeks to stop Britain becoming part of "a new country called the European Union".

Mr Sykes, a self-made man, philanthropist and eurosceptic, said: "Time is not on our side. If we fail to come together, we will have failed those who look to us for a lead in restoring democracy, we will have failed our fellow countrymen and women, and we will have failed our country."

He believes that Mr Brown, like Tony Blair, has reneged on a Labour Party election pledge from 2005 to hold a referendum on the EU treaty. Mr Sykes is a founder member and substantial financial backer of Speakout, a non-party-political group which campaigns for repatriation of powers and a referendum on the EU treaty.

Sources close to Mr Sykes say he has spent more than £5 million in the past decade supporting various anti-EU causes.

Mr Sykes said: "Back in the Nineties most of the various anti-EU groups united to form a common front against a common enemy - the single currency. The campaign was deliberately non-party-political, it used some of the biggest names in showbusiness to get the message across to the public and it forced the issue to the top of the media agenda.

"It is time, once more, to form a common front for the various lobby groups, think-tanks and campaigning organisations that give diversity and strength to the eurosceptic movement to combine their energies into a single campaign."

Mr Sykes wants all eurosceptic groups, including Open Europe, an independent think tank, to join with politicians from all parties and captains of industry. "We need to put our petty divisions to one side and to put the great theological debates on hold. What unites us is much, much more than that which divides us," he said.+

EU treaty is almost exactly the same as the rejected constitution

It is now drawn so widely that there is virtually nothing which cannot be regarded as an EU objective,...

Christopher Booker's notebook

The publication last week in Brussels of the first official English text of the EU treaty confirms what everyone except Gordon Brown and the Foreign Office has been saying - that the new 277-page treaty is almost exactly the same as the old constitution. However, amid the dawning realisation that the attempt to ram through this treaty in 10 weeks is an immense new EU power grab, one crucial feature has attracted little notice - not least because to grasp it one must put together a series of articles scattered through the text.

In effect, the new treaty formally sets up the body known as the European Council as the government of Europe. It was the European Council which in June took an unprecedented step, not only deciding the treaty's text in advance but issuing a "mandate" that scarcely a word can be changed by that intergovernmental conference which is to present it for final signature in October.

The first point to note is that this treaty for the first time formally includes the European Council among "the Union's institutions" (Article 9). The European Council is not to be confused with the Council of Ministers (which has lately, very confusingly, renamed itself "the Council of the European Union"). It was originally

set up in 1974 as a series of regular informal get-togethers between heads of government, as suggested by Jean Monnet, the mastermind behind the entire "European project", although he called it "the provisional government of Europe".

Since then these meetings of the European Council (still often misleadingly referred to as "summits") have become arguably the most important engine of the EU's political integration. But only now is the council being formally incorporated into the EU's structure. This is not least significant since, as the new treaty makes clear, when the heads of government meet in council they are no longer to represent their own countries. Like the members of all other "Union institutions", their first loyalty will now be to the EU. To "promote its values, advance its objectives, serve its interests" takes precedence over any national loyalty.

Turn back to Article 3 of the new treaty, which sets out the "objectives of the Union", and we see that it has been extended since the draft constitution. It is now drawn so widely that there is virtually nothing which cannot be regarded as an EU objective, and the council's prime function is to promote those objectives. As this and other parts of the treaty make clear, the Union will have power to shape and decide policy in almost every field, from defence and foreign affairs to how national economies should be run.

Furthermore, if the union wishes to take any powers not specifically authorised by the treaty, it will be able to do so under a new version of Article 308. Until now this applied only to measures needed to promote the "common market", but its new wording amounts to a blank cheque. It will be allowed new powers over anything it wants, in accordance with those all-embracing "objectives of the union". One of the biggest potential bombshells is hidden away in Article 262, which says that, by decision of the European Council, the EU "may establish new categories of own resources". In other words, it will have the power to levy its own taxes.

What all this amounts to is that the European Union finally wishes to set itself up as the supreme government of Britain and 26 other countries, with unlimited powers over every aspect of our lives: a government we cannot dismiss and which is unaccountable. It is nothing less than a complete coup d'etat. And Gordon Brown wishes to see this imposed on us without allowing us a referendum, in direct breach of a promise on which he was elected, and now on the basis of the transparent lie that it has no bearing on our constitutional rights. It should be enough to blow the minds of everyone in Britain.+

Full article;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/05/nbook105.xml

Tories discover the EU treaty will allow extension of powers

"The red lines are unravelling by the day, every time we get more detail about this." - William Hague

Britain's "red lines" in the EU treaty negotiations are "unravelling by the day", say the Conservatives.

Ministers say Britain has secured control over human and social rights, foreign policy and tax and benefits.

They argue that the "opt-outs" mean there is no need for a referendum on the draft treaty.

But shadow foreign secretary William Hague said all vetoes, apart from defence could be axed, and opt-outs did not offer sufficient protection.

The new treaty is planned to replace the failed EU constitution, rejected by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005, and is expected to be finalised later this year.

The Tories say there should be a referendum because the government had promised one on the constitution, and it is essentially the same thing.

The government argues it is not necessary because Britain's "red lines" have not been crossed.

But Mr Hague told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that a "ratchet clause" in the draft treaty would allow the EU to extend its powers further in the future, without having to draw up a new treaty.

"All of those vetoes other than over defence can be abolished by agreements between European governments in future, without having to go through the whole process of negotiating a fresh treaty or ratifying that in any formal way," he said.

"The red lines are unravelling by the day, every time we get more detail about this.

"For instance there is a declaration attached to the treaty that is supposed to protect our independence in foreign policy but it now turns out that is not legally binding."

And he said the opt-out on the Charter of Fundamental Rights would only extend to "certain areas of law" and its validity was disputed by the European Court of Justice.+

Clamour for a referendum on the EU treaty/constitution grows

"A lot of people are very angry" - Neil O'Brien Director of Open Europe

Leading figures from trade and industry, politics and trade unions are joining calls for a referendum.

Lord Young of Open Europe said, Open Europe should be prepared to fund its own private referendum conducted by the Electoral Reform Society if Brown continues to deny the people a referendum on the treaty.

Neil O'Brien, the group's director, said: "We will work with anyone on this. A lot of people are very angry."

Gisela Stuart, Labour, the MP for Birmingham Edgbaston who is a senior member of a group of up to 40 rebel Labour MPs, says that Brown can prove what he means when he talks about wanting to renew democracy by giving the people a referendum.

Some of the larger trade unions, Tory eurosceptics and Leading figures of industry are joining the rapidly increasing calls for a referendum.

A senior Labour MP today launches a blistering attack on Gordon Brown for reneging on a pledge to hold a referendum on the new European Union treaty. Gisela Stuart, the MP for Birmingham Edgbaston and a former junior health minister, attacks her party's "rubbish" handling of the issue in an article in The Sunday Telegraph. "One of Tony Blair's last acts was to renege on a promise and it is almost unbelievable that one of Gordon Brown's first has been to do the same," she writes. "There is still time for Gordon Brown to put this right.+

Brown's deceit over EU treaty exposed by letter from President of EU Parliament

“We should have the confidence to ask the people.” Gisela Stuart MP for Birmingham Edgbaston

Designed to preserve the provisions of the rejected constitution

Hans-Gert Poettering, president of the European Parliament has admitted that the EU treaty was designed to preserve the provisions of the EU constitution which had been rejected by voters in some EU countries. The revelation comes in a letter to Giscard d’Estaing who designed the rejected EU constitution. He, Hans-Gert Poettering says the measures taken are still those of Valery Giscard.

Among the examples he gives of the preserved provisions of the original constitution are;

· The (EU) ‘High Representative’ will take up the competences granted to the Union Foreign Affairs Minister;

· the majority of measures taken in the field of common foreign and security policy at the 2004 IGC, remain unchanged.

Mark Francois shadow Minister for Europe said "Just about the only person in Europe who still claims that the EU treaty is not the same as the old rejected Constitution is Gordon Brown....Now in a letter to the man who wrote the original Constitution, the President of the European Parliament admits that the new Treaty has been designed especially to hide the fact that the Constitution's back from the people."

In the Commons, Gisela Stuart MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, said it was extremely misleading to suggest that the Treaty gave more power back to member states than the abandoned constitution. And suggested, “We should have the confidence to ask the people.”+

EU Glossocracy and its glossocrats.

...the government of the word, by the word and for the word.

Why the European Union Must Go

...
EU ministers see themselves as political architects of a superpower in the making. By participating in the EU, they can also free themselves from scrutiny of their actions by elected national parliaments.

According to Coughlan, "the great bulk of European laws are never debated at council of minister level, but are formally rubber-stamped if agreement has been reached further down amongst the civil servants on the 300 council sub-committees or the 3,000 or so committees that are attached to the commission."

EU integration represents "a gradual coup by government executives against legislatures, and by politicians against the citizens who elect them." This process is now sucking the reality of power from "traditional government institutions, while leaving these still formally intact. They still keep their old names — parliament, government, supreme court — so that their citizens do not get too alarmed, but their classical functions have been transformed."

Tony Blair, in one of his final interviews as British PM, stated that "The British people are sensible enough to know that, even if they have a certain prejudice about Europe, they don't expect their government necessarily to share it or act upon it." In other words: The British people should be sensible enough to know that their government will ignore their wishes and interests if it deems this appropriate, as it frequently has in its immigration policies.

The European Union is basically an attempt – a rather successful one so far – by the elites in European nation states to cooperate on usurping power, bypassing and eventually abolishing the democratic system, a slow-motion coup d'état. Ideas such as "promoting peace" are used as a pretext for this, a bone to fool the gullible masses and veil what is essentially a naked power grab. It works because the national parliaments still appear to be functioning as before.

This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the EU: It is increasingly dictatorial, but it is a stealth dictatorship, whose most dangerous elements are largely invisible in everyday life. What the average person sees is that the EU makes it easier for him to travel to other countries without a passport, and use the same Euro currency from Arctic Lapland in Finland to Spain's Canary Islands off the African coast.

This appears convenient, and on some level it is. But it comes at the price of hollowing out the power of elected institutions and placing it into the hands of an unelected oligarchy conspiring to usurp ever more power and rearrange the lives of half a billion people without their consent. That's a steep price to pay for a common currency. But people do not clearly see this is their daily lives, and seeing is believing. The enemy that clearly identifies himself as such is sometimes less dangerous than the enemy who is diffused and vague, since you cannot easily mobilize against him.

Alexander Boot, a Russian by birth, left for the West in the 1970s, only to discover that the West he was seeking was no longer there. Boot believes that democracy, or in the words of Abraham Lincoln, the government of the people, by the people and for the people, has been replaced by glossocracy, the government of the word, by the word and for the word.

Glossocracy can be traced back at least to the slogan of the French Revolution in 1789, "Freedom, equality, brotherhood." As it turned out, this meant mass terror, martial law and authoritarian rule. The more meaningless the word, the more useful it is for glossocrats. This is why the notion of Multiculturalism has been so useful, since it sounds vaguely positive, but ambiguous and could be used to cover up vast changes implemented with little public debate. The impulse behind Political Correctness consists of twisting the language we use, enforcing new words or changing the meaning of old ones, turning them into "weapons of crowd control" by demonizing those who fail to comply with the new definitions. The European Union, a French-led enterprise, is currently the world's pre-eminent and most unadulterated glossocracy.

According to Boot, a dictator whose power is based on bullets is afraid of bullets. A glossocrat whose power is based on words is afraid of words. The EU has drawn up guidelines advising government spokesmen to use "non-offensive" phrases when talking about terrorism. The word Jihad should preferably not be used at all, or should be explained as a misunderstood term meaning peaceful struggle against oneself. These recommendations are being implemented. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in an attempt to avoid offending Muslims, in the summer of 2007 banned his ministers from mentioning "Muslim" and "terrorism" in the same breath, following attempted terror attacks staged by Muslims - including several medical doctors - in Glasgow and London.

To quote Paul Fregosi's book Jihad in the West: "The Jihad, the Islamic so-called Holy War, has been a fact of life in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Near and Middle East for more than 1300 years, but this is the first history of the Muslim wars in Europe ever to be published. Hundreds of books, however, have appeared on its Christian counterpart, the Crusades, to which the Jihad is often compared, although they lasted less than two hundred years and unlike the Jihad, which is universal, were largely but not completely confined to the Holy Land. Moreover, the Crusades have been over for more than 700 years, while a Jihad is still going on in the world. The Jihad has been the most unrecorded and disregarded major event of history. It has, in fact, been largely ignored. For instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the Crusades eighty times more space than the Jihad."

At the same time as the memory of 1300 years of almost continuous Jihad warfare and Islamic aggression is gradually being erased from Western school textbooks, "Islamophobia" is being promoted as a serious challenge. By substituting "Jihad" with "Islamophobia," emphasis is moved from Europeans defending themselves against Islamic violence to innocent Muslims suffering from prejudice and racism. An alternate word thus creates an alternate reality.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, apparently afraid of what he perceives as growing opposition to the EU project, thinks Eurosceptics are "psychological terrorists." So, European leaders won't use the word "terrorist" about Muslims supporting suicide bombers, but they have finally found somebody deserving the label: Europeans who oppose the EU.+

Brown in denial over the EU treaty/constitution

“The Irish prime minister says 90 per cent of the Constitution remains in the treaty.
The Spanish foreign minister says it’s 98 per cent. What figure would the Prime Minister put on it?” - Mr Cameron

BROWN 'RUNNING SCARED' OF EU TREATY REFERENDUM

By Macer Hall, Political Editor

GORDON Brown was yesterday accused of breaking a “personal” promise to give voters a referendum on Europe.

The Prime Minister clashed with Tory leader David Cameron over the Government’s refusal to give the public a say on the European Union Treaty.

During heated exchanges at Prime Minister’s Questions, Mr Brown repeatedly declined to say how close the treaty is to the failed EU Constitution.

“Why is he afraid to trust the people and hold that referendum?” taunted Mr Cameron .

...

The Tory leader told Mr Brown: “The Irish prime minister says 90 per cent of the Constitution remains in the treaty.

“The Spanish foreign minister says it’s 98 per cent. What figure would the Prime Minister put on it?” But Mr Brown hit back by accusing Mr Cameron of ditching his drive for the political centre ground and caving in to the Tory right.

Tories claim the treaty fundamentally changes Britain’s relationship with the EU and therefore should be subject to a vote.+

Full article

Revolt by Labour MPs over denial of treaty referendum

"I thought that the commitment we made to a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty when Tony Blair was Prime Minister was a good one,... Given that Gordon Brown is committed to even greater participation of people in decision making, I think the case is even stronger now." - Gisela Stuart, the Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston

EU referendum revolt among Labour MPs

A group of Labour MPs has begun pushing for a referendum on the new European Union Treaty in the first serious revolt against Gordon Brown's leadership.

Up to 40 are considering backing a backbench campaign for a national vote - directly opposing official government policy - with the aim of killing off the treaty for good.

With the Tories and some Liberal Democrats also backing a referendum, the pressure on Mr Brown to give the British people a say is mounting. More than 23,000 Daily Telegraph readers have signed a petition calling for a vote.

Ian Davidson, an MP close to Mr Brown, who was heavily involved in co-ordinating Labour opposition to British entry into the euro in 2001, is one of those behind the plans.

Gisela Stuart, the Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, intends to demand a referendum in a debate in the Commons today.

Miss Stuart - who was appointed as the Government's representative on the European convention that drew up plans for the constitution - said it was wrong for Mr Brown to reject a national vote.

"I thought that the commitment we made to a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty when Tony Blair was Prime Minister was a good one," she said.

"Given that Gordon Brown is committed to even greater participation of people in decision making, I think the case is even stronger now."

Kate Hoey, the Labour MP for Vauxhall, said: "There is no doubt there should be a referendum."

Another Labour MP involved in the campaign said it was disgraceful that the Government was claiming that the new treaty was less far reaching than its predecessor - the Constitutional Treaty - and therefore did not merit a referendum.

"It is being spun by the Government as a different treaty in a way that is totally dishonest," said the MP.

A hard core of a dozen Labour MPs is said be totally committed, while about 30 are considering signing up.

Already one of the major trade unions, the GMB, has come out in favour of a referendum, while the Transport and General Workers Union opposes the treaty.

Yesterday at Prime Minister's Questions, David Cameron, the Tory leader, challenged Mr Brown to say how much of the old Constitutional Treaty - which was killed off by No votes in France and the Netherlands in 2005 - remained, in its replacement.

"The Irish prime minister says 90 per cent of the constitution remains in the treaty. The Spanish foreign minister says it's 98 per cent. What figure would the Prime Minister put on it?'' Mr Cameron asked.

He added: "He says he wants to involve people in the decisions affecting their lives. Yet on the key test of whether to honour the commitment he personally gave to hold the referendum he has failed. Why is he afraid to trust the people and hold that referendum?''+

First translation of EU treaty reveals shocking similarity to the rejected EU constitution

“The substance of the constitution is preserved. That is a fact.” - German Chancellor Angela Merkel

‘In other words, 96% of the text is the same as the rejected Constitution.’ - extract

“The substance of the constitution is preserved. That is a fact.” - German Chancellor Angela Merkel

“The good thing is...that all the symbolic elements are gone, and that which really matters – the core – is left.” - The Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen

“A great part of the content of the European Constitution is captured in the new treaties” - Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero

“Only cosmetic changes have been made and the basic document remains the same.” - The Czech President

“It’s essentially the same proposal as the old Constitution.” - European Commissioner Margot Wallstrom

“They haven't changed the substance - 90 per cent of it is still there”. - Taoiseach Bertie Ahern

First translation and analysis of new version of the Constitutional Treaty: 96% of articles are copied from the original EU Constitution

Responding to the publication of the new version of the European Constitution and the launch of the intergovernmental conference, Open Europe has produced the first English language translation of the new version of the Constitutional Treaty, and the first analysis of its contents - which suggests that it is almost exactly the same as the original European Constitution.

· The analysis finds that only 10 out of 250 proposals in the new treaty are different from the proposals in the original EU Constitution. In other words, 96% of the text is the same as the rejected Constitution.

· The Government is refusing to produce an official English translation of the text until after Parliament rises for the summer. This follows a blanket refusal to discuss its negotiating position with MPs.

”We never expected that they would simply bring back all the text from the old constitution. All they seem to have done is renumber the articles. From this point forward it’s going to become absolutely impossible for Gordon Brown to resist a referendum, because this is exactly the same text that he promised a referendum on before.”

“If Brown now tries to carry on pretending that this is somehow a different document, it will be one of the most audacious political lies in the last couple of decades. It would be simply ludicrous.”

“Despite the fact that it has not been made available in English, we have been able to translate the text from the French quite quickly because we could mostly just cut and paste the English text from the old Constitution. The con they are trying to carry out here is just stunning. This is the cut-and-paste Constitution.”

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

ReferendumList.org launched

So we can agree that the forthcoming EU treaty is going to be a big serious thing for the future of our countries. And we can also agree that elected politicians hold the power they wield, at least theoretically in trust. So what can a concerned citizen do about the thought that the European political elites have decided both singularly and pluraly to disenfranchise their populations by driving ahead with the Constitution, despite its explicit rejection in referenda?

Well this is something.

In a novel experience for this blog it is going to a joint venture with the proprietor of the Devil's Kitchen. Today we have written to every MP the following letter,

"Dear Member of Parliament,

In mid-October, the EU aims to have finished writing the Reform Treaty which will signed by Gordon Brown at the EU Summit in December. Mr Brown has repeatedly refused to honour the Labour Government's manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on the proposed Constitution, which nearly all informed Continental observers agree, the Reform Treaty is in substance.

According top a recent ICM Poll (21 June 2007), overall 86% of voters want a referendum.83% of Labour voters want a vote to be held on the text, as do 88% of Lib-Dem and Tory voters.88% of trade union members want a referendum.

We are running a research program into elected MPs' and selected PPCs' attitudes towards a referendum, and the results will be displayed on a searchable website: ReferendumList.org

Our questions to you are as follows:

1. Do you support the people's call for a Referendum on the EU Treaty?
2. Will you actively call for and support a referendum in the House of Commons?

If an MP does not reply, it will be assumed that they are not in favour of a referendum and that they are in favour of Parliamentary ratification only.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Mounsey
Gawain Towler
ReferendumList.org

So if you want to know what they are up to, whether they follow their respective party lines and so on then come along to ReferendumList and find out.

In the following weeks we will also be writing to all declared candidates so that, in the event of an early election the constituents will be apprised of the views of the candidates grubbing for their votes.

So please take on of the buttons to put on your websites, let people know and use this resource as well as you wish.+

Gordon Brown defies EU referendum calls