The mythology of the EU - Countered
Dr Richard North
Dr Helen Szamuely
Contents
With typical disdain for accuracy – or perhaps reflecting the usual level of Europhile Ignorance, the Independent newspaper yesterday announced the accession of the ten new states to the European Union with the claim that the EU had become “the world's biggest free trade area”.
This myth is one of the most prevalent in relation to the European Union, especially so with “soft” Europhiles who believe that the “Single Market” – the outward manifestation of what is believed to be a trading agreement – is essentially a benign creation.
However, the EU is most emphatically not a free trade area, and its structure is far from benign. Technically, the EU as – as was the EEC before it – a Customs Union.
Moreover, this is not an arcane, technical distinction. A free trade area either eliminates or agrees standard levies and tariffs between members, but each member is free make its own arrangements with third countries. The Customs Union shares the characteristic of common or zero tariffs between members but – and here is the important distinction – it has a common tariff structure with third countries, the proceeds being paid into a central fund.
As with the Bismark’s Customs Union, the so-called Zollverein, in order to manage this central fund, a “political instrument” is needed, in the form of a central government. This was noted by Arthur Salter in his 1931 book The United States of Europe (George, Allen & Unwin, London, p. 92). He was the man who, with Monnet, established the template on which the EU is eventually modelled.
He clearly recognised, all those years ago, the role of a Customs Union, writing that:
“...the commercial and tariff policy of European States is so central and crucial a part of their general policy, the receipts from Customs are so central and substantial a part of their revenues, that a common political authority, deciding for all Europe what tariffs should be imposed and how they should be distributed, would be for every country almost as important as, or even more important than, the national Governments, and would in effect reduce the latter to the status of municipal authorities”.
Small wonder that when in 1955 Paul-Henri Spaak and Monnet began to work on the outline of what was to become the Treaty of Rome, they considered and then rejected the idea of a free trade area. Their objective was to build a United States of Europe, and the customs union was the first essential step in its creation.
But, if the concept of a customs union owed something to the German Zollverein, the way it was structured owed more to Colbertian mercantalism. While a system of mutual recognition of the different standards in the Community could have been entirely workable, the system was built on a rigid framework of regulation that imposed strict common standards as the precondition to trade between member states.
Over the years, therefore, behind the protectionist barrier of a common external tariffs, the “Common Market” has also built up a web of inter-relating standards which have also served to inhibit trade with third countries.
What is on offer, therefore, is a very far cry from free trade. It is a dirigiste, inflexible, regulation-bound system based on the very antithesis of free trade, designed not primarily to promote trade but to protect member states from it, and designed to assist in the process of building a United States of Europe.
In "feel-good" terms, the "environment" often comes up number one in the approval ratings for EU action, where the majority of those responding believe that, overall, the EU is beneficial to the environment. This reflects in part the assiduous propaganda campaign undertaken by the EU so, in this new "myth", we look at the EU’s actual contribution to improving our environment, but also take a look at how their propaganda machine works.
Produce a pamphlet called "Choices for a greener
future", decorate it with a colour photograph of a butterfly against a backdrop of glorious flowers and, by magic, the EU is in the environment business. Go for the EU and get better butterflies!
If ever there was an example of the subtle way the EU harnesses propaganda to the cause, this is it. Everyone is in favour of the "environment" in the same way that no-one could or would speak our against motherhood and apple pie. So, if the EU is in favour of the environment, we should all be in favour of the EU. Such is the underlying message that the EU wishes to convey.
The technique is indeed subtle: "As European citizens, we all share an
interest in protecting and improving the environment around us, because it
will make our lives
better", goes the legend on the very first page of the pamphlet. You have to do a double-take to understand their game they are playing.
First they set up the "European
citizen" and then they link this to a worthy and entirely uncontentious common cause – "protecting
and improving the
environment" – and you are hooked. European citizens are concerned… you are concerned because you are a European citizen… take it any which way you please.
The inference is, of course, that you are concerned because you are a European citizen. There is no allowance for the fact that non-European citizens are just as much concerned, or even that the reader might reject the very notion of European citizenship. The linkage is irrevocable.
Then they go for the H L Mencken "ploy", the American writer who explained that: "The
whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence
clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of
hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Thus we get: "Over recent decades, it became clear that our global
environment is under serious threat as a result of human
activities…". The pamphlet then lards the case with reference to the "menace" of climate change and, once the softening up is done, in comes the honey: "The
way we in Europe respond to these challenges influences our own happiness and
well-being, as well as dictating what sort of world our children live
in".
Note the use of the word "we" – inviting a sense of involvement, of solidarity, of common purpose. Again we see the linkage, this time with "happiness
and
well-being", and the future of our "children". Who but the black-hearted could possible be against such sentiments and such laudable objectives?
From thereon, the rest is easy: "So what can the European Union, in
particular, do to protect and nurture the
environment?", the pamphlet asks. In the context set, such a question is so logical that it follows as night follows day – the EU will "protect
and
nurture". How could you answer that the EU can and should do nothing, in response to such a question?
In case you are tempted to answer in the negatives, however, the pamphlet states the case more firmly: "We
are entering a new era," it states boldly, "in which countries will have to
work together in order to safeguard our environment, for the air we breathe
and the waters we drink are not restricted by national frontiers."
Then for the punchline: "As European citizens (again!) we know the sort of
world we want to live in and the EU is playing a dynamic role in pursuing that
vision with energy and determination".
That is the "case" so far. Firstly, "protecting and improving the
environment" is a "good thing". Secondly, as "European
citizens" we all share an interest in pursuing the protection and improvement of the environment. Thirdly, countries have to work together to that end and, fourthly, we have a "single
vision" of the world we want to live in (doubtless a "European
vision") the EU is playing a "dynamic role" in pursuing that vision.
Goebbels would have been proud of the case put, conflating truth and lies in a subtle mix, so carefully stitched together that it is difficult to separate the two. But here goes.
Looking at the issues, in general terms, it is self-evidently true that "protecting
and improving the environment" is a "good
thing" – but only as a generality. But it begs several questions. But to turn this into practicalities, you have to state what you understand by the "environment?
Then, want do you understand by "protection" and "improvement"? And to what
extent then does protection and improvement of the environment take precedence
over other human, and in particular, economic activities?
Once you ask these questions, a whole new vista opens up. The
"environment", as we know it, is what surrounds us. It is varied, different,
and encompasses everything from houses, gardens, roads, factory sites to
farmland and virgin wilderness – together with air and water. Who decides what
is to be protected and improved, to what standard and at what cost? What is
the mix to be and what are the priorities?
This alone destroys the argument for a "common vision" of the environment.
In each nation state, we have different problems, different priorities,
different needs, different standards, different expectations, and – crucially
– different priorities for the expenditure of limited resources. Reconciling
the problems, the spending priorities and the standards is a matter for
government.
The question is whether a supra-national government should dictate those
priorities and here the essential issue is one of government spending. Should
the EU be able to decide to elevate, say, a requirement for ultra-purity in
drinking water over and above that of the need for hospitals or schools over
and above the need to repair leaky water pipes and the renewal of ageing
sewers?
As to the "European citizens", therein is the lie. The term is an
artificial construct which has no real meaning and only by relying on this
artefact is the EU able to project the idea of an otherwise non-existent
"common vision". Take it away and we have citizens (and subjects) of the
nation state. Their visions (plural) are from a national perspective, and need
– by and large – national solutions.
There is, however, validity in the mantra "countries must work together".
But the lie creeps in with the inference that the only way they can work
together is through the supranational construct of the EU. Yet, one of the
most immediate trans-national pollution controversies affecting the EU was
acid rain and the supposed effect of British power station emissions on
Norwegian forests. Crucially, Norway was not a member of the EU yet mechanisms
for dealing with the problem still existed.
Intergovernmental agreements were concluded under the auspices of the
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), starting with the 1979
Geneva Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, which Britain
ratified in 1982. This convention, which was legally binding, was further
extended by no less than eight additional protocols.
In order for countries to work together, therefore, not only is the EU not
essential but, inasmuch as "pollution knows no frontiers", the borders of EU
member states are in fact too restrictive. Dealing with the wider problem
needs larger groupings of countries than merely EU members.
And now for the biggest lie of all – that the EU is playing a "dynamic
role" in protecting and improving the environment. Long before the EU was in
being, the individual nation states had their own environmental programmes. In
the case of the UK, we had strong legislation and programmes stemming from the
Public Health Act of 1875, before even some member states of the EU were even
nations. In that respect, the EU is simply "hijacking" member state activities
and taking the credit for them.
Without the EU, progress on the environment would have continued and indeed
so would trans-boundary agreements. One test, therefore, is whether the EU
provides "added value", i.e., either improvements over and above those that
would have been achieved anyway, in terms of outcome, efficiency and/or cost.
Here, the record of the EU is dire. One of the earlier examples is the
"batteries directive" 91/157/EEC, aimed at promoting the recovery and
recycling of lead-acid batteries used in motor cars. Prior to that directive,
in the UK we had an excellent system which accounted for 95 percent of all
batteries disposed of, comprising a profitable business for a number of scrap
merchants. The EU scheme, however, imposed a costly, rigid bureaucracy which
destroyed the profitability of the collection system, as a result of which
costs to end users increased and the percentage of batteries recovered fell to
less than 60 percent.
Then we have the famous fridge mountain created by EU regulation 2000/2037
which turned old fridges into "hazardous waste", prohibiting their recycling
and turning a perfectly adequate – self-funding - collection and disposal into
absolute chaos, ending up with thousands of fridges in huge dumps, costing the
taxpayer hundreds of thousands to dispose of them.
This is on the back of the infamous "landfill directive", which is causing
no end of problems, not least a rash of fly tipping, massively increased costs
and a network of expensive incinerators which no one wants at a cost to the UK
estimated at £6.9 billion.
So incoherent is the EU waste policy that even the experts have trouble
making sense of it, with massive confusion between what is waste disposal and
what is recycling. This has led to the absurd situation where it has become
virtually impossible to recycle waste oil and where Scottish Power are no
longer allowed to use processed sewage to make electricity.
Soon we will have to deal with the End of Life Vehicle directive, the
introductory pjase of which is already causing our streets to littered with
car wrecks, while the Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment Directive will
do for personal computers, vacuum cleaners and washing machines exactly what
the EU did for fridges.
Yet the propaganda element is still very much alive, as we noted with
reaction to the "Reach" directive by the Independent newspaper, which
called this bureaucratic monstrosity as "anti-pollution drive". This is the
proposed law that will create so many obstacles to the usage of a wide range
of chemicals that it will drive businesses abroad, where there are fewer
controls of pollution than there are now. The net effect may well be to
increase rather than reduce global pollution.
Then there is the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) which the Royal
Society for the Protection of Birds happily chirps "could cost billions of
pounds" in achieve the EU targets", which have to be met by 2015. This is on
top of the estimated £16 bn needed to upgrade water and sewerage pipes which
is already leading to massively increased water bills.
All this, at a very rough estimate, looks like costing the British economy
something like £40-50 billion over the next ten years or so, or between £4-5
billion a year – all to create more problems than are solved
But that reckons without the grand-daddy of them all, the Kyoto agreement,
which according to the environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg could costs between $150
to $300 billion a year without having any long-term effect on global warming,
massively retarding developed economies and limiting their ability to assist
developing countries.
That itself has spawned the EU’s ultimate bureaucratic dream, the Emissions
Trading Scheme, which adds a further £25 billion a year to the costs of the
productive economy.
This is the EU’s idea of a "greener future". For any normal person it is a
vision of chaos and disaster. Apart from anything else, the fact that the EU
even thinks it is doing good for the environment – and the likes of Margaret
Beckett believe is a reason why we should vote for the EU constitution – more
than adequately demonstrates how far detached from reality supporters of the
"project" really are.
"Are you going to co-operate sir?", says the policeman. These days, you are
lucky if you get the "sir", but the scene is as old as the hills. You survey
the options and conclude that the alternative is to get roundly beaten up,
with the end result being the same as if you came quietly. Meekly, you allow
yourself to be led down to the cells.
No one but a pedant would argue that this is an example of "free
co-operation". Yet this same pedantic myopia drives the claim that the
European Union is an association of freely co-operating nation states.
To deal with this particularly glib, and pernicious myth, however, one has
to address it at several levels.
In the first instance, one can agree that, in the construction of the
European Union - through its various stages from the European Coal and Steel
Community, the EEC and the EC - free co-operation has been involved, at least
between the political elites who agreed to set up the structures.
The essential issue here, though, was the nature of the co-operation and
the result. In setting up the structures, Jean Monnet and the other founding
fathers were not seeking an organisation to foster co-operation. They had seen
co-operation in action in the League of Nations and had seen how, in its own
terms, it had failed.
Instead, they wanted structures where co-operation was not necessary -
where the free choice of nation states could be over-ridden and the will of
the majority imposed.
To that effect, Monnet engineered a structure in which the central
component was a "High Authority" - later to be given the more neutral name of
"Commission". This was a proto-European government which had the power to
command nation states. To enforce its commands, Monnet also created a supreme
court with the power to impose sanctions on defaulters.
In these important respects, the EU is very different from WTO and
especially NATO, which it is often compared. Neither of these organisations
has governmental or quasi-governmental powers, neither can make binding laws
and neither has a supreme court which can impose sanctions on its members.
The irony inherent in the EU, however, is that Monnet - and his fellow
travellers - needed the free co-operation of nation states to implement his
structures. It remains a mystery why supposedly democratic national
politicians - jealous of their own powers - so freely co-operated in handing
over those powers but history suggests that, in many important respects, those
politicians did not know what they were doing, or did not fully appreciate the
consequences of what they were doing.
Nevertheless, the upshot is that, while politicians representing their own
states "freely co-operate" in handing over powers to the EU's government - the
Commission - once those powers have been handed over, co-operation is left at
the door. If member states do not comply with the laws they have co-operated
in making, they can be hauled before the European Court of Justice and
sanctioned.
As the point of decision as to whether to obey a law, therefore, the nation
state has very little choice - even if it disagrees wholeheartedly with that
law. It could refuse to co-operate with the Commission in the same way I could
refuse to co-operate with a policeman who invited me to accompany him to the
cells. But if it acquiesces - which it most often does - that is not free
co-operation.
Of course, this is territory in which the pedant could excel. The nation
state is not obliged to remain within the treaty framework which compels it to
obey the Commission. But then I am not obliged to remain within the societal
framework that gives a policeman power to deprive me of my liberty. I could
always emigrate - as indeed the member state could leave the Union.
But the fact is that that the consequences for the nation state (or the
politicians of that state) on the one hand, and the individual on the other,
of stepping outside their frameworks are not acceptable. Therefore, in our own
ways, we permit the established order to compel us to do things that we do not
wish to do.
In this sense, co-operation is not the issue - it is in fact a red herring.
The issue is "permission" and here I have some sympathy with Europhile
arguments. Primacy of EU law applies because the respective governments (and
parliaments) of member states permit it.
Thus, the EU and all it stands for is not something imposed on us by these
"dreadful foreigners". It is imposed on us by our own governments and
politicians, who permit the treaties to apply. Voluntarily thus do they
enslave their peoples - and, to an extent, voluntarily, we as a nation allow
them to do so.
But that is not an association of freely co-operating nation states. It is
an association of slaves.
On one level, this is the easiest myth of all to disprove. All one has to
do is ask when Europe was last united.
Charlemagne? A very limited union achieved by conquest and dissolved upon
the great man's death? The Holy Roman Empire? Again, somewhat limited and, as
Voltaire said, neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. In fact, as he did not
say, an unholy mess.
Napoleon? Hitler? Each one achieved by conquest for a very short time with
few lasting effects.
On another level, however, the idea of a single European entity, a single
European culture is very insidious and can easily be translated into harmful
political ideas.
The great historian of the Renaissance, Sir John Hale, opens his monumental
study, The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, with the
discussion of the concept of Europe and its emergence in the late fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries.
When in 1623 Francis Bacon threw off the phrase 'we
Europeans', he was assuming that his readers knew where 'Europeans' were, who
they were, and what, in spite of national differences, they shared. This was a
phrase, and an assumption, that could not have been used with such confidence
a century and a half before.
The concept of Europe grew up as Europeans travelled further and further
abroad and found themselves dealing more and more with other political and
cultural entities. It was a concept that gradually, though as Hale shows, very
slowly surpassed the concept of Christendom.
However, what it never did was to become a clear political concept of a
single state. Quite the opposite: the concept of Europe included the idea of a
patchwork of pieces, small and large, that may have had certain similarities
and certain common notions but these notions were often more divisive than
uniting ones.
Ah yes, I hear some of the European integrationists say, that is the
problem: Europe has been consumed by endless fighting and warfare and it is
time to put an end to it. To this there are several replies, the most obvious
being that divisions and competitiveness do not necessarily involve fighting
and warfare. It is merely the opposite of a huge, centralized entity, which
has never been part of European history for any length of time.
There is a basic contradiction in the integrationists' arguments. Let us
look at what the preamble to the draft EU Constitution says:
Conscious that Europe is a continent that has brought
forth civilisation: that its inhabitants, arriving in successive waves from
earliest times, have gradually developed the values underlying humanism:
equality of persons, freedom, respect for reason.
Really? So why does the Laeken Declaration say:
For centuries, peoples and states have taken up arms and
waged war to win control of the European continent. The debilitating effects
of two bloody wars and the weakening of Europe's position in the world brought
a growing realisation that only peace and concerted action could make the
dream of a strong, unified Europe come true.
There are clearly two separate entities at work: there is Europe, which has
had all those wonderful, liberal, humanist, peaceful, civilised forces at work
and there are the peoples and states of Europe, who keep fighting each other
and stubbornly refusing to unite. Therefore, Europe must be built up and
protected from the peoples of Europe in opposition to their history.
A unified Europe, thus, has little to do with the history of the peoples
and states of Europe. Indeed, the idea of a unified Europe is the direct
opposite of what Europe, the Europe Francis Bacon understood and we
understand, is really about.
The recent argument about whether to include the idea of Christian values
in the Constitution demonstrates the problem. It opened up the deep fissures
in Europe, called attention to centuries' old conflicts and undermined the
whole notion of there being one set of European values.
It reminded us all that those European values are not all about sweetness
and light, though they are, frequently, about swashbuckling curiosity and
advancement in political, social, economic and intellectual matters - all of
which is alien to the European Union with its prattle about European
values.
The great dividing lines in post-Classical European history have been
religious. At present, only one of the EU member states is Eastern Orthodox
(as well as a former part of the Ottoman Empire), Greece, but certain problems
in outlook have already been apparent.
There is a secondary dividing line and that is between Catholic and
Protestant countries. Fortunately, in most parts of Europe, the various
denominations have learned to live in peace (nothing to do with the European
Union and everything with historical and economic development) but some
attitudes remain different. It is noticeable that all the countries that
signed a letter asking for an inclusion of Christianity in the Constitution
were largely Catholic. For various historical reasons, the largely Protestant
countries are shying away from the idea.
But there are other factors that make the European experience more varied
than is admitted by the integrationists. A couple of years ago one newspaper
published a list of the 100 greatest military commanders in history. Lists of
that kind are enormous fun and, as usual, there were many satisfying rows and
discussions about those included and not included and the placings.
One letter writer objected to Prince Eugene of Savoy being ranked above
Marlborough. How could this be so, wrote the author indignantly, when
Marlborough was the commander in chief.
The letter writer was talking about the French wars. Prince Eugene's
achievement was to turn back the Ottoman advance, thus liberating Central
Europe from Turkish occupation and ensuring its "European" development.
The point is that the crucial historic experience for many centuries in the
east of the Continent was the constant war against one Muslim invader or
another. The crucial experience in the west was the ongoing wars between
Catholic and Protestant countries, which evolved into a national struggle
between Britain and France.
That may well have influenced the different attitudes to the war against
terror. Or the difference arose from another, equally important distinction.
Twentieth century experience was incomprehensibly different in the two halves
of Europe. The liberation from the Nazis in 1945 was the prelude to a half
century of peaceful, democratic development in the west, while the east was
abandoned to another brutal totalitarian regime.
The divisions and differences can be enumerated endlessly. This does not
prove that there is no basic understanding of what being European is about.
Just as Francis Bacon knew so do we know. But there cannot be a Europe
reunited where no true union has ever existed or can ever exist.
Part I - The Council of Ministers
In answer to the charge that "Europe is undemocratic and that power lies
with unelected, faceless bureaucrats," the UK Representation of the European
Commission is fond of reminding us that,
The most powerful decision-making body, the Council of
Ministers, is responsible through its members to parliaments and electorates
in every EU country.
Furthermore, it states, "Each country decides how to make its ministers
accountable." Thus, the Commission effectively argues, because Council members
are responsible to their electorates, the European Union is democratically
controlled. (It goes on then to describe the role of the European Parliament -
we will deal with that in Part II of this piece).
In order to explode this particular myth - that the Council somehow adds
democratic legitimacy to the European Union - we simply need to look at what
the Council is, and what it does.
Firstly, the Council itself. In fact there are many "Councils" each dealing
with specific policy areas - like environment, transport, fisheries,
agriculture, etc. Their members are the sectoral ministers from the member
states, each council comprising the same number of ministers as there are
member states.
So what do they do?
The answer to that is quite simple - they "legislate". That is, they
receive proposals from the unelected Commission, asking them to take powers
and/or responsibilities from their member state governments (or to impose
obligations on their citizens).
They then turn these proposals into laws, giving the Commission the powers
it asks for - often acting by qualified majority voting - thereby depriving
their own governments (and/or citizens) of power.
That's it.
From then on, the Commission having been given the power, it keeps it, to
exercise as it thinks fit. The Council has no further part to play in the
process, unless or until the Commission comes back to ask it to amend or
extend those powers (or both).
Does the Council maintain an oversight over how those powers are exercised?
No.
Has the Council any power to call the Commission to account over the way it
uses its powers? No.
Can the Council remove or modify those powers, if it is unsatisfied with
the way the Commission is performing? No.
Does the Council even have the power to ask the Commission for information
on its performance? Er... No.
So what is the Council?
In effect, it is a transfer station. On the basis of proposals from the
Commission, it handles the process of taking powers from member states,
packaging them up and shovelling them into the Commission, for them never to
be returned.
Does it ask the electorate in advance - through an election manifesto -
what powers it should hand over? No.
And is any record kept of which particular ministers vote for what, so that
they can be taken to task by their electorates, if they vote the wrong way?
No.
That's democratic?
Part II - The European Parliament
In Part I, we looked at the UK Representation of the European Commission's
answer to the charge that "Europe is undemocratic and that power lies with
unelected, faceless bureaucrats," and dealt with the claim that the Council of
Ministers conferred a democratic element to the European Union.
In this second part, we look at the European parliament, the only directly
elected institution in the EU, and assess whether it confers any democratic
element to the European Union.
All the Commission claims of the parliament is that "direct elections" have
"created a body with a clear mandate from the electorate". "MEPs", it
continues, "are accountable for their work on legislation and in scrutinising
the other EU institutions".
The use of the word "mandate" in this context is interesting. It is
generally held to mean the sanction given by electors to members of parliament
to deal with a question before the country. In other words, the candidates for
the election set out their stalls, the electors look at the rival offerings
and choose between them.
In national elections, this choice has some validity because the winning
party - or coalitions - go on to form a government, which then (in theory at
least) executes the voters' mandate. But in the European parliament, this
cannot happen.
For a start, the election does not produce a government, so the parliament
has no power or authority to execute a mandate. It cannot, for instance,
decide to repeal any EU laws - it cannot even initiate any laws. Those powers
lie elsewhere. Therefore, the candidates - or the parties they represent -
cannot produce manifestos in any meaningful sense of the word, as they have no
means by which they can deliver on promises made.
Furthermore, in a parliament of 732 members, Britain elects only 78 MEPs,
and then from different parties. But even if all were from one party and were
clearly set on one course of action, they do not have the numbers to dictate
terms. Even as a united bloc, they are swamped by the members from other
member-states.
Therein lies one of the central defects of the European parliament. The
essence of a parliamentary system is that it is the core of a system of
representative democracy, where the members go to parliament to represent
their electors' views (and safeguard their interests). But British MEPs cannot
represent the interests of their electors - there are not enough of them to do
so.
Furthermore - and this strikes at the heart of the concept of a
supranational parliament - there is no commonality of interest in the peoples
of the member states that would enable discrete blocs to emerge that could be
adequately represented by a multi-national coalition of MEPs. In other words,
there is no European demos and, without that, there can be no European
democracy.
As for being "accountable for their work on legislation and in scrutinising
the other EU institutions", as the UK Representation of the European
Commission claims, the suggestion that the EP is "accountable" begs the
question of to whom? Without any meaningful manifestos, the electorates have
no yardstick (metrestick?) against which to measure the performance of their
supposed representatives, so there can be no way of holding representatives to
account.
Further, due to the arcane voting system in the parliament, MEP voting
performances in the main (plenary) sessions are most often not recorded. By
far the bulk of votes are settled by a show of hands, which means there is no
record kept of who voted for what. The average voter has no ready means of
determining how their MEPs behaved.
But the ultimate indictment of the system is the way that legislation goes
rolling on, even when a new parliament is elected. In the UK system, when
parliament is prorogued prior to an election, all outstanding legislation -
not yet passed - falls. Not so in the EP. Newly elected members can and do
find themselves voting on the second or third readings of laws that were
introduced to the previous parliament. The names and faces may have changed -
the voters may have completely shifted their allegiances - but that makes
absolutely no difference to the nature of the progression of legislation
through the parliament.
Then there is the scrutiny of "other EU institutions". In fact, there is no
EP scrutiny of the Council, but the only scrutiny worth a light is, in any
case, of the Commission. Here, commissioners do put themselves up for
questioning by MEPs but anyone who has seen this done knows full well what a
charade this is.
The strategy is well established and cynically transparent. First you have
a sympathetic "chairperson", who is able to make sure the "right" people are
picked to ask questions - and also allow for the token antis (just to prove
they are "democratic"). Next you pack the committee with patsies who can be
relied upon to "soft-ball" the commissioner. Then, you take questions in
blocks of five, so the commissioner can "cherry-pick" the bits of the package
he/she wants to answer.
You also impose a time limit on the whole session, and let the commissioner
waffle on as long as he/she likes, until time runs out without any of the
awkward questions from the token antis being answered. And, of course,
supplementaries are either not allowed or severely curtailed. As a result of
this, the questioning sheds light only on this issues which the commission
wants to reveal, and no serious examination every takes place. Sessions end up
as an opportunity for commissioners to propagandise or, as the case may be,
evade accountability, while giving the appearance to the outsider of being
open to scrutiny.
Some apologists for the EU, however, take a different tack when discussing
the democratic legitimacy. They point to national parliaments, like
Westminster, where most law is passed in the form of regulation, passed
automatically through parliament without even a vote; where the government
majority can ensure the passage of Bills without being troubled by the
opposition.
But there is a difference. Individual MPs do represent their constituents
and, if the nation really gets worked up about something, the House
collectively can force a change. Even the mighty Thatcher government was
forced to look again at the poll tax. Even at a minor level, with technical
regulations that are causing problems, chances can be secured by the
intervention of an MP, concerned at the loss of votes, or seeing the
opportunity to attract some favourable publicity.
That difference tells the whole story. No matter what individual MEPs might
think about an existing piece of EU law - and even if all 732 members wanted
it changed (which is highly unlikely) - it cannot force a change. The
unelected commission has the absolute right of initiative, and can ignore
parliament completely.
This makes the parliament a toothless entity but - more to the point - its
existence does not confer democracy on an essentially anti-democratic
organisation.
"The central administration - the EU Commission - is
tiny, with fewer employees than Leeds City Council. Some superstate!"
Richard Corbett MEP
This issue here is not directly whether the EU is or is about to become a
"superstate", but the rebuttal used many Europhiles to counter this claim.
Corbett's claim, quoted above, is typical of the genre. It purports to show
that the EU could neither be not become the fabled "superstate" simply because
of the small number of staff employed by Community institutions - commonly
cited as less than a medium-sized local authority.
Interestingly, as far back as 1975, during the referendum campaign,
Margaret Thatcher herself had used this argument, pointing out that there were
"only 7000 officials" working for the Commission, mainly in Brussels. In later
years, this number crept up to "only 15,000 officials", then "only 18,000",
then "only 22,000", then "only 25,000". Currently, with enlargement, the
number is approaching 40,000 but it still remains less than work for many UK
local authorities.
Nevertheless - as you would expect - the argument is specious. There are
plenty of historical examples of very small numbers of people dominating large
populations, not least the British Raj. While not directly comparable with the
EU, it is nevertheless germane to note that, at the end of Queen Victoria's
reign, 300 million Indians were ruled by barely 1,500 British administrators
of the Indian Civil Service, and perhaps 3,000 British officers in the Indian
Army.
Excluding British soldiers, there were probably no more than 20,000 Britons
engaged in running the whole country - fewer than the number of permanent
officials currently employ-ed by the Commission. (Judd, Dennis [1996], Empire
- The British Imperial Experience From 1765 To The Present. Harper Collins
Publishers, London, pp. 79-80).
However, referring to the actual number of employees of the Commission is
misleading. On any given day in Brussels there are not only the officials of
the Commission itself but also thousands of visiting national civil servants,
from every country in the EU. They may work for the national representative
offices, they may be on detachment to the commission or council, or they may
simply be visiting for discussions - but they are all engaged in some way or
another in the construction of the "project".
The commission, of course, is the "dynamo" of the project, spewing out
directives and regulations by the thousands, now totalling over 97,000 pages,
plus millions of pages of other documents. Looking at this output, common
sense would tell you that such a small staff could not possibly achieve such
levels of productivity. And, of course, it does not. The preparation of much
legislation and many of the technical reports is contracted out, or otherwise
farmed out to outside agencies, ranging from paid contractors, universities
and other academic institutes, sympathetic think-tanks and even the growing
legion of non-governmental organisations in the pay of the commission.
Much of the rest comes from other sources, ranging from civil servants of
member states to an array of anonymous committees, made up from professional
consultants and academics to environmental pressure groups, or
commercially-funded lobbyists acting on behalf of a particular industry or
company. It is estimated that there are 1600 such committees operating in
Brussels, and beyond them 170,000 lobbyists of one kind or another across the
EU, ranging from pan-European trade associations representing whole industries
to the representatives of individual county councils pleading for a share in
regional funding.
Once the legislation is produced, it must then be implemented - the task of
national civil servants and agencies. And where policy domains like fisheries
and agriculture are involved, the hundreds of thousands of civil servants
working on these portfolios in the 25 member states are effectively working
for the EU. For sure, they may be appointed by their member states, they write
on paper bearing their own governments' letterhead, and they are paid by the
taxpayers of their own countries, but their activities and their functions are
all dictated by Brussels. They are national civil servants in name only.
Thus, to say that 30 or even 40,000 Brussels bureaucrats are insufficient
to run a "superstate" is completely to miss the point. They are only the tip
of a huge iceberg. The real point is that "Brussels" acts as a nexus, the
centre of a network, linking thousands of other organisations throughout the
Community, not least the civil services of all the member states.
And that point was latterly acknowledged by Thatcher in her book
Statecraft, published in 2002. She noted that the figure given for the
commission staff - which by then had increased to 30,000 - "leaves out the
much larger number of national officials whose tasks flow from European
regulations". (Harper Collins, London, p. 324.) Those and the many others,
amounting possibly to millions, directly or indirectly working for the
project, are more than sufficient to run a "superstate".
This myth has its variations. One that we shall hear more of in the next
few months goes something like this: the EU has kept peace in Europe for
almost sixty years and if it did not exist, there would undoubtedly be war
between the various protagonists.
Last week Europe celebrated or, at least, remembered the end of the Second
World War in Europe, with VE-Day in the West and Victory Day on the 9th in
Russia and some of the former Soviet republics. There is no point in calling
Europe Day or Schuman Day or anything of that kind. It is Victory Day and the
tanks roll through Red Square as they have always done.
It is, however, an appropriate time to examine the particularly silly but
insiduous myth of "Europe" keeping the peace in Europe. There is an
unresolvable paradox at the heart of the European project. Its aim is
supposedly to preserve European values and ideals from ... the Europeans,
since the main reason for the formation of the European Union, according to
numerous preambles to treaties, is the bad behaviour of the people of Europe
in the past. Unfortunately, the values and ideals were also created by those
badly behaved Europeans in conditions that the European Union is now desperate
to abolish, that is small and medium-sized, competing political entities.
Thus you get the odd notion that "Europe" will keep the peace against the
Europeans. The truth of it all is that by the time Monnet, Schuman and the
others got going on the "European project" in all seriousness the political
situation in the world had changed irrevocably. As early as the Schuman
declaration of the need for European integration (actually written by Monnet)
in 1950 it was too late. The problem for which Schuman was putting forward a
solution no longer existed.
The ideas of European integration were first mooted between the wars but
became particularly powerful after 1945 when Europe awoke to find itself
devastated. Even so the number of people who thought integration was the
answer was very small; far more believed that economic reconstruction and the
development of democracy would be the answer. That is why so much of the early
part of the project had to be conducted in secrecy.
The early founding fathers' aim was European integration because that is
what they believed in. But the notion had to be sold and the idea of peace was
a powerful one after 1945. There was another paradox, though a less important
one here, in that the idea of peace and need to control aggression was
propounded by historically the most aggressive state in Europe: France. The
French having been defeated in three successive wars by the Germans, were,
therefore, the victims and could point to the Germans as the eternal
aggressors who had to be controlled.
In fact, with the development of nuclear weapons and the growth of the two
superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, the question of possible
Franco-German wars became a non-issue. The enemy of the West was further east,
just as the enemy of the West now is in the south and the east. European
integration became an unimportant side-issue. Not the EEC, not the EC, not
even the EU could protect anyone from the Soviet Union without a great deal of
American help; they could not fight communism world-wide; and they cannot
fight terrorism now. The EU can ensure that Denmark does not invade the
Netherlands and that's about it.
It is not political structures that create political reality but the other
way round. The reality was that the West, and within not too many years West
Germany became part of the West, was not going to indulge in internecine
warfare; the reality was that France and Germany neither could nor would fight
each other again. The structure of European integration grew out of that and
is now looking distinctly rickety.
It is easy to go through the facts and point to the truth about peace.
Fact number one: peace was kept only in a small part of
Europe, which happened to be under NATO protection and the nuclear
umbrella.
Fact number two: this part of Europe also had American
troops stationed in it and was amply provided with American military hardware.
Like it or not, and many in western Europe, particularly France do not like
it, but a great deal of American foreign policy in the fifty years after the
World War II was taken up with the problem of protecting Western Europe.
Fact number three: the countries that contributed most to
the protection of Western Europe and keeping the peace in it were not always
those involved in the European project. Apart from the UK, the main
contributions came from Turkey and Norway.
Fact number four: the main crises of the post war period
happened outside the whole European project even if they happened in Europe.
Where was the peace-keeping qualities of "Europe" when the Berlin blockade was
defied, when Eastern Europe rose in revolt, when the Berlin wall went up?
Discussing the Common Agricultural Policy, that's where. There is no need even
to mention problems outside Europe, like the Cuban crisis, the Vietnam war,
the wars in Africa and Latin America.
Fact number five: the actual creation of a European Union
in the Treaty of Maastricht coincided with the break-up of the Soviet Union
and Yugoslavia. While the EU's influence on events in the former USSR was
strictly limited, in the former Yugoslavia it played a baneful part: by trying
to construct a common foreign policy through encouraging Serbia under
Milosevic to keep the "country" together at whatever cost and by imposing an
arms ban on all the other participants, the EU helped to prolong the war and
increase the number of victims. Fierce hostilities and massacres were taking
place on European soil once again as the European Union was entering what was
perceived to be the final stage of integration and, as expected, it was NATO,
led by the Americans that imposed some kind of a temporary solution.
Fact number six: The EU is now systematically undermining
the one successful alliance that did keep the peace in Western Europe: NATO,
without putting very much by way of protection in its place. And all for what?
To give itself a notional and structural foreign and security policy.
So let us forget the EU's outdated attitudes towards politics, war and
peace; it is unlikely to do us any good and unlikely to keep or create peace
where it matters.
With typical disdain for accuracy - or perhaps reflecting the usual level
of Europhile Ignorance, the Independent newspaper yesterday announced the
accession of the ten new states to the European Union with the claim that the
EU had become "the world's biggest free trade area".
This myth is one of the most prevalent in relation to the European Union,
especially so with "soft" Europhiles who believe that the "Single Market" -
the outward manifestation of what is believed to be a trading agreement - is
essentially a benign creation.
However, the EU is most emphatically not a free trade area, and its
structure is far from benign. Technically, the EU as - as was the EEC before
it - a Customs Union.
Moreover, this is not an arcane, technical distinction. A free trade area
either eliminates or agrees standard levies and tariffs between members, but
each member is free make its own arrangements with third countries. The
Customs Union shares the characteristic of common or zero tariffs between
members but - and here is the important distinction - it has a common tariff
structure with third countries, the proceeds being paid into a central
fund.
As with the Bismark's Customs Union, the so-called Zollverein, in order to
manage this central fund, a "political instrument" is needed, in the form of a
central government. This was noted by Arthur Salter in his 1931 book "The
United States of Europe" (George, Allen & Unwin, London, p. 92). He was the
man who, with Monnet, established the template on which the EU is eventually
modelled.
He clearly recognised, all those years ago, the role of a Customs Union,
writing that:
"...the commercial and tariff policy of European States
is so central and crucial a part of their general policy, the receipts from
Customs are so central and substantial a part of their revenues, that a common
political authority, deciding for all Europe what tariffs should be imposed
and how they should be distributed, would be for every country almost as
important as, or even more important than, the national Governments, and would
in effect reduce the latter to the status of municipal authorities".
Small wonder that when in 1955 Paul-Henri Spaak and Monnet began to work on
the outline of what was to become the Treaty of Rome, they considered and then
rejected the idea of a free trade area. Their objective was to build a United
States of Europe, and the customs union was the first essential step in its
creation.
But, if the concept of a customs union owed something to the German
Zollverein, the way it was structured owed more to Colbertian mercantalism.
While a system of mutual recognition of the different standards in the
Community could have been entirely workable, the system was built on a rigid
framework of regulation that imposed strict common standards as the
precondition to trade between member states.
Over the years, therefore, behind the protectionist barrier of a common
external tariffs, the "Common Market" has also built up a web of
inter-relating standards which have also served to inhibit trade with third
countries.
What is on offer, therefore, is a very far cry from free trade. It is a
dirigiste, inflexible, regulation-bound system based on the very
antithesis of free trade, designed not primarily to promote trade but to
protect member states from it, and designed to assist in the process of
building a United States of Europe.
Tony Blair: "The new constitutional treaty is designed... to answer the
challenge of enlargement". Commons statement, 20 April 2004.
There is no more pernicious a myth than the constant refrain, trotted out
from Blair downwards, and faithfully retailed even by the Eurosceptic press,
that the constitution is necessary to deal with enlargement. And the most
obvious and easy response is simply: "what was Nice for?". We were told that
the Nice Treaty was necessary for enlargement and now, with another treaty in
the offing, we are again being told that it is necessary for enlargement.
Therein, in fact, lies the clue to unravelling the myth. The constitution
is not necessary for enlargement: enlargement is the excuse for the
constitution. Exactly the same excuse was used in 1969 when Britain, Ireland
and Denmark were set to join the original Community of Six - when Pompidou
used élargissement as the excuse for establishing the EEC budget, on
which relied the handsome CAP payments that his farmers were going to enjoy.
One way or another, every time a significant enlargement has been proposed, it
has been used as a justification for further integration.
The Europhiles' case for a constitution as a response to this current round
of enlargement might be more convincing if it had suddenly been dreamed up
after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, when the prospect of absorbing the
former Communist states of Eastern and Central Europe became a reality.
But the truth is that the quest for a constitution predates even the EEC
and its predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community. It was a dream of
Coudenhove Kalergi, in 1931, when he wrote his book the United States of
Europe, and it was a central part of Altiero Spinelli's 'Ventotene Manifesto',
written in 1941 under the title Towards a Free and United Europe.
This latter document was to become one of the basic texts of the European
federalist movement and its thinking was clearly reflected in the European
Movement's submission to the Hague Congress in May 1948, from which the
Council of Europe emerged. At that time, even, the federalists were determined
to set up a constituent assembly - a convention by any other name - in order
to draft a constitution for Europe, the text of which bears a remarkable
similarity to that which has been drafted by Giscard.
Despite the best efforts of the federalists, however - mainly through the
blocking actions of the British - there was no progress on the idea, although
it was reactivated again in 1952 when the first meeting of the European Coal
and Steel Assembly turned itself into a constituent assembly, with a view to
drafting a constitution for Europe. This was effectively blocked not by the
British by the French Parliament, which turned against the idea of a "European
Political Community", whence Monnet went ahead with his plans for what became
the Treaty of Rome.
As always in Community affairs, however, the idea of a constitution was not
dead, but dormant. It took until 1979, and the first direct elections to the
European Parliament, for the idea to be resurrected - its author no less than
Alterio Spinelli, now and MEP. By 1984, he and his colleagues in the European
Parliament had produced a "Draft Treaty for a European Union", which was a
constitution in all but name, and again bears a remarkable similarity to
Giscard's current draft.
At the time, however, it was considered too ambitious and Mitterrand
advised Spinelli to go implement his plan in "bite-size" chunks, to avoid
scaring of the more Eurosceptic nations and leaders, one of whom was by then
Margaret Thatcher. Spinelli took the advice, from which emerged - with the
help of a new Commission President, Jacques Delors, the first "chunk",
disguised as a treaty to establish a single market to keep Thatcher off-guard,
but given the revealing title of the Single European Act.
Part two of Spinelli's master plan for a constitution came in 1990, with
the Maastricht Treaty, again carefully disguised so as not to give the game
away. By 1997, however - on the 50th anniversary of the Marshall Plan, Giscard
was in Philadelphia, home of the US constitution, predicting the "miracle" of
a convention to establish "this charter of the European Union".
It took four years, at the Laeken declaration on 2001 for Giscard's
"miracle" to appear, with his appointment as president of the Convention
drafting a European constitution, thus realising an ambition of the
federalists that was over 30 years old. But, terrified that their plan should
be revealed for what it was, a premeditated attempt to create a United States
of Europe, the federalists have resorted to their familiar tactics of
deception, relying on once again on "enlargement" to justify a plan which
existed all along.
Perversely, the constitution - if it happens - will not resolve the
institutional stresses brought about by the enlargement of the EU from 15 to
25 nations. The core problems of trying to manage disparate nations, each with
their own agendas, remain. But that is hardly surprising. The constitution was
never intended to achieve this, whatever Blair and his fellow travellers might
claim. | 
