The EU after Ireland’s NO

I have been silent on the Irish No, for which this blog campaigned so hard, as the consequences were certain to be confusing for a considerable period of time. President Sarkozy’s address yesterday to the European Parliament at the beginning of the period of the French six monthly rotating Presidency of the EU now seems a fitting moment to record some early impressions. The reaction of the majority of the leaders of the main member states of the EU has been predictably disgusting. What better proof of all the worst accusations that this blog and its forerunner have hurled at the EU down the years can there possibly have ever been? The behaviour of the British governing party, its two chambers of Parliament and the nation’s present monarch have been particularly grotesque. Lodging in Rome the ratification papers effecting the mandate of the 28-30th June 2007 meeting of the Council is or will be an affront to every principle of British constitutional democracy. Happily at the beginning of next year under the Czech Presidency a new era will begin for the nations of Europe. I suggest a priority for that Presidency will be a beginning of a phase shedding the supra-nationalist elements of the NICE Treaty (which federalists find so offensive in a national context) and pursuing an agreement on the properly accountable operation of a body responsible solely for the running of a free trade area and such other areas as may be agreed from time to time by simultaneous referendum of the entire population as safeguarded by protections available to minorities in the direct democracy of the cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. The non-democratic close-shave of the Lisbon Treaty and nightmare consequences of a continuing acqui communitaire must never be allowed to be repeated.