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After eight years of popular rejection, political cajoling, and endless hand-wringing, the EU has finally ratified the Lisbon Treaty without a shred of democratic legitimacy or public support.
The Treaty contains all the essential components of an EU superstate, including a single legal personality, a permanent EU presidency, an EU-wide public prosecutor, and the position of foreign minister in all but name. The Lisbon Treaty shifts power away from nation-states to Brussels in critical areas of policymaking -- such as defense, security, foreign affairs, criminal justice, judicial cooperation, and energy . . . It restricts the sovereign right of EU member states to independently determine foreign policy and poses a unique threat to the Anglo-American Special Relationship. Above all, it is a treaty that underscores the EU's ambition to become a global power and challenge American leadership on the world stage.Testimony of Sally McNamara To The Committee on the Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Europe, of the U.S. House of Representatives, 15 Dec. 2009
The EU Superstate -the result of the world's slowest coup - became official within the past month. As I have written before, it is the world's largest experiment in anti-democratic socialism. It is an experiment that is destroying the UK demographically and, quite likely, irreparably, through open borders immigration. Britain's socialist Labour government has further contributed to the mass immigration in order to shore up their power base and, through multiculturalism, to destroy the traditional foundations of British society. Melanie Phillips, in an article a few months ago, called Labour's acts nothing less than "treason." That said, both Labour and the "conservative" Tory party have been fully complicit in Britain's national suicide. And as recent as last month, the Tory leader, David Cameron, all but announced that he will not challenge Labour's coup in transferring British sovereignty to the EU without a promised referendum of the British voters. For the rank and file of Britain, neither major party offers actual representation. There is a near complete disconnect between the ruled and the rulers that British democracy, as currently constituted, is systemically unable to cure.
But the deal is done. We no longer can deal individually with the UK, France, Germany, or any of the other 24 EU members. All are now provinces of the EU - (and as an aside, the UK has actually been subdivided into two separate provinces). This is problematic on many fronts. First and foremost is the fact that this EU superstate is no more a legitimately elected democratic government than is the Ahmedinejad regime in Iran. And that is the tip of the iceberg, as Ms. McNamara, quoted at the top of this post, explained in her testimony to Congress:
The Lisbon Treaty was born from the twice rejected European Constitution, which was voted down in public referenda held in France and Holland in 2005. The Lisbon Treaty itself was rejected in a referendum held in Ireland in 2008, until Dublin was forced into holding a second referendum in October 2009. Ireland's EU Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy stated that if the Lisbon Treaty had been put to a public vote across the European Union, it would have been rejected by 95 percent of EU member states.
In one of the biggest acts of political betrayal in modern British history, the Labour Party denied the British public a long-promised referendum on the Treaty, despite overwhelming support for a public plebiscite. The widespread lack of public support and legitimacy suffered by this Treaty should be of concern to all institutions who uphold the democratic values of openness, honesty, rule of law and transparency.
As with past EU treaties, one specific policy area has been heralded as critical to further European integration. The Single European Act brought about the Single Market and the Maastricht Treaty instituted the single European currency. Undoubtedly, the major success of the Lisbon Treaty will be the EU's power-grab of foreign and defense policy, which is vital to realizing the EU's ambition of becoming the world's first supranational superstate.
The EU boasts that the Lisbon Treaty compels member states to speak with a single voice on external relations, and with a single legal personality Brussels will now sign international agreements on behalf of all member states. The Treaty formally abolishes the EU's pillar structure that provided for nation states to maintain the lead role in foreign affairs. Brussels' elites are claiming to finally have one telephone line to Europe.
All of this may sound enticing to the United States, which has long called for Europe to shoulder a greater share of the burden for global security. However, it is worth considering what has taken place to date as a forewarning of what is to come.
Prior to the Lisbon Treaty, the EU already had an extensive sanctions arsenal through the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) but has repeatedly chosen not to use them. The EU has consistently frustrated the prospect of tougher sanctions against Iran, and has acted, in the words of Joschka Fischer, as a "protective shield" for Tehran against the United States. The EU even rolled out the red carpet for brutal Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe in 2007, officially suspending its own travel ban to welcome him to Lisbon. In Afghanistan, the EU has been nothing more than a bit-part player with a police training mission criticized by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly as too small, underfunded, slow to deploy, inflexible, and largely restricted to Kabul. . . .
The Lisbon Treaty's ability to rein in its members from taking independent action should also concern Washington. Under the Lisbon Treaty, EU member states are now required to consult the other members before undertaking international action and to ensure that their decisions are in line with EU interests. Giving the EU the ability to supersede the autonomy of its member states in areas of foreign policy--such as the decision to join the United States in military action--will seriously impair the ability of America's allies in Europe to stand alongside the United States where and when they choose to do so. It will see America isolated and facing hostility from an organization which is designed to serve as a counterweight to American "hyperpower."
The Lisbon Treaty poses the biggest threat to national sovereignty in Europe since the Second World War. It erodes the legal sovereignty of European nation-states and hands power to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats and foreign-service officers far removed from member states. It duplicates NATO's role and function and decouples America from Europe, killing the concept of indivisible security which has kept the peace in Europe for 60 years.
The institutional and political constraints imposed by the Lisbon Treaty will severely limit Britain's ability to build international alliances and independently determine its foreign policy. The biggest damage would be done to Britain's enduring alliance with the United States. . . .
Further, the imposition of qualified majority voting in 40 new areas represents a significant loss of sovereignty for member states, and a removal of Britain's ability to block the most egregious aspects of EU policy. For example, French President Nicolas Sarkozy successfully removed the EU's policy commitment to free and undistorted competition from the Lisbon Treaty. Sarkozy did not even attempt to hide his intention in doing so: "The word 'protection' is no longer a taboo," he said. The EU has already been described by the International Herald Tribune as the "global antitrust regulator." The Lisbon Treaty confirms the EU's move away from the Anglo-American free market economic model, toward a statist sclerotic Rhineland model.
It is vital that the United States recognize the value in dealing with its enduring allies on a bilateral level. On issues of foreign affairs, defense, security, justice, and home affairs -- including counterterrorism cooperation and intelligence sharing -- bilateral relations are especially important to the U.S. However, in its desire to create a United States of Europe, the EU has pursued policies which downgrade the possibility of traditional alliance-building by the United States. Replacing individual European allies with a single EU Foreign Minister means inevitably, even if unintentionally, American interests will lose in the discussions that matter most. . . .
Europe doesn't need a constitution. The European Union is not the United States of Europe. The EU is a grouping of 27 nation-states, each with its own culture, language, heritage, and national interests. The EU works best as an economic market that facilitates the free movement of goods, services, and people. It is far less successful as a political entity that tries to force its member states to conform to an artificial common identity. The Lisbon Treaty will bring Europe much closer to the French vision of a protected, integrated European Union than the British vision of a free-trading, intergovernmental Europe. It will do huge damage to American interests in Europe; and contrary to any democratic tradition it is a self-amending treaty which can aggrandize power not explicitly conferred on it by the Treaties. As Lady Thatcher states in her seminal book Statecraft: "That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever embarked upon will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era.
That the citizens of these 27 countries have allowed this coup to occur after repeatedly voting against it utterly mystifies me. I do not understand - and likely never will - why there is not blood filling the streets over this.
I don't know if I agree with PM Thatcher. The suicidal policies of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) crowd - embraced by the EU as a means to accrete power (and even written into their constitution as settled fact) - may in fact give the EU a run for its money in the competition the most "unnecessary and irrational" projects of our era.
I would add a further note. Everyone should study how the EU coup came about. It was incremental movements towards the accretion of power over a period of decades. I see exactly the same thing being attempted by the UN through their "balls to the wall" push to see international treaties signed on AGW that are to be administered by and through the UN. I am anything but a conspiracy theorist. That said, my belief is based on the obvious parallels between how the EU accomplished its anti-democratic coup, slowly accreting power over six decades, and how the UN is pushing AGW. These people are dangerous.
