[ILUG] EU constitution

[Daniel Goldsmith]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 10:51:46 +0000, Colm Buckley <colm at tuatha.org> wrote:
> On 10 Mar 2005, at 10:42, Colm Buckley wrote:

> > [babies and bathwater]
> 
> That was perhaps a little unnecessarily facetious.  What I meant was:
> the Constitution in its current form was arrived at after a long
> process of negotiation and consultation between very many interested
> parties. 

The current proposed Constitution was not arrived at by any such process.

The European Convention sat in pleanary and closed session under the
leadership of Valery Giscard D'Estang from Feb 2002 to July 2003 to
formulate a Draft Treaty. Many, if not all, of the proposals for
institutional reform were propounded and accepted at the closed
sessions or at what is euphemistically referred to as 'working
lunches'. This did meet with a number of interested parties but has
been soundly criticised for the manner in which it was run as a
personal fiefdom by D'Estaing.

The proposals of the Convention were then put to the InterGovernmental
Conference -firstly in October 2003 during the Italian presidency,
then finally during the Irish presidencey. The IGC is  the heads of
government of each of the member states, meeting in closed session
without release of notes, memorandae or records, save press releases.
The final  meeting went on, as you may recall, for quite some time,
with Bertie doing his negotiator schtick. The final document
promulgated by that meeting was most emphatically not what had been
proposed by the Commitee.

>  It contains much that is good - and, unfortunately, some that
> is bad.  On balance, I think it is a significant improvement on the
> current situation, and this is why I support it.

I feel that the constitution as presented represents a very real
threat to the independence and sovereignty of nations, particulalry in
the extension of EU collective responsibility to all areas not
otherwise explicitly reserved to the 'members'. The present situation
is founded upon voluntary membership of a collective union, the
contitution removeds the right of a sovereign state to secede from the
union without the say-so of that Union. That is why i reject it.

> Given that it is not
> possible at this stage to remove individual lines from the Constitution
> (amendments are, of course, possible in the future), we end up with the
> choice of accepting the Constitution as it stands, including this line
> on IP, or rejecting it in its entirety.  My call on this choice is that
> we'll be better off with the Constitution than without.

Reminds me of rms' tale of the chef - Chef decides to ask the
animals:"What sauce would you like to be cooked with?" The chicken
responded, "Actually I'd rather not be cooked at all", but the chef
said, "That's outside the discussion--all you can decide is which
sauce."

Regards,

Daniel