Mali a New Trial for the EU

The Presidency of France is arguably the most powerful elected constitutional post in the Western world. This was strikingly illustrated by President Hollande's brief TV address to the nation yesterday afternoon, when he announced his country's forces were in action in Mali and that his Parliament could discuss it if they wished after the weekend, namely three days ahead on Monday.

Well that once was the case, but what now with the EU and the complications of the ESM Treaty now in force for about three and a half months, summary here, while a more detailed explanation here. The Mali engagement by French forces will inevitably impact the French deficit, debt, credit ratings and thereby its ability to meet its ESM Treaty obligations!

A fascinating dispute between France and Finland has only just arisen which illustrates the coming problems very well, read one report here. Essentially Finland has lost a contract to build a large Caribbean cruise liner in Turku to French competition in St Nazaire, apparently due to Finlan's reluctance to match the level of Government subsidy offered by France. How much more difficult has this dispute become as France's African venture brings ever closer the moment when France, instead of being the second largest contributor to the ESM, instead is forced to call upon it for funds and thus partly reliant on Finland's AAA credit rating for lower interest rates. 

Ironic, is it not that, such lower interest costs and higher credit rating are owed to the sanity of the Finnish Government, the sacrifices of its people given from living within their means and consequent reluctance to dish out grotesque subsidies of wasted taxpayers money for otherwise non-competitive industries?

This blog has repeatedly quoted the nonsense of the contribution percentages written into the ESM Treaty as begging belief, with both Spain and Italy being due to contribute large portions of the funds they seem to be among the most likely to need. Let me try another analogy on the ESM, think of it as a Christmas Club, where with all in full employment they all agree to cough up X% of their wages for a celebratory bash every year. How many need to become unemployed and broke before such a club folds? The ESM, of course, was only formed when several of its founders were already in a state of relying on the formation of such a Club for themselves to avoid bankruptcy!

Let us return to Mali, however, for even more absurdities of the EU will soon appear as a result of France's colonial legacy, the costs of which seem to be about to be partly defrayed by that country's Euro Group partners non-consulted members.

My Great Aunt, Margery Perham, was something of an Africa expert and in 1932 debated the contrast between French direct Colonial Rule with Britain's indirect methods with the then Governor of Chad, Jules Marcel de Coppet, who explained it partly in my Aunt's paraphrase - to the lingering dislike of local government in modern France,'a hangover from strong feudal power and an obstacle to centralization'. In addition, the French experience in Africa had been, from the start, more about military and imperial control than anything else, objectives backed up by the dominant French colonial paradigm to the north, represented by Algeria. (Into Africa, C.Brad Faught, Publisher I.B.Taurusp.80)  

Such is the situation (perhaps I should say potential quagmire) into which the EU, or at least the Euro Group has put itself this morning, complicated even further by the coming into force of the Fiscal Compact a mere eleven days ago.

I will, of course, be returning to these complex issues quite often as the date of PM Cameron's landmark speech on Britain and the EU has now been fixed at 22nd January in the Netherlands, a clear signal that Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg's influence is clearly already heavily at work. The worldly maritime view from Holland and Spain will be now badly needed, rather than the dreadful EU embedded corporatism so far evident in all Clegg's actions.  The very unworldly and frankly almost naive David Cameron is going to struggle to rise to this occasion, especially with Clegg in his team and the likes of Michael Heseltine already loudly interfering from the wings, read here! 

                                                                                        

EU Fiscal Treaty causes split at top of a major Irish Party.

Fianna Fail saw the departure of the Deputy Leader of Fianna Fail, Eamon Ó Cuív, yesterday as is reported in the Irish Times, linked here.

The fiscal compact, imposing policies that few European democracies have been prepared to impose or enact over many decades, hence its presumed purpose to enforce authoritarianism from Brussels, should be causing such fractures across Europe.

It is a sorry indictment of Europe's governing and main opposition parties that the national Parliaments are approving rules workable only within autocracies!

UK Parliament debate on the EU Fiscal Treaty

The debate opened at 12:51 today and was a very rare Emergency Debate approved by the Speaker under Standing Order 24 moved by Bill Cash.

A feel for the grave emergency represented by this Non EU Treaty has at least been recognised in one part of the Palace of Westminster! Not so for the opposition, whose benches were virtually deserted throughout.

The Hansard report has now started to appear and I will append my own notes recorded as the debate proceeded with links to that record as the evening progresses. It begins from here.

Bill Cash did his usual accomplished job of pointing out the dangers and legal pitfalls represented by the Treaty, planned to be signed by only 25 of the present EU member states, thereby not (yet) a full EU Treaty!  The most startling revelation for me was the fact that the Foreign Secretary William Hague, in spite of having been urged to appear before Cash's European Scrutiny Committee, has refused do to do, and is not scheduled to appear until the end of March when it will be too late. A typically arrogant thumbing of the nose to democracy by this increasingly irritating non-entity, who has amazingly managed to make his two immediate predecessors appear vaguely competent!

Denis Macshane, unusually in my view made a good contribution to the debate. This passage seemed to me particularly effective:

Let us be clear: the Commission is not involved in this. The European technocracy and bureaucrats are not involved in this; they are utterly sidelined. This is about the raw politics of anger in Germany against Greece, and the raw politics in Greece against Germany. It is also about the raw politics of the Conservative party in this House, some of whose members rightly feel that all the pledges made by their leader, now the Prime Minister, on referendums, renegotiation and repatriation have not in any way been delivered. That is what is causing upset and concern in the House of Commons. I am sure that it was also raw politics in Ireland that led the Taoiseach to agree to the referendum there. We know that Monsieur Hollande has said that, if elected, he will renegotiate the treaty. We also know that Mr Rajoy, the new conservative leader in Spain, has said that he will not implement a Merkozy-type dose, because Spain could not take it.
We need a new approach in Europe, and in this country. I would have no problem if, after 15 years of wallowing in Euroscepticism, the Conservative party rejoined the real European world. I would like to see Conservative MEPs sitting with other centre-right MEPs, precisely to create the links that the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire mentioned. We need more engagement, and not in order to join some Euro-federalist nirvana—that is not on offer at the moment. We are living in not a two-tiered Europe but a multi-tiered Europe, and we have to be part of it. We are not at the moment, but I hope that the Government can change their course before it is too late.

Also from Labour Rhonda, Chris Bryant was impressive. Some quotes:

It is a shame that the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) is no longer in her place. I gather she is often referred to nowadays as the new iron lady—although I do not know who will get an Oscar for playing her in the future. I profoundly disagree with her that a multi-tier Europe is a good idea. During my four and a half seconds as Minister for Europe the BRIC economies—Brazil, Russia, India and China, and for that matter, Mexico—repeatedly told me, “It is essential that we know that we are dealing with a single market.” If we decide to cut up the single market, with lots of different tiers of different elements of legislative proposals, it will do us damage with the growing economies of the world. China is not interested in dealing with 27 different countries in Europe; it is interested in doing business in Europe. If it is going to be more difficult to do business in Europe, it will do business elsewhere—and we will have cut off our nose to spite our face.
I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) about the danger of technocratic Governments being imposed on other European countries. There has always been an element of democratic deficit within the European Union. In a sense, it is almost inevitable—unless we choose to elect a single President and Government of Europe, to which I would be wholeheartedly opposed because I do not think that there is a single people of Europe.

Undoubtedly the speech of the day came from Conservative MP for Wokingham John Redwood, which I thus quote in full. It appears in the Hansard report from 2:07 pm:

This debate is about the future of democracy itself. There can be no more important issue. We are considering a draft treaty that presumes to take substantial powers of decision over how much a country can spend, how much a country can tax and how much a country can borrow from the democratic choices of the member state to a centrally imposed system, which it is hoped will make the euro work better. This matter is of vital importance to the United Kingdom because we wish our neighbours to live in democratic prosperity for their own sakes, because we wish to trade with them successfully and because we wish to make sure that there is no danger whatever that our cherished freedoms and independence as a member state that has deliberately kept out of the euro could in any way be damaged by this treaty, which presumes to use European Union institutions to enforce a non-European institution will.

The peoples of western Europe are right to be mightily worried about the bad state of health of their respective democracies where they have adopted the euro. We see daily on our televisions or hear reported on our radios dreadful scenes from Greece, Spain and Italy, which are struggling with the common economic discipline and policy being imposed today. The German-led new treaty says that such discipline is not strong enough, that there needs to be more mutually assured deflation and that there needs to be a madness imposed on these countries to try to see whether the euro will work.

Ministers rightly say that they must not say anything in public or be seen to do anything in public that makes the difficulties of the euro area worse. I fully endorse that approach. They should never normally comment on the euro, because it is too dangerous, it is too difficult and it is up to those in the euro to say what they wish about how their currency is developing. But how it develops is of grave interest to us, so I urge my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to ensure that, in private, when he is round the table, as he will be, with all the other leaders and with a right to a view, he speaks truth to their impotence. He should say to those assembled leaders struggling to get a grip on their recalcitrant economies and some stability into their very unstable currency, “This is not working.” He should tell them that, in truth, the treaty before us this afternoon cannot conceivably make the euro work. Other things can help to ease the pain of the euro, and in another debate we could discuss many other policies that could pull off the trick of getting many countries through and the euro out the other side, but this treaty is not the way to do it.

This treaty is deeply offensive to many democratic peoples in the countries of western Europe that will face it. It reinforces a German view of how to make the economies of western Europe work that clearly is not working. If part of the medicine for a country that has borrowed too much is to spend less and borrow less in the public sector—that can be the right approach, and I can think of countries where that could apply—at the same time a series of policies have to be adopted to promote growth in the private sector, so that there is some hope, there are some new jobs and there could be new tax revenue coming in.

Where the EU is proposing tax rises, it needs tax reductions on enterprise, business and success. Where it is proposing a bigger monetary straitjacket, it needs monetary ease. It is now creating a very big monetary easing across the eurozone as a whole by tipping trillions of printed money into the system to try to make it work, but that new money cannot possibly help Greece or Portugal, because they have frozen and damaged banks, they are under the austerity cosh, and representatives of the European Union are going in and treating them as if they are damaged economies that cannot conceivably pull through.

The euro scheme is damaging the confidence that Greece and Portugal need in order to see light at the end of the tunnel; it is putting people off investing there. Why would someone go to Greece to invest through euros, if they think that it may be driven out of the currency and forced into a big devaluation? Why would they seek to do business in Greece when the banks are frozen and they are not benefiting from the liquidity injection that is helping the corporate bond market and the Government bond market, temporarily, in Italy and in Spain?

Above all, our Prime Minister has to secure and protect the British interest. We in this House should be very proud of what our predecessors created, obtaining control over how much is raised in taxation, how much is spent and how much this country borrows and prints. We are rightly out of the euro, because those in it cannot conceivably maintain democratic control over those issues. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) for raising this issue today before the summit, but we are worried that—inadvertently, I am sure—the Government might get us dragged into much greater supervision of our economy by the European Union, in a way that signs us up to the very mad policies that we are rightly warning them cannot conceivably work.

Europe is at risk: jobs are being destroyed; economies are being gravely damaged; the people are on the streets; and the main political parties in these European countries are signing up to exactly same policy, so even where a general election takes place the popular will is thwarted, as people do not have a proper choice if they stick to the main parties. In one or two countries Governments are even being changed by the European elite without a single vote being cast and without the democratic view of the people and their parties being consulted. Surely everyone in this House is ashamed of that. Surely we all unite in saying that the thing that brings us together is our belief in the power of the ballot box, the voice of the elected representative and the right of people to choose and to say that a policy is failing. We are told by the European establishment that only its policy can work. There is no evidence whatsoever that the policy is working, but there is massive evidence of the damage it is doing.

The final point I would like to highlight from the debate was made by Jacob Rees-Mogg with the important and concise penultimate contribution to the timed out debate from Richard Drax,  herewith:

....a key part of the treaty may already be in breach of European Union law. I refer hon. Members to article 8, which states:

“If the European Commission, after having given the Contracting Party concerned the opportunity to submit its observations, concludes in its report that such Contracting Party has failed to comply with Article 3(2), the matter will be brought to the Court of Justice of the European Union by one or more Contracting Parties.”

What that says is that the European Commission may end up enforcing requirements under the stability pact in direct contradiction of TFEU—the treaty on the functioning of the European Union—126(10).....

A further aspect of the treaty concerns me. Article 16 says that the treaty will be rolled into the TFEU within five years, so it will become part of the whole package of European Union law within five years. It is currently thought, though others may think differently, that it would not have been possible for this treaty to be brought in under enhanced co-operation. However, there is a school of thought that maintains that the ESM treaty which is awaiting ratification by Parliament would allow enhanced co-operation to be used, in which case this treaty could be rolled into the European Union’s treaties without the say-so of the House, under enhanced co-operation. We should be deeply concerned about that, not least—going back to article 8—because it refers to how countries may be fined...

3.27 pm
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con):

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) for securing the debate. He stands up for everything in which I and a lot of Members on both sides of the House believe.

I simply do not understand why we all look at this huge abyss, this black hole, this legal and financial federalist nightmare, yet go on pouring billions of euros into it in the hope that it will somehow recover. It will not. The political elite in the entire eurozone are betraying the very people they say they represent.

We are going to have tears over this. We have, unfortunately, already had riots in Greece: God forbid that we have riots in this country one day when the people wake up to realise that we have been, dare I say it, disingenuous—I will not say untruthful because I am not allowed to use that word in this House—to our electorate. We have to be truthful, and we have to base our politics on common sense and the law. I want us to have jobs, growth, wealth and mobility, but we will not get them under the current EU federalist state. We must renegotiate and start talking. I urge those on the Front Bench, please, for our party and our country, to say at the meeting, “Enough is enough: let’s sit down and find a more common-sense approach for the future.”

Der Spiegel opines "Irish can't afford to say no"

Der Spiegel seems to have got things the wrong way round in its article on the Irish referendum on the Fiscal Compact, just issued and linked here.

It is future generations of Irish men and women who cannot afford to continue to say yes, to more money printing, LTROs  (another €529 billion this morning), lies and democracy destruction presently under way within the Euro Group. The Irish are already deeply in debt and will remain so for the next generation due to their flirtation with the EU and shame of their political class.

Ireland will at least have another chance to once again reject an EU Treaty, give Britain just one chance and we could regroup with Australia and Canada, just as I urged on my first posting of today!

Quitting the EU is as simple as ABC!

Finally Britain's House of Commons will today debate the European Union! Three hours has been set aside for the debate today at the request of Bill Cash and granted by the Speaker, although it does not yet appear on the published order of business, see here. My source is John Redwood's Diary, read here.

Although the subject is the Non-EU/Fiscal Compact Treaty (upon which the Irish will now have a referendum) the subject of the EU as a whole really cannot this time surely be avoided.

The EU is like a senile, demented, sclerotic, cantankerous, mean, illogical, incontinent  and elderly patient, lying almost comatose at the final moments of its existence, whom none wish to either tend, visit nor comprehend!  All, without exception, secretly yearn for it to pass beyond death's doorway.

Little suprise then that Parliament seeks to avoid discussing the subject as much as it possibly can. The green benches today will probably be as bare as usual when the necessity to consider the monster that actually controls our entire polity is raised for debate!

Yet the time has come to consider the solution to our involvement in this increasingly unaffordable disaster. It cannot in all conscience be any longer delayed!

First step must be to identify a identify a solution. That is as easy as ABC!

Australia - Britain - Canada!

Britain MUST first withdraw from the EU and then establish a zone of complete direct free movement of goods and people between the three equal entities. Offer our UN Security Council vote for future use by co-decision as an extra carrot to that of our large, mobile, hard-working and educated population, eager for extra space!

Irish President Higgins' views on Fiscal Compact alarm Dublin

The Irish Times carries the report of their President's visit and speech in London last week, linked here. It would be quite astounding and an apparent complete failure of his duty to his country, in this commentator's view, had President Higgins suggested he would stand idly by while the entire sovereignty of his country was signed away to foreigners, yet nevertheless that would appear to be what his Ministers expect! A quote:

The primary concern among Cabinet Ministers relates to the President’s comments about the possibility of summoning the Council of State if the Government proceeds to ratify the fiscal compact treaty by legislation rather than referendum.

Spain declares Fiscal Compact impossible even before ratification.

Spain has had the temerity to point out to the madmen and women in Brussels that the provisions of the new fiscal compact treaty could not even stand a chance of being implemented in cloud cuckoo land, read the report in this morning's Daily Telegraph, linked here, from which comes this quote:

Prime minister Mariano Rajoy has reportedly asked European officials to raise Spain's debt reduction target to 5pc, claiming that reducing it to 4.4pc will be impossible.

The ongoing damage of the debt crisis – and the German-led austerity drive – could be laid bare on Thursday if the European Commission (EC) unveils a wholesale revision of the eurozone's growth forecasts, as expected. Experts said the EC is preparing to cut its growth forecasts following the radical spending cuts, tax increases and job losses across Europe.

The missing ingredient for any cure for the ills that beset all the economies of the EU and the consequent plight of society across Europe, is the lack of democratic consent. The EU as presently constructed will never achieve that and every day that passes as it drives events in totally the wrong direction will deepen the consequent ill effects.

Democratic legitimacy has to be restored on a nation by nation basis. General elections are presently shortly due in Greece, followed by France, let us hope an anti-EU democratic and free-market alternative is provided in each of these nations, so that their voters, for once, have an opportunity for demonstrating the utter revulsion that by now the EU is everywhere due!

Taming Treaties - the Intelligence Squared debate in Greece

The report on last evening's debate is from ekathimerini and is linked here.
A quote regarding the vote at its conclusion is the following:

An audience poll suggested that 75 percent were in favor of staying in the euro and less than 19 percent against. The problem, though, is that unless the situation improves substantially in the months to come, the question of whether Greece should use the euro or drachma may not be one that Greeks ever get the chance to answer.

This is merely hinting at the reality of Greece's already lost autonomy. I would suggest that the EU, having decided that no country can leavethe euro, requires that all Eurogroup members must remain stuck within the wealth destroying common currency until it entirely collapses under the weight of its own insoluble contradictions.

The Irish Times this morning has an article linked here, which supports this view when considering the deliberate construction of the fiscal compact treaty to avoid a referendum in Ireland. Increasingly treaties will be drawn to maintain the charade of national consent, while terms that would prove obnoxious to either democracy and decency are subsequently imposed behind the scenes and sickeningly without any public protest from national parliaments! That article opens as follows:

GERMANY’S MINISTER for European Affairs has confirmed that European Union negotiators sought to design the euro zone fiscal compact in such a way to avoid a referendum in Ireland.
Michael Link, who was visiting Dublin yesterday for talks with Ministers, officials and members of the Oireachtas, added that Ireland’s constitutional requirements will also help to determine the drafting, at next week’s EU summit, of rules governing the role of the European Court of Justice in enforcing the new pact.

French Presidential Candidate François Hollande tells the truh!

“A treaty which isn’t yet ratified has not got any legal value”

Fiscal Compact Treaty Problems

There will be no deadline imposed upon the Irish Attorney General on deciding whether the Fiscal Compact Treaty will require a referendum, the Irish Times informs us this morning. In Denmark, ironically the rotating six monthly Presidency holding ex-nation, the question of whether or not a referendum must be held is also up for debate.

In France the political difficulties seem to be the most severe, see EU Observer, linked here. The present Upper House of their Parliament has refused to endorse it, although that might be solved in elections due later this year. More serious, particularly when added to the Upper House's rejection, is the whole question of the legality of President Sarkozy signing the deal in March as planned, in the face of the stated views of the present frontrunner,  the socialist Presidential candidate François Hollande, that he does not agree with it and will re-negotiate it. The same linked article also covers the problems the matter is causing the Czech Republic following their proposed non-signature of the non- EU deal..

Considerable furore for a thoroughly worthless document, that will affect nothing as regards the present crisis, as it appears to this observer!

EU Press Announcement on Fiscal Treaty binds entire EU

The Press Release is here.

Although it states the Agreement was made at an informal meeting of the Council (by means of a footnote) it elsewhere and everywhere implies it is an EU Agreement and thus by implication binding upon all EU members. No mention is made of the absence of Britain and the Czech Republic from the agreeement.

Such devious trickery is typical of the entire institution of the EU which is why the Britiah people must demand their country's complete withdrawal!

I suggest attention be particularly given to the following paragraph:

The new treaty also contains provisions on the coordination and convergence of member states' economic policies and on governance of the euro area. In particular, Euro Summit meetings will take place at least twice a year.

(Emphasis and colour of 'and' added by Ironies Too blogger).

OK a press release is not legally binding, but the depths of the corruption that allows such serial lying and deviousness is thoroughly indicative of the prevailing immorality!

The farcical foolishness of the fantasy fiscal compact

Are the twenty five national leaders of the EU countries that last evening announced they had agreed the terms of a new treaty establishing a fiscal union really expecting their parliaments and peoples to take them at their word?

Can we really believe that these leaders have seriously decided to put aside their main tool of governance over recent decades, namely deficit spending, and set that prohibition in concrete in their constitutions or equivalent national guiding provisions? Are the economics of Keynes really to be banned across the entirety of the territory temporarily controlled by these transient tinkerers?

Of course not! Take France, one of the prime movers of this farce. Its Upper Legislative Body has already ruled any such law as unconstitutional and will refuse any debate on the topic. President Sarkozy behind in the polls, the day before he gave his assent to this nonsense immediately scrapped a large tax on employers to be financed by a VAT rise only to come into effect months later, thus assuredly increasing the French deficit yet further. His Presidential opponent, well ahead in the polls, after next May has rejected the very concept of the fiscal compact. So why has Merkozy wasted the time of 25 other EU leaders in even further debating this nonsens, as they did yesterday, while the real crisis, as pointed out below, in Greece, Portugal and Hungary worsened by the hour?

EU leaders are now so far from reality and in awe of German wealth that they blindly accept anything Merkel suggests, as she represent their sole prospect of ever gaining re-election!

Portugal rates race upwards to scupper EU strike bound summit

In a Brussels shut-down by a General Strike, President Von Rompuy rang a little golden bell to announce things were progressing nicely and that the leaders would discuss growth.

In the real world Portugal's tenyear interest rates which has been at 14.4% at the start of the day had risen by more than two per cent and were heading above 17%. Two year rates on the other hand were more than 400 basic points up at 21%. See a chart from the Wall Street Journal blog report.

Meantime Britain's Prime Minister, David Cameron, who won leadership of his party with the pretence of being opposed to the EU and promising he would offer his countrymen a referendum as to whether they should continue in the corrupt non-democratic conspiracy, arrived a the summit planning to cede more power to the EU in a Treaty to which his country would not belong, but towards the costs of which would commit to fund!

Unions begin to protest the Fiscal Compact Treaty

EurActiv has a report on a protest in Brussels yesterday which is linked from here.

The significance is that on the one hand the measures are being visibly watered down to provide the same avoidance procedures as was successfully accomplished by France and Germany with the original Growth and Stability Pact, while on the streets, resistance is mounting (particularly in Greece with health sector protests).

The causes of all this misery meeting in Davos are particularly sickening this year. One such,the CEO of Citigroup, Vikram Pandit's words this morning on Bloomberg, to defend what the EU was about and his talk of the work upon and progress of the fiscal compact provided a welcome moment of hysteria inducing relief. A text report of the TV interview is here.

4th Draft Non-EU Treaty continues with the same Preamble Lie!

The lie in the Treaty Preamble timed at 1600  on 19-1- 2012 (4th draft of the Fiscal Compact) needs to be legally challenged by Britain as it has been carried forward from the third draft. The draft provided by EurActiv, is linked here, the offending untrue statement of fact is as follows:

BEARING IN MIND that the Heads of State or Governments of the Euro Area Member States and of other Member States of the European Union is to incorporate the provisions of this Treaty as soon as possible into the Treaties on which the European Union is founded,

To make this statement factually accurate, (which should surely be the aim if it is not shortly to be totally disregarded as was its forerunner the Growth and Stability Pact, by its same two driving founding members, France and Germany,) the word either  "several" or "various" should be included between the word "of" and the word "other" in the statement of intent.

EU and Britain are drifting apart.

Mario Monti, always a powerful figure in the development of the EU as it presently exists, has solidified his power base since trashing his commitment to the democracy of the country of his birth. There is now no going back for Monti!

Feeling in Italy against the EU will inevitably become increasingly anti-EU as austerity mounts and the realisation grows that domestic corruption has been replaced rather than removed by the centralised trans-national socialist conglomeration the EU has become. The fact that this is also incompetently led and grossly mismanaged is well captured by this cartoon from Italy, yesterday re-published in Der Spiegel in Germany, linked here.

Mario Monti has therefore burnt his lifeboats for a return to respectability amongst his countrymen, his words in a report in City AM yesterday, linked here, should therefore be considered as well considered and likely to be accurate - “The possibility of the UK subscribing to the new fiscal compact [EU treaty]... is water under the bridge. Pity, but this seems to be the case.”

The meeting between another very powerful and dangerous anti-democratic EU fanatic, Michel Barnier, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, next Monday will therefore be very important, read here. These are dangerous times for our country, England, and for the Corporation of the City of London, under attack from the Continent, both from Scotland backed as so many times in history by our enemies on the Continent and directly from France and our commercial rivals to its East.

Monti has chosen to meet other traitors within our ranks after his visit to 11 Downing Street, this quote comes from the Reuters report linked above, "Barnier will also visit the City to meet senior bankers, some of whom are uneasy about Britain's stand last year."

George Osborne, would appear to have faint-hearted friends enough in the figure of the proud and boasting Scots' blood bearing Prime Minister and his EU fanatical Deputy Clegg, surely the City could now manage to present a united front?

Third Draft Fiscal Compact is same sham as Growth and Stability Pact!

Read Arcticle 7 and one finds that the whole can of worms is not enforceable. By majority vote they can decide to let those breaking the limits continue scot free, just as happened with the original Growth and Stability pact for both France and Germany:

Article 7
While fully respecting the procedural requirements of the European Union Treaties, the Contracting Parties whose currency is the euro commit to support theproposals or recommendations submitted by the European Commission where a Member State whose currency is the euro is considered by the European Commission to be in breach of the deficit criterion in the framework of an excessive deficit procedure. This obligation shall not apply where it is apparent among the Contracting Parties
whose currency is the euro that a qualified majority of them, calculated by analogy with the relevant provisions of the European Union Treaties without taking into account the position of the Contracting Party concerned, is of another view.

Even the supposed rock solid, binding commitments to balanced budget constitutional amendments under Article 8 are only enforceable by the ECJ following a complaint by one of the other 11 (+?) signatories, who might indeed apparently stay at only the number 12 for all time, as there seems too be no consequences for any of the five euro group members who may never get agreement to sign up for the whole wierd arrangement.

Any comment, however brusque and brief as mine has been, cannot but call attention to the absolutely hilarious nature of Article 16, the final provision as follows:

Article 16
Within five years at most following the entry into force of this Treaty, on the basis of an assessment of the experience with its implementation, the necessary steps shall be taken, in compliance with the provisions of the Treaty on the European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, with the aim of incorporating the substance of this Treaty into the legal framework of the European Union.

Two other treaties with twenty seven (at present) signatories, to enforce a contract possibly signed by only twelve of their number. Just how can that work and when will this moment of truth come? Up to the five year point it is apparently not yet time, one nano-second later it is already too late!

Nigel Farage on Cameron's fake veto.

MP Douglas Carswell's posting last evening repeated in full!

Britain says "no" - but more Europe happens anyway

Apparently there is to be an intergovernmental treaty for EU member states. Far from the Eurozone forming a separate Fiscal Union, separate from the EU, it seems that these new rules are to be "folded into the EU treaties".
These EU rule changes will give more power to unelected Commission officials, and presumably any disputes over interpretation will be adjudicated by the federalist Euro courts.
But apart from that, how is our veto working out?
Perhaps it is time for the government to set out clearly and precisely what its Europe strategy is. Clinging to the ruins of failed Foreign Office thinking is not enough. Allowing ourselves to be guided by Europhile Whitehall mandarins has only taken us down a blind alley.
Having ended up doing the right thing last month when we said "no", ministers now need to come up with a coherent strategy - and fast. What sort of relationship do they envisage Britain having with the EU? If we no longer have any say over the single market rules - as seems likely - do ministers still think we ought to comply with them, unless exporting to Euroland?
How do ministers envisage the new deal with Euroland taking shape? Repatriating powers unilaterally or some sort of hard-nosed deal-making? And most importantly, when do they envisage putting the new deal to the people in a referendum?
The Europe question is bigger than the Coalition.
Posted on 6 January 2012 by Douglas Carswell

New Fiscal Compact Treaty Article I "Deeper integration in the internal market"

Article 1.
1.   By this Treaty, the Contracting Parties, as Member States of the European Union, agree on a “fiscal compact” and on a stronger coordination of economic policies, involving an enhanced governance to foster fiscal discipline and deeper integration in the internal market as well as stronger growth, enhanced competitiveness and social cohesion.

Not so much a shot across the bows of British Prime Minister, David Cameron, more a broadside from all three gun decks, designed to sink him, I would suggest!

The revised draft of the new Non-EU Treaty (which still seems to lack a proper name - is "International Treaty..." really a good opening?) is linked from here, (thanks to Open Europe).