The Treaty of Nice - Towards a United States of Europe?
LAST YEAR (2000) we printed a letter from Mrs Diana Yeoh, a housewife and mother
from Wiltshire in England. Since late April she had been organising a National
Petition which urged Prime Minister Tony Blair not to sign the Treaty of Nice.
Her letter to UN noted that "the British people who sign the petition
will be saying NO to Mr. Blair giving away, without their permission, their
right to be a self governing country. They will be saying that they do not want
to be a part of a United States of Europe with a constitution which will
override our own laws".
Mrs Yeoh handed her Petition in to 10 Downing Street on 11th
November of last year - Armistice Day. In a covering letter to Mr. Blair, she
noted that the 75,277 people who had signed the Petition "do not want
you to sign the Treaty of Nice because we want to live in a country where our
justice and legal systems are not overridden by European Union Law, where our
taxes can be set to suit our economic conditions, not decided by the European
Central Bank for the whole of the European Union.
"We want our soldiers to protect us in our own country, not
made to fight wars in foreign lands, under a foreign power, in a European Army.
"We want to live in a country free from the fear of
Europol - The European Police Force, who can enter our country on the
instruction of the European Prosecutor, and will be immune from prosecution
themselves, whatever they do in the course of their duties. We do not want to
live, bound by a written constitution for a United States of Europe".
She also asked that Blair would adhere to his "promise to listen to the
people of this country and not ignore the wishes of those who elected you, to
serve them." However, her plea fell on deaf ears, as the Treaty of Nice
was signed in December.
We share many of Mrs Yeoh's concerns about Blair's actions - and
the future direction of the EU. Did 'New' Labour's last election manifesto
mention that they would transfer any national controls to a foreign power? And
does Tony Blair have a mandate which allows him to sign away any rights for
Britain to govern itself? However, we do not reject 'Europe'
outright. Geographically, Ulster is a European nation and ethnically we are
Europeans. There's a lot of sense in sovereign nations meeting each other on an
equal footing - but is the EU best suited to this? It's very collectivist in
nature and is more interested in mass social engineering - treating everyone
from Scandinavia to the southernmost tip of Italy as one. Despite denials by
europhiles in Britain, (but not in France and Germany), the EU is seeking to
centralise a growing amount of power in its own hands and to reshape itself as a
'superpower' in its own right. There's no point in Ulster freeing itself from
Westminster and Dublin only to be shackled by the EU.
We would like to see the EU restructure itself as a European
Confederacy. The problem with it at present is that its affairs are dominated by
the larger member states. Germany has the largest population and wants to have a
greater proportional influence on EU affairs than Luxembourg which has the
smallest population. In the past year we saw Britain, France and Germany lead a
lynch mob against tiny Austria because they didn't approve of the Austrian
people's choice of government.
We have no problem with a future independent Ulster state being
part of a Confederal European structure. However, there has to be a greater
emphasis on member states' rights and this is something that so-called
eurosceptics throughout the EU have to take on board.
Our vision of a European Confederacy is one based on indigenous
peoples, cultures, ecology, direct democracy and historic nations and regions.
For this reason we are concerned by the attitude of some English eurosceptics
who want to take the UK out of the EU only to join NAFTA. Tory leader, William
Hague even wants to increase Britain's role as a US aircraft carrier by taking
part in the doubtful 'son of star wars' missile defence project which George W
Bush seems likely to try to build in the next few years. This will do nothing to
halt the menace of Globalism and international consumerist 'culture'.
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