EU Constitution...errr I mean "Lisbon Treaty"

[Steel_Tomb]

So then, it's finally been ratified by the Czech's. No grudge against them, they held it up for as long as possible... more than our feeble Government has been bothered to do.

I can't help but feel somewhat worried about this whole farce. From what I've read and heard on the news, Westinster will loose its power and the MEP's will be deciding things. So the Government we elect will have far less power in deciding the laws of the land, and instead an unelected EU President and MP's from other nations get to decide what happens in our country?

Anyone able to clafify this for me? Is it as bad as it sounds?

If so, talk about stabbing your country in the back... At least Tony (B)liar won't get to be President.

[Skybird]

Several threads on that where I listed the major critical things, ST.

In short, it is not representative for europe in that it does not reflect the majority conditions of european people and nations. In fact it very heavily distorts these relations, both regarding population sizes and economic sizes (financial contirbutions to the EU). Also, populaistic demandy by some governments have been given special deals, compromising the whole set of rules for all, both regarding content and rules of approving the thing. "United we shall stand" - but some are given the right to stand more united than others, or what?

It leaves the EU commission the option to govern by and to overrule EVERY TIME, if only they want, the EU parliament by use of emergency decrees. This allows an absurd condition of the EU parliament rendered absolutely powerless. That they will not do that - for that you only have their lips forming the words, but in a treaty thing slike this should not be lef topen, but should be nailed down black on white, right? But they intentionally refused to shut this hole (the criticism has been brought to their ears often enough). The state of emergency has not been clearly defined, and thus can be called at any will, it also sees no criterions oforhow long it remains valid once declared - it is a completely open ended thing without any option to enforce an end to it once declared by the commission. Therefore there is the window left open to run effectively a EU commission dicatatorship over an unlimited ammount of time - legally, by using the Lisbon dictate. This has been criticised before - and the heads of government and their advisory boards furiously rejected to adress this problem, giving just candy-sweet words that nobody wants to do that.Thus this feature is brought in intentionally.

Now consider the everyday experience of a bureaucratic rule or a law getting hollowed out by leaving open the chance to appeal for getting a special exception permission. there are many examples of where the laws forbid something, but for example whole business branches nevertheless avoide that prohibition by using the legal option to be allowed a special license, a special permission, making them just the "exception" from the rule, and many do like this, by that turning this into the new everyday rule, and the hollow prohibition being left behind, meaningless.

Also, we once had a guy named Ulbricht in the GDR, who said into the cameras: "A wall...? Nobody has the intention of building a wall!" - while his troops already were shutting down the passages to West Berlin and laid barbwire and first wall segments were built and windows and doors in haouses were closed while he was speaking. That'S because the GDR was called German Democratic Republic, I assume.

The Lisbon dictate makes mandatory and now legally binding cross-links to the EU Human Rights Charta, which features such great gifts like criticising religion in general being illegal, and a hate-crime that is under penalty. This feature is a gift of the pro-Islam lobby in the EU. This is not only about thoughts and arguments but also about deeds. If you refuse somebody because of his religous background, you can be faced with legal sanctions due to the hate-crime you committed. that way you are legally forced to contribute and to support for example migration policies or cultural policies that you do not wish to support at all and in fact want to criticise: in the future can can get penalised for that in all EU countries, not just in some. - This is one of my favourites, of course.

EU demands become mandatory to be followed in general, by principal, and overrule national constitutions and parliaments. Already now, around 80% of all legal proposals passing the parliament have their origin not in the national parliaments, but in Brussel. The Lisbon dictate strengthens this even more, so it is correct to say states loose even more of their sovereignity. National governments now have the possibility that if they fail with a policy in the national parliament and their opposition blocking it, that they could carry it to Brussel to the EU commission, the national chiefs of state there demand the comission to turn it into an official EU policiy, and then the national rebellious parliament at home now has no legal right anymore to oppose it, but is doomed to let it pass. Opposoition successfully denied. This must be one of the main reasons why the governmen chiefs in Europe tried so determined to get this new rules enforced onto europeans. It gives them new tools to tackle oppositions at home.

The EU commission and the Lisbon dicate both have no democratic legitimation by the people of europe. Both got/get decided on by explicitly excluding the people of europe. The lisbon dictate is by content exactly what the Eu constitution has been, after people dismissed it, the chapters were arranged in a new order but left as good as unchanged, the critical stuff got put into the 600 pages appendices so that it is diffiuclt to find and to be understood, and the thing got a new label, but it is the same old constitution, even it'S fathers admit (and criticise). It is a cosmetic change only, a betrayal. It also gives us the offices that people did not want to have. There will be a EU foreign minister who will not be called foreign minister but be equipped with the same authority and power like a foreign minister for the EU, so in effect he is a foreign minister without being called a foreign minister. The devil is a master of manipulating words.

that something so fundamental like this Lisbon dictate, that will have such far-reaching consequences, and effects all our lives and culture so tremendously, has been enforcced against the people in the small room behind the stage, by a small handful of potentates who all too often behave as if they were the stars of a new neo-absolutism, is unacceptable. Also unacceptable is that a body like the commission, that is also decided on by the heads of state only under total exclusion of the people, giving it now even the power to switch of the EU parliament if the state leaders see fit for that, is is given such tremendous power. the Eu parliament is meant to be a counterbalance - and always sees the risk of the commission minimising them by going to a system of enforcing intentions by decrees, no matter what the parliament says. That would be okay maybe if only the commission would be a democratic body under control by the people of Europe - but it isn't, and exactly is shielded from becoming controlled by the people.

All this together also means that national elections become even more unimportant in the future than they already are. Why electing a national parliament if it must submit to any demands coming from Brussel, a Brussel that in the past 15 years have corrupted more and mor epowers and drawn more and more powers from the states to itself? Why voting at home if the elected body nevertheless must give up the sovereignity of this parliament as well as that of the national constitutions? It's a fake show only, designed to appease the crowd. That'S why they make such big tam-tam about it: the more people focus on national elections, the less time they spend with having critical thoughts. Even the criticism gets channelled, if possible, rendering it ineffective, it's a bit like the protest parks they had in China during the Olympics. Talk as much as you want, practice your precious right of free speech (but make sure you do not commit an official EU hate crime when criticising the wrong things ) and convince yourself you are so very important - as long as you do not have the power to really enforce a change against the establishmeent, the system must care for you.

The numerical relation between EU parliament members and economic lobbysists in Brussel in said by observes to be in the realm of ratios around 45:1 or even 60:1. These people'S job it is to bypass the unobstructed democratic decision finding processes in the parliament (that's how it once was meant) and to distort them so that their employers get much greater share in governing power than they should have or are legitimated to have. One must be a masochist to like the idea that this unhealthy constellation now gets even more power to mess up things and being manipulated by the big business world.

I also have an issue with the naturalness by which the EU, without ever having been legally legitimated to do so, puts such a tremednous power into the hands of a gremium that is selected behind closed doors and without any form of legitimation by the european people. I also am psised by the naturalness by which this gremium has claimed to have - and has secured - the right to demand nations to abandon their national constitutions and declaring these indirectly as no longer valid in that EU policies overrule constitutions. In Germany, this has been rejected by the German Constitutional High Court, so that the parliament had to release a set of new laws that should make sure the parliament has a word in any decision of the govenment in Brussel. However, these laws are lagging behind the court's demands and were watered down, since both government and the opposition wanted this Lisbon dictate - which many politicians have admitted to never have read and understood in full! - passing at all cost (with the population in huge numbers rejecting it, last polls they did said something about 65-75% rejecting it). Also, the national law here collides with the Lisbon dictate'S legal power and the EU'S power. I know how it will end: any opposition to the government'S posture on something at EU level - will end as a footnote that at best historians one day will be fascinated of. But even if opposition and criticism has lived for just one day, so it neverthelss has lived. I am moved.

We are living in an era where the blossoming of democracy already has seen it'S best times, we now experience the deconstruction of democracy under the label of "strengthening democracy", where special interests and lobbyism take over control and will try to keep governable what less and lesser is governable: a crowded, overpopulated world that more and more is battling over fading ressources. in the new German parliament, elected 4 weeks ago, there are 20% less specialists with practical experience from their former jobs for the various political fields, than there have been before - but instead the number of lawyers has increased by the same number. that is a trend of the past 3 elections. You see the same throughout eurpoe since 10, 12 years, in official commitees and advisory boards from health to economy policies: the insiders and pracope experienced people left or got kicked out, laywers rushing in. Welcome to the ruling of Schreibtischtäter.

the future totalitarian order we seem to head for, will be shaped and defined by lawyers, and bureaucratic rules will become dominant in defining politics and actions, more important than reality itself - you already can see it now, every day. And I cannot imagine anything good coming from a tyranny run by lawyers. Add to this the growing of orthodox religiousness and political fanatism as typical human responses to growing existential pressure, and you are set for plenty of solid entertainment in the future.

Note that this trend maybe is a natural process, since we allowed our social societies to become more and more complex and to ever grow in rules and legal texts, so that first lawyers more and more became necessary to implement policies and laws defined and intended by politicians - and then finally becoming more important then the policy itself. No longer gets done what rality would demand to get done: but what will be done gets defined and inetnded by what the already existing chaos of rules allow. Spiced up with plenty of private business lobbyism, of course. Democracy already is very massively "unalive" and instead just ritualized - a hollow corpus, a facade with no life behind it. and the more lifeless it becomes, the more hysteric the media effort and the politician'S demand to let it appear as alive and shiny and healthy, and the louder the calls for making distributing to the wanted self-deception a mandatory thing. After the latest fall in numbers of voters at the German polls, again the call was to be heared to make going to elections mandatory.

If you don't pay respect to our show, then we'll make ya - or else! True for Germany. True on EU level as well.

I could vomit into the bin all day long when thinking about these things for too long.

[Skybird]

The Lisabon document is I think 20 pages or so of well-sounding, but relatively unspecified text - which would be fine for a constitution, since it is not meant to go into specific details. The old constituition was criticised for right this: having more than 600 (!) pages. Back to the Lisbon paper, all the critical things, the details raising controversy, the legally binding stuff - is in the 600+ pages of appendices, sometimes scattered in various locations inside these, intentionally hiding them.

This intention alone tells you all important you need to know about this agenda.

The Lisbon dicate by conetent is the same as the EU constitution that was refused by the rules the EU had set up itself. the EU then decided not to play by it's own rules, and not to let vote on it again by the people, that way claiming that these people had legitmised it by having voted national government.

This brain stunt also tells you something you need to know about this agenda.

The freedom and right to choose is meaningless if the alternatives are not real, and having the choice is pointless if you are only left to make the one choice others demand you to make - else they lie, betray and cheat on you.

[Steel_Tomb]

Holy crap, if thats the short version whats the full one lol. Your posts should come with a warning for BIG WALLS OF TEXT!

[Skybird]

Mostly I just SUMMARIZE the extensive criticism that more expert people have come up with. Especially the former German state president and former president of the Constitutional High Court, Roman Herzog, obviously a proffessional jurist, on my mind, and one of the most profiled European experts on the EU Lisbon dictate, but also comments made by Valery Giscard-d'Estaing and Helmut Schmidt. Herzog is picking the stuff apart paragrpah by paragrpah and brandmarks it as killing democracy where stupid catch phrases claim the opposite, and Schmidt attacks the fundamental intention and thinking behind it, and the massive deformations that had been imposed on the EU in the past 15 years or so. Both also rip apart both the legal and moral legitimation of this "document".

Two such brilliant, well-versed and uncompromised minds in close alliance to attack the EU agenda - that really is a force in argument that is hard to counter. Compared to these two, almost all other politicians defending the Lisbon dictate are just stupid babblers trying to bribe the public with slogans and untrue catchphrases.

[Rhodes]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Compared to these two, almost all other politicians defending the Lisbon dictate are just stupid babblers trying to bribe the public with slogans and untrue catchphrases.

You are defining Portugal prime-minister!

[SS107.9MHz]

Two time consecutive, in for the second term, Portuguese Prime-minister

[G.K.]

Czechs (Or at least me) are sorry for this.
Noone asked the Czech people about their opinion, it was the decision of our politicans.
Sometimes I think president Klaus is the only politician here who still uses his brain, speaking about both EU and climate change.

[Shearwater]

If you don't like it, why did you join the EU in the first place?

[XabbaRus]

Because at the time the EU was a trading block to make trade within Europe simpler and some useful things like have one set of standards for a particular product across all the countried in the EU meaning you don't have to recertify your product to a coutries standards that differ from your own.

It has now grown out of control.

[Jimbuna]

Precisely...we are an island nation...time to pull out I reckon. If we can afford to

[Shearwater]

Originally Posted by XabbaRus

Because at the time the EU was a trading block to make trade within Europe simpler and some useful things like have one set of standards for a particular product across all the countried in the EU meaning you don't have to recertify your product to a coutries standards that differ from your own.

It has now grown out of control.

That's true, but that process had already been well underway before the Central and Eastern European countries decided to join
The main problem to me is the lack of democratic control. I don't oppose a more integrated Europe (or at least the idea), but I understand that many people feel that they're not in control of the process anymore (if that has ever been the case). Opposition is good and necessary, but I would like to see it coming from elected European institutions (like e.g. the European Parliament), not appointed EU representatives or national governments, which often ride the populist ticket (which is often how I perceive the Czech and the Polish governments).

[badhat17]

Originally Posted by Shearwater

Opposition is good and necessary, but I would like to see it coming from elected European institutions (like e.g. the European Parliament), not appointed EU representatives or national governments, which often ride the populist ticket (which is often how I perceive the Czech and the Polish governments).

Do you expect to get opposition from those that are riding a 400k PA gravy train ?