What's in the EU Constitution? (Very long)
Posted: Wed 01 Jun, 2005 14.13
Taken from Indymedia Ireland - apologies for bad formatting
WHY THE LEFT SHOULD OPPOSE THE EU CONSTITUTION
"The Constitution is the capstone of a European Federal State."
- Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian Prime Minister, Financial Times, 21-6-2004
"For the first time, Europe has a shared Constitution. This pact is the
point of no return. Europe is becoming an irreversible project,
irrevocable after the ratification of this treaty. It is a new era for
Europe, a new geography, a new history."
- French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Le Metro, 7-10-2004
"It wasn't worth creating a negative commotion with the British. I rewrote
my text with the word federal replaced by communautaire, which means
exactly the same thing."
- President of the European Convention Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Wall
Street Journal Europe, 7-7-2003
"We know that nine out of 10 people will not have read the Constitution and
will vote on the basis of what politicians and journalists say. More than
that, if the answer is No, the vote will probably have to be done again,
because it absolutely has to be Yes."
- Jean-Luc Dehaene, Former Belgian Prime Minister and Vice-President of
the EU Convention, Irish Times, 2-6-2004
"This is crossing the Rubicon, after which there will be no more sovereign
states in Europe with fully-fledged governments and parliaments which
represent legitimate interests of their citizens, but only one state will
remain. Basic things will be decided by a remote 'federal government' in
Brussels and, for example, Czech citizens will be only a tiny particle
whose voice and influence will be almost zero. S We are against a European
superstate."
- Czech President Vaclav Klaus, Mlada Fronta Dnes, 29-9-2003
How the constitution works
The Constitution of any normal State lays down the rules and institutional
framework for making political decisions. But it does not seek to forestall
the ideological content of those decisions. That is left to political debate between the political parties of Left and Right, abiding by the decision-making rules. The EU Constitution that is set out in the "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe" is different from a normal Constitution in that while it lays down decision-making rules, it also lays down a right-wing economic ideology which those rules must implement.
1. THE CONSTITUTION ENSHRINES EXTREME NEO-LIBERALISM AS THE BASIS OF THE EU ECONOMY.
It turns the fundamental principles of laissez-faire, i.e.free competition across national borders on the basis of the unimpeded movement of goods, services, capital and labour, into constitutional obligations
These are to be implemented by small committees of supranational politicians and bureaucrats under the influence of the big corporate lobbyists such as the European Roundtable of Industrialists, outside democratic control. This is
the opposite of public control and economic planning of any kind, which all
sections of the Left accept as necessary in some areas. The EU Constitution
suppresses political alternatives. If implemented it would reduce workers'
capacity to mobilise and would restrict the policy areas their
organisations can effect change in;for they would be constitutionally
obliged to conform to neo-liberal economic principles at EU and national
levels. It does not advance a social Europe,which requires social controls
on capital, not capital that is free of control as a matter of constitutional principle. It prevents public enterprises and State aids from serving national social purposes(Arts.III-161,162,166 and 167).
2. IT ENCOURAGES THE PRIVATISATION OF PUBLIC SERVICES...
and enshrines a heavy bias against public enterprise in favour of private capital. The Constitution gives Brussels powers to decide by majority vote what counts as a "public service"(Art.III-166). This could mean that it is up to the EU to identify which areas of public health and education services, for
example, would be exempt from competition policy, and which areas would be opened up to private sector competitition. It permits such policies to be
imposed on developing countries through the trade treaties the EU
concludes under the Common Commercial Policy, and the invesment rules it
lays down(Arts.III-314,317).
3. IT ENSHRINES THE PERMANENT DOMINANCE OF CAPITAL OVER LABOUR.
Article III-156 provides that there shall be no control on the movement of capital either within the Union or between the Union and the rest of the world, even though such controls may periodically be required to serve the social interest.
4. IT MAKES THE MONETARIST ECONOMIC POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK CONSTITUTIONALLY MANDATORY.
The ECB's sole brief in setting interest rates and controlling the money supply of the eurozone is to ensure price stability, not maximize economic growth, create jobs or reduce inequalities.
This imposes deflation on the larger eurozone economies. It prevents national governments expanding demand to counter recession and unemployment. It removes credit and financial policy from the sphere of public debate, subordinating it to the priorities of bankers, big business and technical experts.
It effectively makes democratic electoral mandates relating to the control of credit, money and interest rates redundant.
5. IT MAKES THE ADOPTION OT THE EURO A CONSTITUTIONAL REQUIREMENT...
...even though 13 of the 25 Member States still retain their own national
currencies(Arts.I-8 and III-177). Ireland's surrender of its ability to control credit and decide its rate of interest has been an important factor in the country's soaring house prices. If the dollar continues to fall and the euro to rise, as at present, Irish business competitiveness must significantly deteriorate, for we do two-thirds of our foreign trade outside the eurozone. We can no longer counter this by varying our currency exchange rate,something from which we benefited enormously during the "Celtic Tiger" years 1993-1999, for the Government has surrendered that power by adopting the euro.
6. IT MILITARIZES THE EU.
The Constitution points to the end of the formal military neutrality of Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria and Malta by replacing the Nice Treaty provision that the progressive framing of a common defence policy "MIGHT lead to a common defence, SHOULD the European Council so decide" with the provision in the Constitution that it "WILL lead to a common defence, WHEN the European Council, acting unanimously, so decides"(Art.I-41).
That decision is clearly only a matter of time. The same Article requires all Member States "to make civilian and military capabilities available to the Union for the implementation of the common security and defence policy" The Constitution permits EU military operations to take place without a UN Charter mandate.
Article I-16 gives the EU the power to conduct a common foreign and security policy covering "all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union's security, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy that might lead to a common defence". The same Article places Member States under an explicit constitutional obligation to refrain from following an independent foreign policy if that clashes with the EU one: "Member States shall actively and unreservedly support the Union's common foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity and shall comply with the Union's action in this area. They shall refrain from action contrary to the Union's interests or likely to impair its effectiveness."
7. IT CENTRALISES THE EU FURTHER, ABOLISHES OVER 60 NATIONAL VETOES, TAKES AWAY FURTHER POWERS FROM NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS AND CITIZENS, AND TRANSFERS THEM TO A TINY HANDFUL OF EU POLITICIANS AND CIVIL SERVANTS.
The Constitution abolishes existing national vetoes or gives new law-making
powers to the EU in relation to over 60 policy areas or issues: for
example, harmonising crime and justice matters, criminal sanctions and the
definition of offences; border controls; asylum and immigration; energy;
culture; tourism; sport; the market for public services; Europol and
Eurojust; social security for migrant workers; public health; rules of the
structural and cohesion funds etc.
8. IT ALLOWS THE EU'S TOP POLITICIANS TO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION WITHOUT THE NEED FOR NEW TREATIES.
An "escalator clause" (Art.IV-444) allows the 25 Presidents and Prime Ministers to shift further policy areas - for example harmonizing indirect taxes (Art.III-171) - from unanimity to majority voting without need of new treaties, parliamentary approval or referendums, as long as there is consensus amongst themselves and national parliaments do not object. This creates a permanent democratic deficit and means that the text of the Constitution is not a fully accurate guide to its own provisions.
A so-called "Flexibility Clause"(Art.I-18) permits EU Ministers to take new powers to themselves if they think the Constitution does not give the EU sufficient power to attain its very wide objectives.
At present they have this power with regard to the single market. The
Constitution extends it to all areas of government policy. These two
provisions have no place in any democratic Constitution.
9. IT TRANSFERS POWER TO THE NEW EU TO DECIDE OUR FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS IN THE LARGE AND EXPANDING AREA COVERED BY EU LAW.
At present it is national Constitutions and Supreme Courts that ultimately decide our rights, plus the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which is quite independent of and separate from the EU Court of Justice(ECJ) in Luxembourg.
The Constitution gives the EU Court a human rights competence for the first time, which would confer on this "court with a mission", as one of its own judges once called it - that mission being to extend EU powers to the maximum possible extent through its case law - a vast new legal territory to rule over.
It does this by making the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding.
The EU should respect human rights, but it should not have the power to
decide what they are.
10. AS A CONCESSION TO EUROPEAN EMPLOYERS, THE CHARTER OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS FAILS TO STRENGTHEN WORKERS' RIGHTS TO ORGANISE AND ACT COLLECTIVELY.
Article II-88 provides that workers have these rights "in accordance with Union law and national laws and practices". The Constitution protects an employer's right to lock out his employees, quite as much as an employee's right to go on strike, depending on what their national labour law lays down.
In so far as the Constitution allows fundamental rights to be limited in the interests of the EU, some future ECJ judgement could threaten workers' rights that have been long fought for and established at national level. The Charter of Fundamental Rights is essentially subordinate to EU commercial and economic policy and is circumscribed by that policy.
11. EURATOM, THE EUROPEAN ATOMIC ENERGY TREATY,WHICH PROMOTES NUCLEAR POWER, IS MADE PART OF THE CONSTITUTION.
Protocol 36 continues the EURATOM Community in being indefinitely, side by side with the new EU, and commits the EU Member States to supporting nuclear energy. With the advent of the new East European members, the majority of EU States now use nuclear power for civil purposes.
12. THE CONSTITUTION SHIFTS EU LAW-MAKING BY THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS TO A POPULATION-BASED VOTING SYSTEM WHICH ADVANTAGES THE BIG STATES AND RELATIVELY DISADVANTAGES MIDDLE-SIZED STATES LIKE IRELAND.
It abolishes the weighted voting system that was agreed in the Treaty of Nice to provide for EU enlargement, and ordains that EU laws will be made in future by a "double majority" of States and population: 55% of the Member States, at least 15, as long as they include 65% of the EU's population(Art.I-25).
Thus 15 States, if they satisfy the 65% population criterion, would be able
to outvote 10. On the number-of-States criterion a blocking minority must
be at least 11 States, so that that will be harder to assemble than before.
14. THE CONSTITUTION TRANSFORMS THE PRESENT "EUROPEAN UNION", WHICH IS A DESCRIPTIVE TITLE FOR VARIOUS FORMS OF COOPERATION BETWEEN ITS MEMBER COUNTRIES, INTO AN EU FEDERAL STATE, AND REDUCES IRELAND AND THE OTHER MEMBER STATES TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL STATUS OF PROVINCES INSIDE THIS NEW EUROPEAN FEDERATION
What is called the "European Union" at present is a descriptive term for
various forms of cooperation between its Member States.
The "European Union" that we currently belong to refers to all
different forms of cooperation taken together. But the EU does not exist as
a legal entity as such.
The present EU does not have legal personality or an independent corporate existence in its own right. Therefore there is no such thing as "European Union" law, only "European Community" or "EC" law.
Propagandists for the Constitution confuse the terms "Union" and
"Community" deliberately, to prevent people realising that the proposed new
Union, based on its own Constitution, would in legal terms be fundamentally
different from the European Union that we are told we are honorary citizens
of at present.
The EU Constitution turns the EU into a State by means of four precise
legal steps.
FIRST, it repeals the existing EC and EU treaties(Art.IV-437).
It thereby abolishes the existing European Union and European Community.
SECOND, it establishes a new European Union founded on its own Constitution rather than on treaties between sovereign Member States(Art.I-1). A Constitution, as distinct from a Treaty, is an independent source of legal
authority for a State;although history also shows many examples of States
being set up by treaties.
THIRD, it lays down that this Constitution and law made under it has primacy over the law, including the constitutional law, of its Member States, without any qualification or exclusions that would reserve powers to its Member States indefinitely (Arts.I-6). This makes the European Constitution the fundamental source of legal authority in the new EU, supplanting the constitutions of the Member States in that respect.
FOURTH, it gives this new European Union, which henceforth derives its authority and legitimacy from its own Constitution, legal personality and independent corporate existence for the first time(Art.I-7). This makes the new EU legally separate from its individual Member States, just as Texas and Virginia are legally separate from the US Federation and vice versa, even though the USA includes these provincial states. The Constitution enables the new EU State to act as sovereign over its Members and to enter into treaty relations with other States, just like any other member of the international community of States.
The Constitution could have excluded some national powers and competences permanently from the scope of this new EU and the primacy of its laws, in which case Member States would have retained some of their original sovereignty and independence. But it did not do that. Member States still retain their own national constitutions of course, just as Texas and Virginia have their own constitutions, but they are subordinate to the new EU Constitution, which is the fundamental source of authority for the new
Union, just as the Federal Constitution has primacy in the USA and other
Federations.
This does not mean that the new EU State will run everything, anymore than
the early American or German or Indian or Russian Federations run, or ran,
everything. The EU actually runs lots of things and potentially runs a lot
more. How much more will depend on which of their remaining powers or
competences the Member States may agree to transfer to the new EU in the
future.
The two main powers of Statehood the new EU would not yet possess if the Constitution is ratified is the power to impose taxes and the power to
force its Member States to go to war against their will.
Apart from that, the new Union would have all the key features of
Statehood: a Constitution, citizenship, a population, a territory, a currency, armed forces, a legislature, executive and judiciary, a Foreign Minister and diplomatic corps, some 100,000 pages of federal law, the right to conclude international treaties with other States in the ever-growing area of its exclusive competence - and now of course its own flag, anthem and annual public holiday, which are given a legal basis for the first time in the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe. Moreover,it would have acquired these features in a much shorter period of time than it took the US Federation historically to acquire them, although unlike the latter there is no European people or national community to give them a democratic basis,legitimacy and authority.
15. THE CONSTITUTION WAS DRAWN UP BY A CONVENTION THAT FAILED TO DO ITS JOB.
This Convention was set up by the 2001 Laeken Declaration of EU Presidents and Prime Ministers. This Declaration charged the Convention with the task of producing proposals to make the EU more democractic, more transparent and bring it closer to citizens. It was told to consider the possibility of restoring powers from the supranational level to the Member States, and consider "the possibility ... in the long run" of an EU Constitution.
Instead of doing that the Convention, which overwhelmingly consisted of Federalist EU-State-builders, rushed headlong into drafting an EU State Constitution that has the legal effect of turning the EU into a State and does not propose repatriating a single power from the supranational to the national level, but proposes rather to transfer over 60 further policy areas from Member States to the EU.
16. THE CONSTITUTION FUNDAMENTALLY UNDERMINES DEMOCRACY
The Left has always been among the strongest upholders of democracy. The
Left has traditionally stood for the right of peoples to self-determination and to chose their own government.
This fundamental democratic right, which is a basic principle of international law, enshrined in the United Nations Charter, is violated by the Constitution's proposal to make the proposed new European Union, founded now for the first time on its own State Constitution, into the supreme source of lawful authority for its 25 Member States.
The EU becomes the new legal sovereign for EU citizens, who will owe it real allegiance for the first time, over and above their own national States. Under the Constitution the sovereign powers of the new EU would be vested in its Council, Commission, Court and Parliament, to which we would all owe loyalty and obedience. We would become real citizens of the EU for the first time, not just as an honorary title, an adjunct to national citizenship, as at present under the 1993 Treaty of Maastricht, but with rights and obligations direct to the EU institutions rather than through our national institutions as hitherto.
In this EU Federation the laws for 450 million Europeans would be made by what is effectively an oligarchy, a legislative committee, of 25 politicians on the Council of Ministers, who are irremoveable as a group and responsible collectively to no one. Those laws in turn are based on proposals from the 25-member, eventually 18-member, EU Commission, who are governmental nominees and not individually elected.
European laws may be amended by the elected European Parliament, but only with the agreement of the Council and Commission, whose law-making power is therefore primary. The citizens of any EU Member State cannot change a single European law, even if they overwhelmingly wish to do that.
CONCLUSION
These proposed governmental structures for the greater part of Europe are
profoundly undemocratic, quite apart from the neo-liberal economic ideology
the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe requires them to implement as a constitutional imperative. As democrats therefore, all socialists, Greens, anti-war activists, genuine liberals and others on the Left, need to work in parallel with democratic non-socialists and others, rejecting all association with racist or fascist elements, in the common international struggle to defend democracy in face of the proposed EU Constitution.
WHY THE LEFT SHOULD OPPOSE THE EU CONSTITUTION
"The Constitution is the capstone of a European Federal State."
- Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian Prime Minister, Financial Times, 21-6-2004
"For the first time, Europe has a shared Constitution. This pact is the
point of no return. Europe is becoming an irreversible project,
irrevocable after the ratification of this treaty. It is a new era for
Europe, a new geography, a new history."
- French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Le Metro, 7-10-2004
"It wasn't worth creating a negative commotion with the British. I rewrote
my text with the word federal replaced by communautaire, which means
exactly the same thing."
- President of the European Convention Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Wall
Street Journal Europe, 7-7-2003
"We know that nine out of 10 people will not have read the Constitution and
will vote on the basis of what politicians and journalists say. More than
that, if the answer is No, the vote will probably have to be done again,
because it absolutely has to be Yes."
- Jean-Luc Dehaene, Former Belgian Prime Minister and Vice-President of
the EU Convention, Irish Times, 2-6-2004
"This is crossing the Rubicon, after which there will be no more sovereign
states in Europe with fully-fledged governments and parliaments which
represent legitimate interests of their citizens, but only one state will
remain. Basic things will be decided by a remote 'federal government' in
Brussels and, for example, Czech citizens will be only a tiny particle
whose voice and influence will be almost zero. S We are against a European
superstate."
- Czech President Vaclav Klaus, Mlada Fronta Dnes, 29-9-2003
How the constitution works
The Constitution of any normal State lays down the rules and institutional
framework for making political decisions. But it does not seek to forestall
the ideological content of those decisions. That is left to political debate between the political parties of Left and Right, abiding by the decision-making rules. The EU Constitution that is set out in the "Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe" is different from a normal Constitution in that while it lays down decision-making rules, it also lays down a right-wing economic ideology which those rules must implement.
1. THE CONSTITUTION ENSHRINES EXTREME NEO-LIBERALISM AS THE BASIS OF THE EU ECONOMY.
It turns the fundamental principles of laissez-faire, i.e.free competition across national borders on the basis of the unimpeded movement of goods, services, capital and labour, into constitutional obligations
These are to be implemented by small committees of supranational politicians and bureaucrats under the influence of the big corporate lobbyists such as the European Roundtable of Industrialists, outside democratic control. This is
the opposite of public control and economic planning of any kind, which all
sections of the Left accept as necessary in some areas. The EU Constitution
suppresses political alternatives. If implemented it would reduce workers'
capacity to mobilise and would restrict the policy areas their
organisations can effect change in;for they would be constitutionally
obliged to conform to neo-liberal economic principles at EU and national
levels. It does not advance a social Europe,which requires social controls
on capital, not capital that is free of control as a matter of constitutional principle. It prevents public enterprises and State aids from serving national social purposes(Arts.III-161,162,166 and 167).
2. IT ENCOURAGES THE PRIVATISATION OF PUBLIC SERVICES...
and enshrines a heavy bias against public enterprise in favour of private capital. The Constitution gives Brussels powers to decide by majority vote what counts as a "public service"(Art.III-166). This could mean that it is up to the EU to identify which areas of public health and education services, for
example, would be exempt from competition policy, and which areas would be opened up to private sector competitition. It permits such policies to be
imposed on developing countries through the trade treaties the EU
concludes under the Common Commercial Policy, and the invesment rules it
lays down(Arts.III-314,317).
3. IT ENSHRINES THE PERMANENT DOMINANCE OF CAPITAL OVER LABOUR.
Article III-156 provides that there shall be no control on the movement of capital either within the Union or between the Union and the rest of the world, even though such controls may periodically be required to serve the social interest.
4. IT MAKES THE MONETARIST ECONOMIC POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK CONSTITUTIONALLY MANDATORY.
The ECB's sole brief in setting interest rates and controlling the money supply of the eurozone is to ensure price stability, not maximize economic growth, create jobs or reduce inequalities.
This imposes deflation on the larger eurozone economies. It prevents national governments expanding demand to counter recession and unemployment. It removes credit and financial policy from the sphere of public debate, subordinating it to the priorities of bankers, big business and technical experts.
It effectively makes democratic electoral mandates relating to the control of credit, money and interest rates redundant.
5. IT MAKES THE ADOPTION OT THE EURO A CONSTITUTIONAL REQUIREMENT...
...even though 13 of the 25 Member States still retain their own national
currencies(Arts.I-8 and III-177). Ireland's surrender of its ability to control credit and decide its rate of interest has been an important factor in the country's soaring house prices. If the dollar continues to fall and the euro to rise, as at present, Irish business competitiveness must significantly deteriorate, for we do two-thirds of our foreign trade outside the eurozone. We can no longer counter this by varying our currency exchange rate,something from which we benefited enormously during the "Celtic Tiger" years 1993-1999, for the Government has surrendered that power by adopting the euro.
6. IT MILITARIZES THE EU.
The Constitution points to the end of the formal military neutrality of Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria and Malta by replacing the Nice Treaty provision that the progressive framing of a common defence policy "MIGHT lead to a common defence, SHOULD the European Council so decide" with the provision in the Constitution that it "WILL lead to a common defence, WHEN the European Council, acting unanimously, so decides"(Art.I-41).
That decision is clearly only a matter of time. The same Article requires all Member States "to make civilian and military capabilities available to the Union for the implementation of the common security and defence policy" The Constitution permits EU military operations to take place without a UN Charter mandate.
Article I-16 gives the EU the power to conduct a common foreign and security policy covering "all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union's security, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy that might lead to a common defence". The same Article places Member States under an explicit constitutional obligation to refrain from following an independent foreign policy if that clashes with the EU one: "Member States shall actively and unreservedly support the Union's common foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity and shall comply with the Union's action in this area. They shall refrain from action contrary to the Union's interests or likely to impair its effectiveness."
7. IT CENTRALISES THE EU FURTHER, ABOLISHES OVER 60 NATIONAL VETOES, TAKES AWAY FURTHER POWERS FROM NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS AND CITIZENS, AND TRANSFERS THEM TO A TINY HANDFUL OF EU POLITICIANS AND CIVIL SERVANTS.
The Constitution abolishes existing national vetoes or gives new law-making
powers to the EU in relation to over 60 policy areas or issues: for
example, harmonising crime and justice matters, criminal sanctions and the
definition of offences; border controls; asylum and immigration; energy;
culture; tourism; sport; the market for public services; Europol and
Eurojust; social security for migrant workers; public health; rules of the
structural and cohesion funds etc.
8. IT ALLOWS THE EU'S TOP POLITICIANS TO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION WITHOUT THE NEED FOR NEW TREATIES.
An "escalator clause" (Art.IV-444) allows the 25 Presidents and Prime Ministers to shift further policy areas - for example harmonizing indirect taxes (Art.III-171) - from unanimity to majority voting without need of new treaties, parliamentary approval or referendums, as long as there is consensus amongst themselves and national parliaments do not object. This creates a permanent democratic deficit and means that the text of the Constitution is not a fully accurate guide to its own provisions.
A so-called "Flexibility Clause"(Art.I-18) permits EU Ministers to take new powers to themselves if they think the Constitution does not give the EU sufficient power to attain its very wide objectives.
At present they have this power with regard to the single market. The
Constitution extends it to all areas of government policy. These two
provisions have no place in any democratic Constitution.
9. IT TRANSFERS POWER TO THE NEW EU TO DECIDE OUR FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS IN THE LARGE AND EXPANDING AREA COVERED BY EU LAW.
At present it is national Constitutions and Supreme Courts that ultimately decide our rights, plus the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which is quite independent of and separate from the EU Court of Justice(ECJ) in Luxembourg.
The Constitution gives the EU Court a human rights competence for the first time, which would confer on this "court with a mission", as one of its own judges once called it - that mission being to extend EU powers to the maximum possible extent through its case law - a vast new legal territory to rule over.
It does this by making the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding.
The EU should respect human rights, but it should not have the power to
decide what they are.
10. AS A CONCESSION TO EUROPEAN EMPLOYERS, THE CHARTER OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS FAILS TO STRENGTHEN WORKERS' RIGHTS TO ORGANISE AND ACT COLLECTIVELY.
Article II-88 provides that workers have these rights "in accordance with Union law and national laws and practices". The Constitution protects an employer's right to lock out his employees, quite as much as an employee's right to go on strike, depending on what their national labour law lays down.
In so far as the Constitution allows fundamental rights to be limited in the interests of the EU, some future ECJ judgement could threaten workers' rights that have been long fought for and established at national level. The Charter of Fundamental Rights is essentially subordinate to EU commercial and economic policy and is circumscribed by that policy.
11. EURATOM, THE EUROPEAN ATOMIC ENERGY TREATY,WHICH PROMOTES NUCLEAR POWER, IS MADE PART OF THE CONSTITUTION.
Protocol 36 continues the EURATOM Community in being indefinitely, side by side with the new EU, and commits the EU Member States to supporting nuclear energy. With the advent of the new East European members, the majority of EU States now use nuclear power for civil purposes.
12. THE CONSTITUTION SHIFTS EU LAW-MAKING BY THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS TO A POPULATION-BASED VOTING SYSTEM WHICH ADVANTAGES THE BIG STATES AND RELATIVELY DISADVANTAGES MIDDLE-SIZED STATES LIKE IRELAND.
It abolishes the weighted voting system that was agreed in the Treaty of Nice to provide for EU enlargement, and ordains that EU laws will be made in future by a "double majority" of States and population: 55% of the Member States, at least 15, as long as they include 65% of the EU's population(Art.I-25).
Thus 15 States, if they satisfy the 65% population criterion, would be able
to outvote 10. On the number-of-States criterion a blocking minority must
be at least 11 States, so that that will be harder to assemble than before.
14. THE CONSTITUTION TRANSFORMS THE PRESENT "EUROPEAN UNION", WHICH IS A DESCRIPTIVE TITLE FOR VARIOUS FORMS OF COOPERATION BETWEEN ITS MEMBER COUNTRIES, INTO AN EU FEDERAL STATE, AND REDUCES IRELAND AND THE OTHER MEMBER STATES TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL STATUS OF PROVINCES INSIDE THIS NEW EUROPEAN FEDERATION
What is called the "European Union" at present is a descriptive term for
various forms of cooperation between its Member States.
The "European Union" that we currently belong to refers to all
different forms of cooperation taken together. But the EU does not exist as
a legal entity as such.
The present EU does not have legal personality or an independent corporate existence in its own right. Therefore there is no such thing as "European Union" law, only "European Community" or "EC" law.
Propagandists for the Constitution confuse the terms "Union" and
"Community" deliberately, to prevent people realising that the proposed new
Union, based on its own Constitution, would in legal terms be fundamentally
different from the European Union that we are told we are honorary citizens
of at present.
The EU Constitution turns the EU into a State by means of four precise
legal steps.
FIRST, it repeals the existing EC and EU treaties(Art.IV-437).
It thereby abolishes the existing European Union and European Community.
SECOND, it establishes a new European Union founded on its own Constitution rather than on treaties between sovereign Member States(Art.I-1). A Constitution, as distinct from a Treaty, is an independent source of legal
authority for a State;although history also shows many examples of States
being set up by treaties.
THIRD, it lays down that this Constitution and law made under it has primacy over the law, including the constitutional law, of its Member States, without any qualification or exclusions that would reserve powers to its Member States indefinitely (Arts.I-6). This makes the European Constitution the fundamental source of legal authority in the new EU, supplanting the constitutions of the Member States in that respect.
FOURTH, it gives this new European Union, which henceforth derives its authority and legitimacy from its own Constitution, legal personality and independent corporate existence for the first time(Art.I-7). This makes the new EU legally separate from its individual Member States, just as Texas and Virginia are legally separate from the US Federation and vice versa, even though the USA includes these provincial states. The Constitution enables the new EU State to act as sovereign over its Members and to enter into treaty relations with other States, just like any other member of the international community of States.
The Constitution could have excluded some national powers and competences permanently from the scope of this new EU and the primacy of its laws, in which case Member States would have retained some of their original sovereignty and independence. But it did not do that. Member States still retain their own national constitutions of course, just as Texas and Virginia have their own constitutions, but they are subordinate to the new EU Constitution, which is the fundamental source of authority for the new
Union, just as the Federal Constitution has primacy in the USA and other
Federations.
This does not mean that the new EU State will run everything, anymore than
the early American or German or Indian or Russian Federations run, or ran,
everything. The EU actually runs lots of things and potentially runs a lot
more. How much more will depend on which of their remaining powers or
competences the Member States may agree to transfer to the new EU in the
future.
The two main powers of Statehood the new EU would not yet possess if the Constitution is ratified is the power to impose taxes and the power to
force its Member States to go to war against their will.
Apart from that, the new Union would have all the key features of
Statehood: a Constitution, citizenship, a population, a territory, a currency, armed forces, a legislature, executive and judiciary, a Foreign Minister and diplomatic corps, some 100,000 pages of federal law, the right to conclude international treaties with other States in the ever-growing area of its exclusive competence - and now of course its own flag, anthem and annual public holiday, which are given a legal basis for the first time in the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe. Moreover,it would have acquired these features in a much shorter period of time than it took the US Federation historically to acquire them, although unlike the latter there is no European people or national community to give them a democratic basis,legitimacy and authority.
15. THE CONSTITUTION WAS DRAWN UP BY A CONVENTION THAT FAILED TO DO ITS JOB.
This Convention was set up by the 2001 Laeken Declaration of EU Presidents and Prime Ministers. This Declaration charged the Convention with the task of producing proposals to make the EU more democractic, more transparent and bring it closer to citizens. It was told to consider the possibility of restoring powers from the supranational level to the Member States, and consider "the possibility ... in the long run" of an EU Constitution.
Instead of doing that the Convention, which overwhelmingly consisted of Federalist EU-State-builders, rushed headlong into drafting an EU State Constitution that has the legal effect of turning the EU into a State and does not propose repatriating a single power from the supranational to the national level, but proposes rather to transfer over 60 further policy areas from Member States to the EU.
16. THE CONSTITUTION FUNDAMENTALLY UNDERMINES DEMOCRACY
The Left has always been among the strongest upholders of democracy. The
Left has traditionally stood for the right of peoples to self-determination and to chose their own government.
This fundamental democratic right, which is a basic principle of international law, enshrined in the United Nations Charter, is violated by the Constitution's proposal to make the proposed new European Union, founded now for the first time on its own State Constitution, into the supreme source of lawful authority for its 25 Member States.
The EU becomes the new legal sovereign for EU citizens, who will owe it real allegiance for the first time, over and above their own national States. Under the Constitution the sovereign powers of the new EU would be vested in its Council, Commission, Court and Parliament, to which we would all owe loyalty and obedience. We would become real citizens of the EU for the first time, not just as an honorary title, an adjunct to national citizenship, as at present under the 1993 Treaty of Maastricht, but with rights and obligations direct to the EU institutions rather than through our national institutions as hitherto.
In this EU Federation the laws for 450 million Europeans would be made by what is effectively an oligarchy, a legislative committee, of 25 politicians on the Council of Ministers, who are irremoveable as a group and responsible collectively to no one. Those laws in turn are based on proposals from the 25-member, eventually 18-member, EU Commission, who are governmental nominees and not individually elected.
European laws may be amended by the elected European Parliament, but only with the agreement of the Council and Commission, whose law-making power is therefore primary. The citizens of any EU Member State cannot change a single European law, even if they overwhelmingly wish to do that.
CONCLUSION
These proposed governmental structures for the greater part of Europe are
profoundly undemocratic, quite apart from the neo-liberal economic ideology
the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe requires them to implement as a constitutional imperative. As democrats therefore, all socialists, Greens, anti-war activists, genuine liberals and others on the Left, need to work in parallel with democratic non-socialists and others, rejecting all association with racist or fascist elements, in the common international struggle to defend democracy in face of the proposed EU Constitution.