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    • Chalk One Up for the Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys

       May 30, 2005

    Amazingly, given the choice for the continued free and sovereign existence of their nation, the French actually chose NOT to surrender their sovereignty to the EU by ratifying the EU Constitution. Shocking, but true. And I have to hand it to Chirac for once. The treaty could - and would - have been ratified in a parliamentary vote but he actually let the people speak, and they spoke loudly. With 83% of the votes counted so far, 57% of the people voted no. Unfortunately, this probably does not end the attack - from the Scotsman

    But the French "godfather" of the treaty said that such a result would not be allowed to stand.

    "Those who did not vote for the constitution, we will ask them to re-vote," said Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president who led the Constitutional Convention that wrote the treaty.

    Nine of the EU member nations have ratified the treaty, but eight of those nations did so by parliamentary procedure instead of a popular vote.

    Just a few of the problems with the European Constitution are:
    - All EU law prevails over national laws and national constitutions
    - Only the EU Court, no national high court, has jurisdiction on questions of EU member state's competence.
    - In the area of Justice and Home Affairs Member States lose their competence to legislate when the Union exercises its own. This basically means that the Union only needs to adopt a piece of legislation in the area of JHA, to make the Member States lose their competence.

    The reader friendly version of the 60,000 page Constitution - as opposed to our own constitution of less than 5,000 words - can be read here.

    Updated: Via Daily Pundit, the blog EU Referendum is a great roundup of EU news, and has plenty on reaction to France's rejection of the EU Constitution.


    Posted by Laura Curtis at May 30, 2005 11:03 AM

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    Comments

    #  May 30th, 2005 12:06 PM      kris
    That EU referdum site has some great quotes:

    In this, the Daily Telegraph leader comes closest to divining the reality, declaring that: "Mere democracy won't stop the EU machine." The project was never meant to be democratic, it says.

    From the first, the EU's founding fathers understood that it needed to be immune to public opinion. The genius of Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman was to design a system in which supreme power was wielded by unelected officials, and in which the peoples were presented with a series of faits accomplis. When, in 1992, they got their first No vote in Denmark's referendum on Maastricht, our masters were too set in their ways to consider respecting the result, and so pushed on regardless. They will do the same thing today.
     
     
    #  May 30th, 2005 2:13 PM      Laura
    Of course, a lot of people voted against it because they didn't want free markets and other "western" influences to prevail - but hey, "it may be a double digit unemployment rate, out of control public spending, failing socialist economy, politically corrupt, increasingly anti-semitic, overrun by North African Islamists society, but it's OUR double digit unemployment..." you get the idea.  
     
    #  May 30th, 2005 5:03 PM      Laura
    One UK response, on whether it should have it's own referendum on this:
    UKIP LEADER ROGER KNAPMAN

    Let the British public have a say. We thought we were going into a common market; it\'s grown into a political union.

    And yet the last time we had a vote - and that was thirty years ago - we were told our independence and sovereignty wouldn\'t be affected. It has been.

    The British public need another look at this and a referendum on a far deeper issue than was discussed yesterday.
     
     
    #  May 31st, 2005 8:21 AM      KVBigSis
    That EU Referendum site is fascinating. Thanks.  
     
    #  May 31st, 2005 9:19 AM      BrianH
    It appears Chirac decided it was the French PM's fault and canned him. He replaced him would our friend Dominique de Villepin.

    http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8652622

    I guess he isn't interested in improving French wine sales to the US....

     
     
    #  May 31st, 2005 10:57 AM      Laura
    Chirac can't resign himself because then he can be prosecuted for OFF and other corruption. His supporters are trying to extend his immunity for life, critics are counting the days till they can pounce on him.  
     

     

     

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