Merger Mania
John F. McManus
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The New American, September 20, 2004
European Union member nations are close to voting on a newly created Constitution. Europeans are awakening to the serious reality of losing their independence. |
If the leaders of European nations decide that their countries should commit suicide, and their peoples allow them to do so, shame on them. The road toward this destination has actually been traveled for more than 50 years — from the 1952 formation of the European Coal and Steel Community (six nations), to the 1958 Common Market (six nations), to the 1986 expansion of the European Economic Community (12 nations), to the 1992 European Community (15 nations), to the current European Union (25 nations).
Sold over several decades to the European people as a beneficial trade agreement, the EU’s progress toward gaining ultimate domination included publication of the EU Draft Constitution in 2003. Among its 465 articles in 250 pages, Article I stated: “… this Constitution establishes the European Union [that] shall have primacy over member states.”
Nations willing to accept that bold assertion have indeed indicated a willingness to commit suicide. Once the proposed constitution was published, already simmering concern among Euroskeptics (those who oppose surrendering national independence to the EU) grew dramatically.
When he served as president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel spoke for these largely-ignored patriots of affected lands when he stated, “This is crossing the Rubicon, after which there will be no more sovereign states in Europe … only one state will remain.” He added, “Basic things will be decided by a remote federal government in Brussels.... We are against a European superstate.”
What Havel didn’t say, but what can be detected by anyone studying the Draft Constitution, is that the promoters of the European Union intend not only to have the EU supersede the governments of all member states, but to make it conform to “the principles of the United Nations Charter.” The Constitution’s deference to the UN is not surprising, considering that the supranational government now emerging under the EU is intended as a stepping stone to world government under the United Nations.
Even without a fully approved Constitution, the EU already has an executive branch (EU Commission), legislative branch (Council of Ministers and EU Parliament), and a judicial branch (the EU Court of Justice). It has an EU flag, anthem, motto, passport, auto license plates, Olympics, youth orchestra, and annual EU Day.
This emerging EU domination has spurred the rise of new political forces in several of the countries being merged. In England, for example, the new United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) has rapidly gained impressive support among Britain’s heretofore sleeping voters.
In a burst of candor rarely seen in political circles, the UKIP bluntly published its demand that Britain quit the EU. In a March 2004 letter to the John Birch Society, UKIP Deputy Leader Mike Nattrass summarized his group’s reasoning: “The EU was sold to the British people as a ‘trading agreement’ and has turned into a ‘Political Union’ which is changing our basic laws and traditions.”
Then in the June 2004 elections, UKIP candidates won 10 additional seats in the EU Parliament to add to the two they already held. Popular television personality Robert Kilroy-Silk, a newly elected UKIP star, told reporters what he intended to do when taking his place in the European Parliament: “Wreck it — expose it for the waste, the corruption and the way it’s eroding our independence and our sovereignty.” But 12 seats among the many hundreds who make up the EU Parliament is hardly a commanding force.
One Step Back, Two Steps Forward
The surge of British opposition to EU domination has forced Prime Minister Tony Blair, a committed EU supporter, to reverse course and agree to allow a referendum to decide whether his country deepens its plunge into the EU. The EU-backing British Broadcasting Corporation has reluctantly reported that governing parties throughout Europe, all of whose leaders are supporters of the EU, “are suffering big losses.” Consequently, other nations are being forced to hold their own referenda to decide whether to submit to the EU.
Seemingly undaunted by gathering opposition to their plans, Europe’s leaders succeeded in replacing their Draft Constitution with a wholly new Constitution on June 18. To take effect, it must be ratified by each of the 25 EU nations, a process that will severely test the waning clout of Europe’s internationalist-minded political heavyweights over the next two years. Plans are already forming in several nations to scuttle their delivery to the Brussels-based superstate.
Like the Draft Constitution of 2003, the new Constitution’s Article I-5a plainly states: “The Constitution, and law adopted by the Union’s Institutions in exercising competences conferred upon it, shall have primacy over the law of the Member States.” The reference to “law adopted by the Union’s Institutions” means that the EU’s bureaucratic agencies would be empowered to create laws having “primacy over the law of the Member States.”
How will some of these laws be agreed to? The Constitution creates a system termed a “qualified majority vote” (QMV) defined as “at least 55 percent of the members of the Council, comprising at least 15 of them and representing Member States comprising at least 65 percent of the population of the Union.”
Some laws dealing with defense, foreign policy, taxation and social security could be vetoed by a member nation, a power grudgingly granted to satisfy British demands. But Britain’s Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, who wants to succeed Labour’s Tony Blair, called the document “bad for our democracy, bad for jobs, and bad for Britain.”
Not only were Europe’s leaders forced to include such telling compromises in their final Constitution, they rejected strong demands that they acknowledge God and Europe’s Christian heritage, a move that has soured many of Europe’s Christians. Nor could they agree on choosing a president of the European Commission, the most powerful EU post. Britain opposed Belgium’s prime minister; the Franco-German group nixed a British alternative selection; and several other European heavyweights pulled their names from consideration. Consequently, Europe’s leaders will have to return to Brussels soon to name a leader. It won’t be an easy task.
Is the new EU Constitution in jeopardy as it moves toward ratification? It would certainly seem so. But there is another important reason why it should be rejected, something virtually no one seems willing to note.
If past is prologue, the determined internationalists promoting the EU-UN megastate will agree to additional compromises in order to counter complaints and get something on the books. They will then work to “fix it” according to their desires.
Had such a strategy been employed in 1919, the U.S. would have joined the League of Nations. But President Woodrow Wilson’s demand for all-or-nothing acceptance of his proposal led to its rejection by the U.S. Senate. In other instances, of course, this very strategy worked well for the architects of the Federal Reserve in 1913 and the Social Security System in 1935.
Europeans must be wary of such a ruse and reject further submergence into the EU. They will be well advised to steer clear of any seemingly safe watering down of the EU’s new Constitution. Such a step away from a fully empowered EU would only prove temporary and would lead to eventual restoration of what they oppose.
Dismantling Globalism
Past criticisms of the European Union in this publication have insisted that the ultimate goal of its creators has always been the delivery of Europe into the waiting clutches of the United Nations. This final EU Constitution, consistent with the previous Draft Constitution, confirms our assessment. It calls for subservience to the UN Charter in various ways, using such phrases as “strict observance for,” “in accordance with,” “respect for,” “in conformity with,” “without prejudice to,” and “establishing all appropriate forms of cooperation with.”
Unfortunately, the EU-UN connection is not widely known. If the people of Europe can gain this additional awareness, the unraveling of the EU might begin. And following soon after such a welcome development, the UN should find itself in deep trouble throughout an awakening world.
The significant advances toward national suicide already accomplished by the European Union are likewise being planned for the entire Western Hemisphere via the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Not unexpectedly, FTAA’s promoters have let it be known that their plan includes similar deference to the United Nations.
An awakening of Americans to the fact that the FTAA is not about free trade — the same pretense that has worked so well in Europe — and that it is about destroying our national independence, can lead to its rejection by Congress. And from that important stand, removal of the U.S. from the sovereignty-compromising grasp of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the World Trade Organization, and even the United Nations can likely be realized.
If we do not seize this momentous opportunity to get our nation out of these independence-destroying “free trade” traps, then we too will have committed suicide.
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