Europe’s
Constitutional Treaty: A Threat to Democracy and
How to Avoid It
By
Declan J. Ganley
www.libertas.eu
Volume 4, Number
5
December 2003
Declan J.
Ganley is an Irish entrepreneur and founder of
wireless broadband and cable TV businesses in
Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. In the
early 1990s he built what became the largest
private forestry company in the former Soviet
Union. He serves on the Futures Group of the
Irish Government’s Information Society
Commission.
Many observers view former
president of France Valery Giscard d’Estaing as
having labored tirelessly in the interests of
his nation and Europe over the course of his
life of public service. But Giscard d’Estaing
now presides over the Brussels convention
charged with producing a draft constitution for
the future of Europe, the very concept of which
is an attack on democracy in Europe and a
subversion of Europe’s citizenry.
“Democracy” derives from the
ancient Greek word for “the rule of the people.”
Invented in Europe, its ideals have spread to
the far corners of the globe. It has become our
way of life in Europe and something we take for
granted. It cannot be taken from us or relegated
to the role of symbolic chattel while Giscard
d’Estaing and his convention transfer its key
functions to Brussels. Throughout Europe’s
history, those who attempt to take from the
people that which is theirs ultimately fail; one
can only hope that the convention’s usurpation
of the European agenda seems similarly destined
to fail.
Benjamin Franklin famously
said, “Any society that would give up a little
liberty to gain a little security will deserve
neither and lose both.” European citizens must
pay attention to and act on the draft
constitution for the future of Europe that the
convention’s logrolling has produced. Unless
they do, a serious assault will have been
carried out by the European elite represented by
the convention, which will further encroach on
Europe’s libertarian democratic society and its
ability to hold those who govern accountable for
their actions. If the convention succeeds,
Europe’s future may be headed down a very
dangerous path.
The draft constitution
represents the political bureaucracy’s attempt
to consolidate its hold over the decision-making
process in the EU, which affects Europeans’
daily lives in fundamental ways. Should it come
to pass, the constitution would call for a
presidential head of Europe, in the role of the
president of the European Council, who will have
global recognition as president of the Union, in
whose election the people will have no say.
Their vote and opinion are neither required nor
desired.
A foreign affairs minister
would oversee the tract in the draft, that
“member states shall actively and unreservedly
support the Union’s common foreign and security
policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual
solidarity. They shall refrain from action
contrary to the Union’s interests or likely to
undermine its effectiveness.” Of course, the
(non-popularly elected) president and his or her
foreign minister would be unlikely to display
what Chirac earlier this year identified as the
“bad behavior” and signs of being “badly brought
up” of the annoying, democratically elected
leaders of Central and Eastern European states.
The president and minister
will be hand-picked by the Brussels bureaucracy.
The European minister for foreign affairs, who
will represent European interests to the world,
will not have been appointed by a president
elected by Europeans. It is already the case
that Europeans did not elect those responsible
for the policy that underpins the Euro. The
governor of the European Central Bank is neither
directly nor indirectly accountable to the
citizenry. This means that Western Europeans
live in a far less accountable society than they
did only a decade or so ago. Sweden’s rejection
of the Euro in its recent referendum is a sign
that Europeans recognise this fact and require
accountability from those setting monetary and
other policy. The many areas over which they
have ceded or will be ceding power to Brussels
include employment regulation, industry,
transport, communications, justice, health,
agriculture, fisheries, and important aspects of
defence. The national veto is to be abolished in
no fewer than 50 new areas, including
immigration and asylum. The draft constitution
also ratifies that EU law will have primacy over
member states.
Bureaucracy vs. Democracy
Notice a trend here? Our
democratic rights and liberty, values that so
many Europeans and others have fought and died
for, are at risk. Ideals born of revolutionary
France are betrayed. Our liberty and democracy
are interwoven: subverting them could undo the
success of liberal democracy in Europe to date.
Superannuated or failed politicians with
sinecures atop a multiplying bureaucracy in
Brussels have prospered for too long off the
backs of hard-working Europeans. This latest
effort is a bridge too far.
At least one aspect of the
bureaucracy’s effort has merit, which is the
laudable goal of achieving the ever-closer union
of Europe aspired to in the 1957 Treaty of Rome.
This is a wise and desirable objective and
should be achievable. The EU has served the
people of Europe well. It is abundantly apparent
that it is capable of much more, which is why we
must jealously guard it from those that would
try to snatch its levers from us. A United
Europe could provide for European peace,
prosperity, strength, quality of life, and the
ability to build not just a better Europe but a
better and safer world. A United States of
Europe, structured properly, could benefit
Europeans and the world.
The convention that Giscard
d’Estaing has presided over these past two years
has somehow managed to tarnish the prospect for
a United Europe. It has created a perception in
the minds of millions of Europeans that European
federalism stands for centralism, inefficiency,
lack of accountability, and overreaching
control--classic big government encroaching on
the rights and sovereignty of the individual and
the last redoubt of old-style socialism writ
large. A federal Europe is a pretty good idea,
if it possessed an accountable administration
with a clear European identity and position on
the world stage; had vested in it only those key
disciplines that are best and most efficiently
managed on a European level; embraced Europe’s
diversity; and devolved as many matters as
possible to Europe’s regions. But the
Constitution for the Future of Europe does not
provide for such a Europe.
Most important, the president
of the European Council must not be elected by
the collected Prime Ministers of Europe, who
will no doubt choose from among themselves,
electing one of their retired/retiring own for
the job, where s/he will win a triple-crown
retirement plan: the parliamentary pension, the
ministerial pension, and then the EU pension.
Yet another American founding father, James
Madison said that “the censorial power is in the
people over the government and not the
government over the people.” His words ring true
for Europeans today. Europeans do not require
middlemen to interpret what is best for them.
The president of Europe must be accountable to
Europeans at the ballot box.
The European Flaw and How to Fix It
All of these goings-on in
Europe point to a current flaw in the European
system of democracy, whose structures are
failing through a combination of self-interests
and inability to adapt. These failing structures
are the embodiment of “old Europe.” Like the
creaking analog telephone systems of earlier
decades, Europe’s system of nationally
structured political parties has become a legacy
system. You can tweak and push the system
harder, you can add new parts, but what lies
underneath can no longer deliver the performance
required of it. The old “analog system” must be
discarded: European politics needs to go
digital.
It is time for the creation of
new, truly pan-European political organizations.
Looking at the United States, the historian
Clinton Rossiter said “No America without
democracy, no democracy without politics, no
politics without parties.” Similarly, in the
absence of mainstream, truly European political
parties, the European political scene has become
the plaything of special interest groups with no
broader European vision. New parties and
organizations could address Europe’s needs at
the levels where most of the decisions affecting
us are, or should be, made: the macro level in
Europe, our broader community, and at the most
local level within the regions of Europe’s
states. Europeans hold in generally low regard
most of the current political leaders in Europe,
who stumble from opinion poll to opinion poll
with little other motive than to stay in power.
In addition to protecting our
future from power grabs, pan- European parties
could start to address issues such as free
trade, security, education, quality of life,
health care, the family, an independent
judiciary, competitiveness, technology,
entrepreneurship and job creation, the
developing world, and human rights. Vaclav Havel
put it succinctly when he said of the current
structure of the European Union, “Europe speaks
to my head but it says nothing to my heart.” For
the European ideal to prosper, Europe must
become something much broader than a physical
place: it must become a living idea that others
might embrace and eventually join.
Unfortunately, the draft
constitution does not follow the true path of
constitutional liberalism that has served the
Western world so well in recent history. The
foundations of libertarianism in the Roman
Republic were slowly undone by the undermining
of Rome’s own elite. As political analyst and
Newsweek International editor
Fareed Zakaria states in his The Future of
Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad
(2003), “The lesson of Rome’s fall is that for
the rule of law and liberty to endure, you need
more than the good intentions of the rulers, for
they may change (both the intentions and the
rulers).”
The draft constitution may
prove to be a significant ingredient in what
could develop into a medium-term disaster for
Europe. Continuing down this path could lead to
the rejection of the constitution in its present
form via referenda in a small number of European
states. This may well lead to a two-tier Europe:
the “fast-track” inner core and the others. If
Germany and France stay on this course and at
the same time fail to reform their welfare
burdens, they will have no choice but to seek
shelter for their economies through trade
protectionism in order to stanch the resultant
loss of jobs and investment. Within a decade the
EU could be disintegrating into something
unpleasant and have grown farther apart from its
old ally, the United States.
Brussels has already begun its
efforts to force the constitution upon the
people of Europe. A spokesman for the European
Commission president Romano Prodi stated in
September that “if it (the constitution) is not
ratified, Europe faces the messy choice of
grinding to a halt or having to expel one of its
members.” This from a man with no mandate from
the people. Europeans have by and large become
tired of our political leadership, who are for
the most part devoid of any great vision for
Europe’s future. Many of Europe’s leaders have
taken on a distinctively grey hue. This
disillusionment in the leadership has resulted
in most people’s not noticing what has been
going on in the convention. Through the
familiar, steady drone of weekly political
coverage, a coup of sorts has been perpetrated
to snatch away Europeans’ rights.
Preventing Disaster
The forces at work within the
Europolitical elites make a momentous force
behind this power grab. Each state’s senior
socialist and centrist political figures will
call for adoption of the draft constitution as a
“reasonable compromise” and a “historic
achievement”—of which Europe has had too many
with sad consequences already. The extreme right
and fringe parties will argue against them,
which will only make the proponents look more
correct.
The convention can only be
countered with a true and fair vision for a
United Europe. Europeans who until now have kept
their views to themselves should mobilize to
stop this tide. They must overcome groupings and
parties based on legacy national organizations
to form a new organization and articulate a
clear and achievable vision for Europe’s future.
Rather than try to define itself in
contradistinction to the United States, this new
Europe must be an equal partner and influence
for the worldwide extension of justice and
liberty. Such a political party— I will for the
sake of discussion call it “Libertas”—will need
to challenge the engrained composition of the
convention in local and regional elections, as
well as running candidates at member-state and
EU levels. The old structures need shaking up.
The Intergovernmental
Conference expects to conclude its work by
December, towards having a treaty ready for
signature in May 2004. Fortunately this outcome
can be avoided. The constitution can be rejected
by referenda voters in Ireland, Denmark, and
France. Something better needs to be proposed.
It is time to map out a new and better United
Europe. When given the opportunity, Europeans
must bury the constitution of the Brussels elite
in the spot they’ll mark with an X on the ballot
paper.
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*
THE ENEMY WITHIN
*
www.eutruth.org
LATEST!
eurofacts:-5th
September,2008
Hurrah for
Libertas!
www.libertas.eu
It was
reported in the Sunday Telegraph on 20th
July 2008 that the Irish millionaire, Declan
Ganley , has disclosed far reaching plans to
give voters THROUGHOUT THE EUROPEAN UNION a
REFERENDUM on the HANDOVER of POWER to
BRUSSELS.
He is to
field more than 400 candidates in next
June's European Parliament elections in 26
countries including GREAT BRITAIN, where
voters have been side -tracked by
governments that have happily ratified the
LISBON TREATY without any democratic input
from their voters.
Great
Britain has 12 European Parliament
constituencies and will certainly be a
novelty -and a huge relief -if formerly
non-democratic endorsement of the EU
Treaties hits the buffers! The vehicle for
Mr Ganley's initiative will be his pressure
group-
LIBERTAS!
-he
claims to be well on his way to raising the
£75 million to FUND HIS PROJECT.
As the long
standing critic of the way that the EU has
concentrated power in Brussels,
AT THE
EXPENSE OF DEMOCRACY
I and very
many others will say "GREAT, bring it on".
If Mr Ganley would welcome
financial contributions from the voters in
the 26 countries then he should place
advertisements in their
NATIONAL PAPERS.
His initiative will truly put
the cat amongst the pigeons for it has been
all too easy for Europe's political elite to
ride roughshod over their peoples. His
initiative will also present UKIP with a
conundrum for it no doubt expected to do
well in Europe, next June-2009, against the
[TRAITOROUS TRIPARTITE CABAL] the three main
political parties in our country.
DAVID OWEN
Devon
[ENGLAND]
[Well! as our bulletins have
shown over the past five years we have
supported the UKIP solely because they were
the largest eurosceptic organisation with an
understood message of OUT OF THE EU. We are
now of the opinion that the UKIP have failed
their supporters with their TOO LITTLE! TOO
LATE! approach failing to mobilise the
entire eurosceptic bodies under an
INDEPENDENT LEADER of RENOWN, possibly a
military personage with the TRUE GRIT to GET
THE JOB DONE. UKIP has failed to do so and
now all their resources should be handed
over to a MAN of DESTINY who CAN SAVE the
FREEDOM loving PEOPLE OF EUROPE. POWER
MUST RETURN TO THE PEOPLE and support for Mr
Ganley and HIS and OUR JUST CAUSE - WILL
DO JUST THAT.
*
Mr Ganley will have our FULL
SUPPORT in his momentous EPIC making
decision to SAVE the PEOPLE of EUROPE and
EUROPE ITSELF.
IT ONLY NEEDS FOR EVERY
EUROSCEPTIC OF WHATEVER PARTY TO PUT PARTY
POLITICS ASIDE AND SUPPORT
LIBERTAS!
in JUNE, 2009
*
www.libertas.eu
*
SEPTEMBER-2008
[Unfortunately the high-sounding words of
Declan J.Ganley did not live up to the great
expectations that we all hoped would come
from his EU wide campaign for DEMOCRACY in
the EU. His words on camera did
not match his previous utterances to the
electorate and instead appeared to deny that
he had any intention of changing the EU.
The result was a disaster for his party and
a great disappointment to those who decided
to back his attempt to bring CHANGE within
the EU which we had stated was impossible
but we believed his statement nonetheless
and backed his party to the hilt. Feb-2010]
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