Treasures from the Threads - Number thirty-seven

Denis Cooper to the Daily Telegraph on the ever closer union, linked here: The EU is an international organisation established by treaties between its sovereign member states, and the presumption is that the member states are above all committed to "ever closer union", ultimately leading to their fusion into a single sovereign state. It may be a federation like the US or Australia, as envisaged in the 1950 Schuman Declaration proposing a European Coal and Steel Community: Europa link "a first step in the federation of Europe", "the first concrete foundation of a European federation"; or it may be a unitary state; but either way in the end the national sovereignty of the member states must be formally transferred to the new single European state, which will take its place on the world stage alongside the other sovereign states. That commitment was in the very first line of the Preamble to the 1957 Treaty of Rome, immediately after the list of the six heads of state who were making the treaty: "DETERMINED to lay the foundations of an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe" and it was re-iterated in the Preamble to the Maastricht Treaty on European Union: "RESOLVED to continue the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe". and well as in its Article 1, and it will still be there after December 1st when the Lisbon Treaty comes into force. If the people of a country allow its government and Parliament to sign them up to a constant, unlimited process of "ever closer union" with the peoples of other countries, then they can't keep complaining whenever they find themselves subjected to that process of "ever closer union"; in fact there would be more legitimate grounds for complaint if the governments of other countries failed to live up to their solemn commitment and obstructed the process of "ever closer union". But if they don't want to be part of that process of "ever closer union", they need to elect a majority of MPs who will insist that the government negotiates a new and very different treaty, one predicated on the assumption that they wish their country to remain an independent sovereign state. There's no feasible middle path here, no chance of being technically signed up for the principle of "ever closer union" but cleverly avoiding it having any practical effects; just as there's no chance of being "In Europe but not run by Europe", as Hague so misleadingly puts it

Denis Cooper

on November 16, 2009

at 10:16 AM