EU Referendum

Showing posts with label Vaclav Klaus. Show all posts

leprechaun[i-leprechaun]It is difficult to know what precisely has changed since last July when it was learned that a group of senators in the Czech Upper House were planning to refer the constitutional Lisbon treaty back to the country's constitutional court – a process which could delay ratification for between three and six months.

However, The Times is getting rather excited about this, having picked up some gossip from last week's informal European Council meeting in Brussels, held to prepare for the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh on 24-25 September.

The issue was, apparently, brought up at that meeting when "EU leaders" were said to be "furious" at the delay, which means that the treaty could still be unratified by the time the UK goes to the polls, even if the Irish roll over and vote "yes" in their referendum.

With Mr Cameron somewhat on the rack over the treaty, one can only suppose that he is hoping for a "no" vote out of the Irish, which will enable him to park the issue, claiming the treaty is dead in the water, making a UK referendum irrelevant.

But if the Irish fail to do the decent thing, and the Czechs manage to hold out, this puts Cameron in something of a quandary. With the treaty not ratified, he will be obliged to honour his promise and hold a referendum. He will then be in the awkward position of supporting the "no" campaign, in the middle of trying to establish his own administration.

If this prospect might be unattractive to Cameron, we are told that it horrifies most EU leaders, not least the poison dwarf, Nicolas Sarkozy, who has warned Prague that it faces "consequences" if it does not swiftly follow an Irish "yes" (they hope) with its own ratification.

The outburst apparently followed a private warning from Jan Fischer, the Czech caretaker prime minister, that he had little control over president Václav Klaus, and could not force him to sign the ratification document.

Nevertheless, Sarkozy was not a happy bunny, declaring darkly that "... if the Irish say 'yes', there is no question that we will accept to stay in a no-man's land with a Europe that does not have the institutions to cope with the crisis." Asked about what could be done to persuade Klaus to sign, he added: "It will be necessary to draw the consequences — but those will be the subject of another meeting."

What precisely Sarkozy could then do, he was perhaps wise not to specify, as one rather gets the impression that Klaus is rather enjoying tweaking the tail of the "colleagues", and is trying to hold on until after the British election. Cameron is unlikely to gain quite the same degree of enjoyment.

Over the next few weeks though, little do the Irish realise quite how much power they have – although it makes their referendum choice that much more difficult. Do they stuff the "colleagues" with a "no" vote, or stuff the next English prime minister by voting "yes"? Either way, of course, there will be consequences.

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Anthony_Coughlan[i-Anthony_Coughlan]Yesterday evening Dr Anthony Coughlan a long-term campaigner in Ireland, the man who is responsible for the fact that referendums are called in that country before treaties are ratified and also for the fact that two of them, Nice and Lisbon, were given a NO before the Irish were forced to vote again, gave a talk to the Bruges Group about the Constitutional Lisbon Treaty and the situation in Ireland.

Afterwards I managed to sit down and have a long chat on what we can do to help on this side of the Irish Sea. It is very limited because there is legislation about funding from abroad during electoral and referendum campaigns. Naturally, this does not apply to the EU or the Commission as they do not campaign, merely produce information (mostly descriptions of feats of flying by the Porcine Air Force).

Nor would it be a good idea to have speakers from Britain, which rather upset me as I was looking forward to a possible visit to Dublin, a city I love dearly. The Irish government, astonishingly enough, plays the nationalist card while campaigning for the final destruction of the Irish Free State.

However, if the NO campaign provides information that is rather a different affair. Their aim is to publish a newsprint version of the annotated Consolidated Treaties, showing how the Lisbon Treaty changes the existing situation. It is complete with a detailed glossary and index and would be an excellent weapon in the fight if it went out to every household with a neutral letter that called attention to the need to understand what people are voting about.

The other issue is President Klaus's pen, which is, at present in the air as he stubbornly refuses to sign the treaty's ratification in the Czech Republic. He can, in fact, keep that pen in the air indefinitely but if the Irish vote YES in October the pressure on him to sign will be huge.

His office has been hinting heavily that it would be easier for him to resist that pressure if he could say that he had had numerous letters and requests from Britain, particularly from the British Conservatives, asking him to hold back the signature until the General Election after which the latter are likely to form the new government with the intention of giving the British people the referendum that they had been denied previously.

To be fair to President Klaus, he sounds rather doubtful about the Conservatives and their intentions in connection with the Constitutional Lisbon Treaty. But it is possible that he could use letters from British MEPs, MPs and peers as well as various organizations to bolster his own argument for not signing. A letter from the Shadow Foreign Secretary, of course, would be ideal. But that would presuppose that the Shadow Foreign Secretary actually cared one way or another about the subject.

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Vaclav+Klaus[i-Vaclav+Klaus]It seems that there is one politician in Europe who has understood the essence of the European project and why it is not a good idea for any of its members. Sadly, that politician is not one of ours. Nor is it President Sarkozy or Chancellor Merkel. In fact, I gave the game away in the title. I am talking the only East European politician who genuinely believes in democracy and the free market: President Vaclav Klaus.

On May 18 he gave a speech in Prague that summarized his reservations. After a more or less justified boast of the Czech Republics performance in most of the post-Communist years, he came to a discussion of what was wrong with the present situation.

In the last decade the Czech economic performance was affected by two external factors:

- the economic growth in the rest of the world, especially in our main export markets;

- the constraints connected with our membership in the EU, or to put it more explicitly, with economic growth restraining institutions and economic policies in the EU.

Of these, he continued, the second was more important and more harmful. One could and did adjust to the first but the EU with its growth-restraining institutions has become a real problem, especially as the gain that the Czech Republic may have had - the opening up of the markets - was achieved before membership.

(Of course, it could be argued that western markets would not have been opened but for the negotiations for membership but, as we have written many times before, that was going about it the wrong way. The EU could not envisage any relationship with the former Communist states but their membeship when the existing members were ready. This was not a particularly helpful and stabilizing attitude either for the old or the new members.)

Going on, President Klaus explained why he did not hold with the way European integration was progressing:

The past 50 years of the European integration have been usually considered to be a success, even if it is very difficult to statistically measure it or to prove it. We all know that there have been many other unique, unrepeatable historical as well as much more important evolutionary global factors which were influencing the economic (and not only economic) performance of the EU member countries at the same time. This is not very often explicitly discussed and recognized. All progress of that period is usually attributed to the existence of the EU.

What I consider important is the fact that the concept (or model) of European integration has been fundamentally changing over time. With the benefit of hindsight, and with the courage to generalize, I see two different integration models (or methods of integration) in Europe in the last 50 years.

The first one I call the liberalisation model. It was characterised by an inter-European opening-up, by the overall liberalisation of human activities, by the removal of various, in the past created barriers at the borders of countries as regards the movement of goods and services, of labour and capital, as well as of ideas and cultural patterns. Its main feature was the removal of barriers and its basis was intergovernmentalism.

The second one, which I call the interventionist and harmonisation model, is characterised by enormous centralisation of decision-making in Brussels, by far-reaching regulation of human activities, by harmonisation of all kinds of “parameters” of political, economic and social systems, by standardisation and homogenization of human life. The main features of the second model are regulation and harmonisation orchestrated from above, and the birth of supranationalism.

I am frustrated that the people in Europe do not see this fundamental metamorphosis sufficiently clearly and especially do not think about its inevitable consequences. I am angry with politicians and their fellow travellers that they do maximum to hide it and to make it fuzzy.

I am – as it is well known – in favour of the first model, not of the second. I am convinced that the unification of decision-making at the EU level and the overall harmonisation of societal “parameters” went much further than was necessary and than is rational and economically advantageous.

I consider it wrong. I am not satisfied with making only cosmetic changes. I am, therefore, in favour of redefining the whole concept of the European Union.

I suggest going back to the intergovernmental model of European integration. I suggest going back to the original concept of attempting to remove existing barriers among countries. I suggest going back to the consistent liberalisation and opening-up of markets (not only economic ones). I suggest minimising political intervention in human activities. Where this intervention is inevitable, it should be done close to the citizens (which means at the level of municipalities, regions and states), not in Brussels.

To summarize, I want freedom in Europe, not democratic deficit, I want democracy in Europe, not postdemocracy.

Read the whole speech. It is not long and well worth it.

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