Asking The Question

Blimey. One Conservative MEP has just asked a series of fairly philosophical questions regarding the UK’s relationship with the EU. Considering the European elections took place last month I think Nirj Deva MEP is a bit late. UKIP wanted this debate and tried to have it, but neither the Labour, Lib-Dems, nor the Conservative party were interested and in fact actively tried not to have it!

But Nirj writes a very interesting article, so let’s have a look…

The European Union, first established as the EEC in Jan 1958 comprises of three separate but interdependent institutions. First the European Commission – the super civil service of the European Union; second, the legislative lower House called the European Council representing the Ministers of the 27 Member States and third, the legislative Senate of the EU – called the European Parliament, a body directly elected according to party lines which purports to represent the interests of the 500 million people of Europe.

Firstly, I find it fascinating that he views the parliament as the Senate – the upper house – and the European Council as the lower house. I have only ever seen it referred to as the lower house, and maybe this gives an insight into his, and other MEP’s, attitude towards the institution. If you see the Parliament as a powerful body with influence – i.e. having the final say after the nations have thrashed out their negotiations, then this view holds. If, however, like us Eurosceptics, you see the Parliament as effectively powerless, only able to approve or possibly amend legislation, with the power being held by national governments and the European Commission, then the Parliament is undoubtedly the lower house.

Anyway, i digress…

My South East of England constituency – the unwieldy yet nevertheless beautiful creation of Tony Blair’s first government – is larger than all but twelve of America’s fifty states and roughly the same size as Israel.

As a MEP elected from South East England by an electorate of 7.5 million people to the European Parliament I legislate not only for my electorate here in the UK, but also for Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus and Malta – and for the peoples of all these countries.

This, of course, implies that the EU should be viewed and a homogeneous entity with a single, common, pan-European Demos. The German contitutional court ruled that no such thing exists in its recent ruling on the Lisbon Treaty, saying…

The peoples of the Member States are the holders of the constituent power
[...]
With its Article 23, the Basic Law grants powers to participate and develop a European Union which is designed as an association of sovereign national states (Staatenverbund). The concept of Verbund covers a close long-term association of states which remain sovereign, an association which exercises public authority on the basis of a treaty, whose fundamental order is, however, subject to the
disposal of the Member States alone and in which the peoples of their Member States, i.e. the citizens of the states, remain the subjects of democratic legitimisation.
[...]
The European Parliament is not a body of representation of a sovereign European people but a supranational body of representation of the peoples of the Member States,

In other words, it is the people of each nation state who are sovereign, and thus there is no European Demos from which a democratically legitimate European Parliament can derive authority.

In legislating for these 500 million people my primary duty is to first determine what is best for my own constituents in the South East of England, what next is best for my party the Conservative Party and third what is best for all the peoples of Europe whose interest are represented by the European Parliament.

I am assuming the omission of ‘what is best for my county’ was an unintended omission, but if not then why? But this brings us back to the same issue of legitimacy above. I have never voted for Martin Schulz, the German Socialist MEP, nor has a German voter ever voted for Nirj Deva. So by what authority can they legislate and impose law upon me?

In a national context, it is assumed that there is such a homogeneous Demos, which is so lacking in an EU context, which has developed over time in line with the development and fortification of the concept of statehood, and along with the culture. I do not vote for 645 out of the 646 MPs, and yet I/we accept their authority to legislate in a Parliament comprised of their 645 peers and to legislate for the entire country.

But even within the UK we can see tensions. The Scots, for example, have a distinct culture and thus politics. And we can see that Scotland has a strong likelihood of ceding from the Union (UK that is, not EU!). The EU is similarly trying to force together nations with strong cultures and identities, which have evolved over many years and which make the continent of Europe a great part of the World. I can certainly foresee the same tensions, and indeed we are already experiencing them now.

Scotland became part of the UK 300 years ago. Nobody would suggest that it has lost its identity, and I would contest that Eurosceptics similarly wouldn’t suggest that being part of an integrated EU would necessarily to this (subject to the next point). But 300 years ago the state was very much smaller than it is today. It didn’t legislate over all areas of our lives, it wasn’t paternalistic, it didn’t absorb 45% or so of our GDP, and so it was, effectively, of little consequence to the daily lives of Scots.

And so the second point, I believe is key. When you take diverse cultures, with their own attitudes and identity, and attempt to widely and deeply harmonise them, you hit resistance. Just as the Scots are undoubtedly more socialist than the English, when the burden of ‘one size fits all’ legislation is light it matters little, but when the burden is heavy, detailed and specific, then those cultural differences create tensions.

The solution is, obviously, to devolve democratic decision making to as low a level as possible and, preferably, to roll back the state to that it becomes light.

However, having said that, the question must now be asked: does the European Parliament now legislate in more areas of policy making over the lives of ordinary Britons than say the United States Senate or the US House of Representative over lives of the people of California?

In other words, is the European Parliament and the European Council more powerful over the lives of an ordinary British citizen than Britain’s own Parliament – the House of Commons – and in comparison is the United States Senate and House of Representative more powerful over the lives of a Californian whose own state legislature in Sacramento also makes laws on his behalf?

The answer to the first question, after sixty years of the EU, is that more than 75% of the laws that an ordinary British or German or French or Latvian person now lives under is indeed first made in the Europe, drafted by the Commission; voted in or modified by the Council (Lower House) and the European Parliament (the Senate) and automatically transposed without change  into British or German or French or Latvian law under the Treaties which made European Law superior and which supersedes any law made by any National Parliament including the House of Commons in London, the Bundestag in Berlin, the National Assembly in Paris or the Saeima in Riga.

In other words, any European Law thus passed overrides any legislation made by the British Parliament or any other Member State Parliament in the areas where Europe has the superior competence given it by the Treaties of Rome, Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and now, lurking ominously in the wings, the Treaty of Lisbon.

Does this make Nirj the second Conservative MEP, other than Dan Hannan, to publicly state the EU legislative burden is 75%? Even if this figure were low – for arguments sake say 10%, it would still be too high for me. And that is because the amount of legislation is irrelevant if the system is wrong in the first instance.

Nirj exaggerates a little when he says the law is automatically transposed into national law. Only Regulations take immediate effect, and without the need to touch the sides of Westminster, while Directives do allow some scope for national implementation.

The answer to the second question is that the European Institutions in Brussels now have more legislative power over the lives of ordinary citizens in a Member State than the US Congress and White House over the lives of ordinary citizens in California or Texas or any US state.

In my opinion, power is shared roughly 50:50 in the United State between the fifty states and Washington DC and in India between Delhi and the twenty eight state capitals, whereas in Europe the balance has shifted radically in Brussels’ favour with the EU passing 75% of the laws (and increasing) while the role and power of the twenty-seven Member State Parliaments has alarmingly diminished.

As a European Court of Justice (the Supreme Court of Europe) judgment Ruling of 1991 R v Secretary of State for Transport ex-parte Factortame Ltd ECJ 213/89 clearly demonstrated “where a British Act of Parliament conflicts with European legislation, the Act of Parliament is not enforceable in the courts”
Last year alone, over 5000 statutory instruments were pushed through the House of Commons by Ministers, many of them involved with the direct transposition of European directives and regulations and almost all of them rushed through without proper debate or parliamentary scrutiny.

Well, my friend, that is what is meant by “ever closer union”. While the Constitution of the Unites States of America was written so as to push power downwards and outwards, the EU and its Constitution and now Lisbon treaty is a technocrats charter, designed, along with the treaties which precede it, to centralise and accumulate power.

It is clear that, at present, the EU has few powers of legislative initiation over UK home and judicial affairs, economic, monetary and tax policy, foreign affairs and defence, education, sports, media and health. These are still largely the purview of Whitehall and the House of Commons.

However, if the European Constitutional Treaty (Lisbon Treaty) is ratified enormous powers over energy policy, foreign affairs, the judiciary, policing, immigration and asylum policy and culture and media will be handed over to the Brussels institutions.

Well, if it is so serious and of prime importance to you, then why does the Conservative party not pledge to hold a referendum, retrospectively if necessary, on the treaty? Why the weasel words from David Cameron?

On the anvil of ‘harmonisation’, the powers of the trans-national institutions have been inexorably extended to encompass an all-pervasive legislative and executive role for the EU concurrently with National Parliaments surrendering their historic and traditional law making roles.

Quite, which is why UKIP believe that sovereign law making authority should reside at the national level, and that cooperation, negotiation, treaties, and voluntary joint-action should replace binding political union. Nirj asks “how do we fight back?”. Well, you could start by coming up with a coherent position grounded on principle, and work out exactly what kind of relationship you want, rather than drift in the wind with only a vague idea of direction.

Nirj Deva, asks some very specific questions which while welcome and very much needed, strike me as simply highlighting the lack of coherence within the Conservative party. Let’s take them in turn…

How do we reform the EU to bring about smaller government and more powerful citizens?

You ‘de-federalise’ and return to a cooperating association of sovereign states. When that is done it becomes irrelevant what size the state is in any other country.

How should Europe do less – and how should they do it better?

Limit areas of mutual legislation, as would naturally happen with negotiation of sovereign states. As for the national level, that requires politicians willing to not play God and attempt to legislate over every aspect of our lives.

Recognizing that an average birth rate of 1.5 will leave a deficit of skills talents and a depopulated internal market, how do we deregulate the EU?

You don’t need to de-regulate the EU if you are not bound to it. Who cares if the French want burdensome social legislation, and why would we want to stop them? Being tied together in a union creates these problems.

How do we develop new safeguards for the rights of member states?
How should subsidiarity be strengthened: by a subsidiarity panel, new treaty provisions on interpretation or a ‘states’ rights’ clause?
What legislative areas should we repatriate and how?

Again, sovereign sates hold all the cards and can choose what level of cooperation they desire. Future governments can also make such decisions at the time. It is the most flexible structure.

How can – and how far should – National Parliaments otherwise be more closely involved in EU decision-making (by pre-Council meeting mandates for ministers, for example) or by sitting as the revising Upper Chamber of the European Parliament to review subsidiarity and intergovernmental pillars or through a permanent “Congress of National Parliaments” to review subsidiarity and pass treaty amendments (except those of “constitutional” nature)?

A Parliamentary assembly? A congress of national Parliaments? That sounds like a damn good idea. It is what we used to do, more or less, before the EU existed in the Council of Europe.

Even if national parliaments were inserted into the EU law making process, so that a national Parliament had to approve any law before it could become law in that country, then that would be acceptable since national parliaments would retain sovereign authority over law making in their land.

He poses more questions but my answers are all of the same vein. Do go and read the whole article for yourself though as it makes some great points. It’s just a shame he is clearly so xenophobic and so evidently a fruitcake, loony and closet racist to make such suggestions. No doubt David Cameron will kick him out the party?