DANIEL HANNAN's EURO BRIEFINGS   A distinct case of the wobbles Lend me your votes Vote for an Independent Britain! Meanwhile in Europe We're heading for an amicable divorce  Europe's Virtual Reality Daniel Hannan's memo to Gordon Brown Convincing the Germans The EPP:  Crunch Time What if Britain is left behind? Another Strasbourg scam What happed to the free market? Send for the Sheriff A lonely dissenting voice The need for consistency It's got to be Cameron Sovereign People What is the point of voting? Pan-European Political Parties Time for an Amicable Divorce The Constitution is in Force Dissolve the People and Elect Another in their place Power to the People Are Euro-Sceptics really Nazis? Taking the Argument to Berlin French Malaise The Cost of Europe Brussels owns up to Law Breaking Time for Regime Change in Europe MacShane is onto me Not in My Name Christmas Vote for Turkey What a Shower! What would happen if we voted 'no'? The Parody of a Parliament Blue-eyed Sheikhs Another Brussels ban Ten things you should know about the European Constitution Who are our true friends? Vote No! What happens next? Meanwhile in Brussels Why I am going to the European Court Your chance to choose your MEP Blair buys his prestige with Britain's well-being Brussels owns up to law-breaking 132 days to go .. Don't drop your guard Let the people decide Is the EU good at what it does? I shouldn't say this, but the expenses here are fabulous What can I do to help? Estonia The EU's proposed constitution Why won't they vote? A disaster for the EU? United States of Europe? Hey, Prodi, leave those kids alone! Conservatives to leave federalist bloc Hand over your fish What'll it cost to make you like Brussels? The new Irish question The biggest euro-myth of all Coming next: an EU constitution Welcome home Will it never end? Some things need no comment Sleazier and sleazier Listen to the country Don’t close our health stores Irish ayes It's official:  a United States of Europe   DANIEL HANNAN's EURO BRIEFINGS   A distinct case of the wobbles   Enjoy your moment, all you apostles of the euro: this is as good as it’s doing to get. The accession of Slovenia last month brought membership of the single currency to 13, and I’m willing to bet that that’s as high as it’ll ever go.   A survey in the Financial Times this week showed that, throughout the euro-zone, large majorites hanker after their old currencies. The nostalgia is keenest at the Union’s core: nearly two thirds of Germans oppose the euro. The FT made no attempt to disguise its contempt for the doltishness of the common man. Its report began: “The euro-zone economy may be growing robustly, but its citizens appear not to expect significant financial gains as a result. They give scant credit to the eight-year-old euro for improving their national performances, an FT/Harris poll shows…”   But it’s not just the polls. Millions are simply opting out. A chunk of Bavaria is issuing its own money, while shops from Italy to the Netherlands have started to accept their former currencies, to the delight of their customers. Suddenly, the question is not who will be the next to join, but who will be the first to leave. In anticipation of a collapse, Germans are being advised to hang on to euro notes beginning with serial number “X” (which, apparently, indicates that they’re issued in Germany) and to ditch those beginning with “S” (issued in Italy).   Amazing how quickly something can go from being inevitable to being unthinkable. Eight years ago, most commentators assumed that the three recalcitrants – Britain, Sweden and Denmark – would have to join sooner or later. But guess which of the then 15 EU states have since enjoyed the highest growth rates? That’s right: Britain, Sweden and Denmark. As the Americans say, go figure.   2 February 2007    back to top   Lend me your votes!   I am delighted that my proposal to repeal the 1972 European Communities Act has made it onto the final shortlist of the Today’s Programme Christmas Repeal – a poll which allows listeners to nominate the law that they would most like to blast off the statute book.   There are, of course, thousands of otiose and damaging pieces of legislation in force. If it were up to me, I’d scrap all of the laws on the Today Programme shortlist, starting with the 2004 Hunting Act and the 1998 Human Rights Act. And I’d throw in the 1997 Firearms Act, the 1974 Heath and Safety at Work Act, the 1989 Football Supporters Act, the 2006 Identity Cards Act, the 2000 Financial Services Act and – my particular bête noire – the 1972 Local Government Act, which abolished our counties.   But, before we bale out the tub, let us at least turn off the tap. Brussels is now responsible for churning out an almost unbelievable 80 per cent of the laws passed in the member states. (We have that statistic courtesy of the German Government; whenever our own is asked to name the figure, it says that it would be too expensive to compile the data.) Revoke the 1972 European Communities Act and our Parliament will once again be sovereign; then we can turn our attention to scraping away other excrescences.   To vote for the repeal of the 1972 European Communities Act, please go to https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today and click on “Christmas Repeal”. You can also vote by phone by calling 0901 522 1004.   In the short time that you’ve been reading this bulletin, Britain has paid around £50,000 into the EU budget. What are you waiting for?   31 December 2006 back to top   Vote for an independent Britain!   The Today programme on radio 4 is running a listeners poll to find the most unpopular law in Britain. The Christmas Repeal invites you to nominate the piece of legislation you would most like to see scrapped. You can vote online at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/vote/2006vote/   This is a huge step forward from two years ago, when Radio 4 wanted us to squeeze yet another law onto our already crammed statute book (in the event, listeners plumped for a Bill to allow householders to shoot intruders, but the Labour MP who had promised to propose the winning entry in Parliament backed out).   There are, of course, many otiose statutes: The Football Supporters Act, the Firearms Act, the Human Rights Act, the Hunting With Dogs Act and a goodly chunk of the illiberal legislation that has been brought in over the past five years under the guise of anti-terrorism legislation.   But there is surely one outstanding candidate for repeal: the 1972 European Communities Act. This is the piece of legislation that gives EU decisions automatic primacy over British Acts of Parliament. When it was passed, most people assumed that this precedence would be confined to cross-border questions, such as trade, competition and pollution. Thirty-four years on, we know better. Brussels is now the primary source of legislation in the United Kingdom, accounting for 80 per cent of our laws. This astonishing statistic, as regular readers of this bulletin will know, comes from the German Government; our own refuses to name a figure, claiming that it is too expensive to compile the data.   What is the point of voting when four out of every five legal acts in Britain are proposed, not just by people that we didn't vote for, but by unelected EU officials whom nobody voted for?   Scrap the 1972 European Communities Act, and we will automatically restore the supremacy our elected representatives. From that moment, EU directives and regulations would have force in this country only following a specific decision by Parliament to enact them; otherwise they would be treated as advisory.   I shall appear on the Today Programme on Thursday morning to argue the case for repealing the 1972 European Communities Act. If you share my belief in an independent, democratic Britain, please add your vote on the Today programme website. The address again: www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/vote/2006vote/   13 December 2006 back to top  Meanwhile in Europe....     Let’s review where we stand, shall we? Since the French and Dutch “No” votes, five more states have approved the European Constitution, bringing to 18 the number of nations to have ratified. Meanwhile, every government remains devoted to the text.   Germany’s Angela Merkel says the European constitution is “vital to German interests”. Italy’s Romano Prodi says he interprets the “No” votes as “a demand for more Europe, not less”. Spain insists that its “Yes” vote be allowed to stand. Austria and Finland want ratification to be completed by the end of 2007, and Belgium suggests changing the rules so that this can happen by a majority vote rather than by unanimity.   In France, both main presidential candidates are committed to pushing ahead: Nicolas Sarkozy says he wants a “mini-treaty” that will contain all the constitution’s main elements, while Ségolène Royal says that, if Britain has problems with the constitution, the rest of the EU should go ahead without it. Not that the UK is trying to back out: it seems to have agreed in principle to the Sarkozy “mini-treaty” proposal.   Am I forgetting anyone? Oh yes, there is one solitary voice of dissent: that of the ordinary citizen who, whenever invited to express an opinion on the Constitution, keeps rejecting it. Opinion has swung against the constitution over the past two years, both in France and the Netherlands and in those countries whose governments went ahead with ratification – most spectacularly in Germany, where two thirds of people now say they would vote “No”. Not that any of the governments seems to care.   Indeed, the distinction between governments and peoples has been explicitly acknowledged by the constitution’s chief author, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. “It was not France that said ‘no’ to the constitution,” he said the other day, “it was 55 per cent of French people.” France, in other words, is represented, not by its ill-informed population, but by its exquisitely tailored former President. “L’état, c’est Giscard.”   Relying on Giscard’s argument, the EU will continue to adopt as many of the Constitution’s proposals as it can under the existing structures. It has, after all, already enacted the document’s chief provisions: a European criminal justice system, a diplomatic corps (the “European External Action Service”) the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Some 85 per cent of the clauses can be pushed through this way. Then, at some stage in the next 18 months, there will be a perfunctory Inter-Governmental Conference to tie up the loose ends: the new voting weights, for example, and the end of the rotating presidency. There will be no disagreement in principle about these things, which the 25 – now, with Romania and Bulgaria, 27 – governments have accepted in principle all along. The national leaders will then tell their electorates that it would be absurd to hold referendums on such detailed and technical proposals. The result? We will end up with virtually the entire text of the constitution, but with no more referendums. 24 November 2006 back to top    We're heading for an amicable divorce Why no riots? Why no mob of aggrieved taxpayers, descending on the European Commission with burning brands? On Tuesday, for the twelfth year in a row, the European Court of Auditors refused to approve the EU budget. Yet the story has pretty much passed Europe’s media by. If a national government agency could not account for the majority of its spending, it would be front page news. But, faced with the usual Brussels tales of bogus invoices and non-existent farm products and collusion between the authorities and the fraudsters, we shrug our shoulders indifferently. In our collective reaction, I think one can descry the beginning of the end of Britain’s relationship with the EU. The other day, I happened to read a review of a book about successful relationships. The author’s chief point, if I understood her correctly, was that a marriage can weather a good deal of arguing. Rows between husband and wife suggest that each values the other’s opinion enough to want to change it. It is when bickering gives way to scorn that the marriage is over. That, it seems to me, is what is happening vis-à-vis the EU. For seven years, I have been writing about Euro-corruption. I have recorded the petty extravagances — MEPs’ expenses, Commissioners’ allowances — and the gargantuan sleaze: the billions of euros that disappear from the CAP, structural funds and foreign aid. At first, these articles used to provoke furious reactions from readers. But, as the years have passed, a resigned, disdainful tone has crept into their responses. People seem to be giving up on the idea that Brussels might ever be reformed. The relationship has reached that fatal stage where anger is giving way to contempt. Sooner rather than later, we shall file for separation. 31 October 2006 back to top      Europe's virtual reality It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that the two events are linked. One day, Günter Verheugen, the Commission Vice-President, attacks the cost of Euro-bureaucracy. The next, photographs appear of the Commissioner strolling hand in hand with a female aide while on a visit to Lithuania. Mr Verheugen denies any impropriety and, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it would be churlish not to believe him. It just seems odd that photographs taken two months previously should suddenly appear in the press at the very moment that the Commissioner is making himself awkward. A Commissioner can get away with many things. He can be idle, incompetent or drunk. He can be a former Stalinist, or have been convicted of political corruption. But he cannot give voice to the belief, held almost universally outside Brussels , that the EU is overly meddlesome. All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. Nor was Mr Verheugen simply mouthing off. He offered figures to back his claim, and very scary figures they were. According to the Commissioner’s findings, EU standardisation now costs businesses €600 billion a year. A billion here, a billion there — after a while it starts to add up to real money. €600 billion is a larger sum that the total spending of 20 out of the 25 member states. It dwarfs the EU’s €110 billion budget. In fact, on the Commission’s own statistics, it is nearly four times as much as the €180 billion savings supposedly generated by the single market. Think about that for a moment. Here is the Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry — the man in charge of the whole thing, as it were — admitting that, from a business point of view, the EU has been a failure: that the benefits of cross-border trade are massively outweighed by the disbenefits of administrative and compliance costs. Of course, Mr Verheugen’s analysis will come as no surprise to those who work in commerce and industry. A handful of multinationals love Euro-regulation, seeing it as a way to squeeze their smaller competitors out of the market. But most firms find complying with Brussels rules an increasingly difficult struggle. The Commission itself, however, inhabits a different world: a virtual world of deregulation and competitiveness and “slashing red tape”. In any speech about business, a Eurocrat will kick off by telling his audience about something called “the Lisbon agenda”, which will give the EU “the most dynamic enterprise economy in the world by the year 2020”. On one level, he genuinely believes it. Or, to be precise, he is so removed from the outside world that it does not occur to him to assess the real impact of his policies. I have lost count of how many times I have had variants of the following conversation: HANNAN: “This latest proposal of yours [maximum working hours, or equal rights for temporary workers, or REACH] will destroy jobs in my constituency. EUROCRAT: “Nonsense: we’ve just passed a resolution that says that the fight against unemployment is one of our top three priorities.” HANNAN: “Yes, but in the real world, your policy is making it harder for firms to take on staff.” EUROCRAT: “Didn’t you hear what I just said? One of our top three priorities...” Mr Verheugen’s crime was to intrude a dose of reality into the virtual world, to crash through the careful suspension of disbelief that sustains so much European integration. What he said was true, and everyone knows it. That is why he won’t be pardoned. 22 October 2006 back to top    The article below appeared on the following web page: https://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2006/09/daniel_hannans_.html   Daniel Hannan's memo to Gordon Brown: There is one way the English might accept a Scottish Prime Minister   I have found it: the philosopher's stone of politics, the elixir of life. There really is an answer to the West Lothian Question. Twenty nine years have passed since Tam Dalyell, the stony Old Etonian who then sat for West Lothian, set the conundrum before Parliament. Scottish devolution, he observed, would lead to a constitutional anomaly, as Westminster MPs with Scottish seats would be able to vote on matters affecting English constituencies, but would have no say over such matters in their own constituencies. Today, the problem is no longer academic. On two occasions -- over foundation hospitals and again over tuition fees -- the votes of Scottish MPs secured the passage of contentious legislation that did not apply north of the border. And the signs are that the English are becoming miffed. An opinion poll in The Daily Telegraph showed that nearly half of English voters object to the idea of a Scottish Prime Minister -- a finding that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. What, then, is the answer? The only two solutions so far hazarded - a separate English parliament or a wholly independent Scotland - have understandably failed to win widespread support. But there is a third option: localism. There is no power exercised by the Holyrood legislature under the 1998 Scotland Act that could not, in England, be devolved to a lower level -- either to counties and cities or, better still, to individual citizens. English councils could, for example reassume responsibility for the relief of poverty, which was considered a municipal function from the Middle Ages until the late 20th century. They could take up the powers of the now defunct Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. They could administer health and education (or at least the financing of these policies: there is no reason why they should directly run schools and hospitals). All Westminster MPs would then find themselves on an equal footing. True, they would have lost some of their powers. But they would be able to compensate by taking back different powers from judges, quangoes and Eurocrats. The House of Commons would, in its functions at least, resemble the US Congress, concentrating on big, national issues such as defence, immigration and foreign treaties. I suspect that most MPs would regard this as an improvement on their current status as providers of a queue-jumping service for pushy people. Could our local authorities cope with the increased responsibilities? Absolutely. Kent has three times the population of Wyoming; yet Wyoming happily runs its own criminal justice, social security and taxation systems. Give councils more power and you will attract a higher calibre of candidate as well as boosting participation at local elections. In Britain, local authorities raise 25 per cent of their budgets and turnout is typically around 30 per cent. In France, those figures are, respectively, 50 and 55 per cent; in Switzerland 85 and 90 per cent. English devolution is not simply a way to correct the lopsided devolution settlement; it is a meritorious reform in itself. Canvassers from all three parties will privately tell you that they are coming across an unprecedented degree of doorstep cynicism. "Voting doesn't make any difference," say the punters -- and they're right. The questions that impact most tangibly on local communities -- whether to build more houses, where to deploy the police, who goes to which school -- have been removed from the democratic process. Decisions that would be made at a town meeting in the US are made, in England, by a single minister and then imposed uniformly on the whole country. As well as being unaccountable, the system is inefficient. "To the size of a state there is a limit, as there is to animals, plants and implements," wrote Aristotle, "for none of these can retain its facility if it is too large". The NHS payroll is the size of the population of an average African nation, and its budget considerably higher. No single minister, be he the wisest in Whitehall, can get the most out of such a monstrous organisation. In Europe, as in North America, conservatives generally stand as the defenders of local particularisms against the bureaucrats in the national capital. There are signs that, after decades of misguided centralism, the Tories might do the same here. David Cameron has promised to place the police under locally elected representatives, to democratise the Crown Prerogative powers and to wind up the regional quangoes and pass their powers downwards. If he follows through, he may find that he has solved the West Lothian Question almost without meaning to. It would, of course, be open to the Scottish and Welsh electorates to embark on a parallel localist agenda, devolving power to Aberdeenshire, Flintshire and the rest. Either way, the asymmetry of the current dispensation would have been corrected. The English would no longer have anything to complain about. We could all go back to resenting Gordon Brown, not because he sits for a Fifeshire seat, but because he is a miserable girner who has plundered our pensions and given away our gold reserves. Righting the current constitutional imbalance will be like tapping a pebble out of our shoe. With the irritant removed, we can go back to celebrating the things that we have achieved together: ending the slave trade, bringing law and civilisation to new continents, fighting for the freedom of all Europe's nations. There will still be occasional squabbles, of course. The relationship between England and Scotland, like that between Johnson and Boswell, has always involved a certain amount of teasing along with the underlying affection. It is a relationship typified by the Highlander who, observing the rout at Dunkirk, commented tersely: "If the English give in too, this could be a long war". But, in the last analysis, there is more that unites us than that divides us. For all our quarrels, we share a way of looking at the world. The underlying argument for the Union has not changed in 400 years. It was ably and eloquently advanced by that aboriginal Unionist, James VI and I: "Hath not God first united these kingdoms, both in language and religion and similitude of manners? Hath He not made us all in one island, compassed by one sea?" Amen. 11 September 2006 back to top    Convincing the Germans   Daniel writes a regular column for the German newspaper Die Welt – the only Euro-sceptical voice in the entire German media. There follows the English translation of his latest article.   So we’re all agreed. One year after the “no” votes, the leaders of the EU have decided to make the text binding by 2009. The new Italian government says it interprets the “no” votes as “a demand for more Europe, not less”. The Belgian government suggests changing the rules so that the European Constitution may be adopted by a qualified majority vote. Wolfgang Schuessel says that ratification should be completed in 2007. Angela Merkel says the text is “vital to German interests”. The European Commission plans to push ahead with as much of the constitution as it can, with or without formal approval.   Am I forgetting anyone? Oh yes, there is one lonely voice of dissent: that of the ordinary citizen who, when invited to express an opinion on the Constitution, usually rejects it. Opinion has swung against the constitution over the past 12 months, both in France and the Netherlands and in those countries whose governments pushed ahead with ratification.   The distinction between governments and peoples has been explicitly acknowledged by the constitution’s chief author, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. “It is not France that has said ‘no’ to the constitution,” he said last week, “it is 55 per cent of French people.” France, in other words, is represented, not by its ill-informed population, but by its former President. “L’état, c’est Giscard.”   Giscard is turning on its head a principle which Europeans have spent 300 years fighting to establish, namely that rulers should be accountable to their people. To be fair, he is not alone. A certain disregard for democracy is integral to the European project. Eurocrats are well aware that the EU would never have got to where it is today if each successive transfer of power to Brussels had been referred to the national electorates for approval. They see no dishonour in this; on the contrary, they are forever congratulating themselves on their determined leadership.   Jean-Claude Juncker was at it again this week, urging Europe’s governments to ignore their voters. In an interview with the radio station Deutschlandfunk, he said: “If Kohl and Waigel had held a consultation exercise, we would never have had the euro.” Indeed. And would that have been such a bad thing? I can’t help noticing that, since the euro was introduced in 1999, the EU members with the highest growth rates have been the ones that stayed out: Britain, Denmark and Sweden. And why did they stay out? Because they had to consult their peoples.   In contrast, you Germans seem content to contract out the whole question to your politicians. While this column, I have received many letters from readers of Die Welt – always, by British standards, courteous and well argued. Some of you, naturally enough, think I am writing rubbish. But I have been struck by how many have said things like, “I think as you do, but no one in Germany can say these things.” Well, my friends, that is up to you. If you are content with the Brussels racket, with the unaudited accounts, with the self-serving bureaucracy, with the one-way centralisation of power, with the open contempt for the democratic verdict of the national electorates, fine. But if you are worried about what is going on, for Heaven’s sake say so. To hand away your freedoms for the sake of politeness – that, surely, would be going too far.    22 June 2006 back to top    THE EPP: CRUNCH TIME   David Cameron needs your support. Nine months ago, he announced that, as leader, he would sever our party’s links with the ultra-federalist European People’s Party (EPP). In its place, he promised, he would create Conservative Group in the European Parliament, dedicated to national independence and personal freedom. Since then, he has been violently attacked by the Left-wing press – and, disgracefully, by a handful of Tories. Leaving the EPP, claim the Euro-zealots, will mean “leaving the mainstream”, “lurching to the Right” and “abandoning the modernising agenda”.   This is drivel of course. There is nothing mainstream about the palaeo-federalism of the EPP, which wants a European army and police force, a single EU seat on the UN Security Council, and a pan-European income tax to be levied by the EPP. Nor is there anything Right-wing about believing in parliamentary sovereignty. Outside the EPP, we would sit with respectable Centre-Right parties, many of them in government in their home countries, who believe in personal liberty, free markets and the Atlantic alliance. And nothing could be less modern than the 1950s vision of a European superstate to which the EPP continues to cling, despite its repeated rejection in referendums.   It is a fact of politics that, when a change is proposed, some of the old guard dig in. Equally, those who support the reform tend to sit back and say nothing. In consequence, those who oppose David Cameron on this issue are making all the running.   In the interests of fairness, let me direct you to the two websites that set out the arguments on each side. www.epp-ed.blogspot.com makes the case for remaining where we are; www.adieu-epp.com makes the case for setting up our own group. Look at both sites and make your own mind up.   If you think we should stay with the EPP, fine. I disagree, but the Tory party is a broad alliance. But if you share my and David’s view that we should fight for a different sort of Europe, for Heaven’s sake say so. If you have a local Conservative MP, write to him and tell what you think. If you don’t, write directly to the Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague. But please don’t just take things for granted. Again and again, we British have made the mistake of ignoring until too late what is happening on the European mainland.  Let’s not do it again.     1 June 2006 back to top    WHAT IF BRITAIN IS LEFT BEHIND? I have always had a sneaking regard for the new Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi -- a feeling which, as far as I can tell, is wholly unreciprocated. Shortly after he was appointed President of the European Commission in 1999, I conducted an interview with him, during which I asked about the curious episode of Aldo Moro. Aldo Moro, you may recall, was the former Italian Prime Minister who, in 1978, was kidnapped and later murdered by the Red Brigades. While he was being held, Prodi, then an academic, went to the police and told them (correctly) that Aldo Moro could be found at a place called Gradoli. Asked how he knew, he replied that he had been playing with a Ouija board when the spirits of dead Christian Democrats had moved the glass to spell out G-R-A-D-O-L-I. Prodi became more than a little testy when I raised the subject. Later, when the interview was published, his press officer falsely claimed that he thought he had been speaking off the record. But the episode did nothing to diminish my admiration for the old boy. Don't be fooled by the grey bureaucrat act. Prodi is a man who speaks his mind with admirable clarity. When other Commissioners were denying that EU armed forces were under construction, he cheerfully told a British newspaper: "If you don't want to call it a European army, fine -- you can call it Margaret, you can call it Mary-Ann". Now, evidently still under the influence of those dead Christian Democrats, he says he wants an advance guard of EU states to push ahead with much deeper integration, leaving the sceptics to stew in their indecision. To which I say: bravo! Most of the acrimony among EU members these past 30 years has been caused by differences over political union. Whatever compromise is reached, it is always a step too far for the British, but never enough for the founding, federalist states. The result is that no one is happy. The British -- and, to a lesser extent, the Swedes and Danes -- feel they are being dragged à contre coeur into a union that they do not want, while the Belgians and Germans and Italians feel that they are being impeded by constant British whingeing and vetoing. In consequence, a project that was meant to be all about friendship among Europe's nations ends up causing friction. If the core, Carolingian countries want to merge themselves into a single polity, if they want an EU army, a European police force, a President of Europe, a Continent-wide tax system, good luck to them. Britain should look on as a friend and sponsor, an external flying buttress. It is no part of our business to tell other sovereign countries how to relate one to another -- even if they want to abolish their separate sovereignties. By the same token, though, Britain should be allowed to opt out of a number of policies currently under EU jurisdiction. Although it is reasonable to accept a degree of harmonisation of cross-border questions, Brussels is currently administering a number of policy areas of essentially domestic concern: farming, fishing, employment law, industrial relations, the status of local government, the interpretation of human rights, transport policy, immigration, defence, energy policy. In return for allowing the Euro-enthusiast states to use the EU's mechanisms and procedures to forge ahead on their own, Britain should seek to recuperate its autonomy in these areas -- and to allow other states to do the same. I suspect, although I have no way of knowing, that if Britain were to set the precedent in this way, others among the EU's more free-trading, maritime members would seek a similar status. They may even team up with the EFTA states, so that Europe would divide into two amicable associations: an inner core, with most of the attributes and trappings of a federal state, and a peripheral aureole of free trading nations, looking as much to the open main as to their Continental neighbours. These two blocs would be bound together through the constant nexus of a free market, and also by frequent collaboration on other matters. They would support each other diplomatically, commercially and, in extremis, militarily. Indeed, they ought to get on far better than they do now, when every budget negotiation and every EU summit ends up pitting them against each other. So go for it, Prodi. We'll be cheering you on from the sidelines. After all, Churchill always envisaged a European federation with Britain outside it -- a compromise that, had it been adopted at the time, would have spared us all a great deal of anguish. You'll be better off without us and, in your heart, you know it. You'll lose a bad tenant, but you'll gain a good neighbour.   29 May 2006 back to top    Another Strasbourg Scam   The European Parliament, it seems, has been swindled. We MEPs – or, rather, you taxpayers – have been paying €1 million a year over the odds to the city of Strasbourg (see the excellent coverage online at www.thefirstpost.co.uk).   It is, of course, quite normal to over-invoice when dealing with the EU. Contractors know that Eurocrats are not spending their own money. They are like builders asking “Insurance job, this, is it?” – only on a far, far grander scale.   What distinguishes this little scam, though, is that it reignites the argument about the location of the European Parliament. MEPs generally meet in Brussels; but, once a month, we travel Strasbourg. (We also maintain a permanent seat in Luxembourg, for reasons which are too complicated to go into now.) The expense of migrating between these places is awesome. Even when we factor out the cost of interpretation, each MEP costs the taxpayer nearly €2.5 million a year. It’s not just the 732 MEPs who make the monthly peregrination, you see: it’s the chauffeurs, the committee clerks, the man who advises your secretary about her pension rights – oh, and some twelve tons of papers, shuttling back and forth in a dedicated train.   Many MEPs, sick of having to place themselves in the clumsy hands of Air France each month, want to end the Strasbourg sittings. But there is no way that this can happen: the French have managed to sneak a clause into the Treaties specifying that the Parliament must meet in Strasbourg twelve times a year. This commitment cannot now be removed without the unanimous consent of all 25 states; and there is no way that France will give its consent.   Interestingly, though, the Treaties make no mention of Brussels. So there is a way to end this wasteful and absurd charade: we could cut out Brussels and meet permanently in the chief town of Alsace. Moving away from the grey and soulless streets of Brussels would horrify the Euro-fanatics: they see the town as Europe’s federal capital. But meeting permanently in Strasbourg would bolster the old idea that the EU is an association of states, its institutions spread among its members. Whenever I suggest this idea to other MEPs, they say: “But we have to be at the centre of power. If we were separated from the Commission, it would be harder to pass legislation.” Yes, it would. As the French say: “Et alors?” 26 April 2006 back to top    What happened to the free market? It is the least cited passage in the Treaty of Rome - so at odds with the rest of the text, in fact, that when I quote it, my fellow Eurocrats usually think I am making it up. It comes in the Preamble as one of the founding objectives of the European Economic Community, and it reads as follows: "Desiring to contribute, by means of a common commercial policy, to the progressive abolition of restrictions on international trade". Of course, if this objective were ever fulfilled, the EU would have no raison d'etre. In a world without tariffs, there would be no need for customs unions. Indeed, for many Euro-enthusiasts, the whole purpose of integration is to give the EU clout against its trading rivals, and to protect Europe's social model from lower cost economies. Hence Peter Mandelson's preposterous decision to slap a punitive tariff of 5 per cent, rising to 20 per cent in the coming months, on shoes from China and Vietnam - a ruling that will add around £7.00 to the price of a pair of shoes. The Trade Commissioner argues that this is an anti-dumping measure, which is what the EU invariably says when it wants to protect inefficient industries within its borders. But let us give Mr Mandelson the benefit of the doubt, and assume that the Chinese really are subsidising their cobblers. If so, the more fool them. It means that, every time we buy a pair of their shoes, we are picking up a subsidy from the Chinese taxpayer. No British interest is served by this protectionism. Again and again, our consumers are expected to suffer for the sake of backward producers on the Continent. EU tariffs are highest in the fields of agriculture, textiles, steel and road vehicles - all areas where, in effect, British shoppers are being asked to prop up hopeless Continental manufacturers. You might regard this as unfortunate; but your opinions don't count. Britain has had no commercial policy since 1 January 1973, when our trade was wholly contracted out to Brussels. The entire show has been removed from our elected representatives and placed in the hands of an unelected functionary who, when he was a politician, twice had to resign in disgrace. You might have very strong views about commercial policy. You might want us to open our markets to struggling African producers. You might, for all I know, have been one of the millions of people who jumped up and down at the Live8 concert. But there is absolutely nothing you can do about it as long as we are in the EU. Some democracy.   2 March 2006 back to top    Send for the Sheriff   Last week, a group of people marched through London calling for those they disagreed with to be “beheaded”, “massacred” and “annihilated”. A pretty clear case, you’d have thought, of incitement. After all, such talk can no longer be dismissed as empty swanking. In the past five years, we have seen British boys leaving Tipton and Wanstead and Beeston to fight and kill their fellow subjects, whether in Afghanistan, Gaza or London. When the marchers dressed as suicide bombers, and called for “a real holocaust” (with the horrible insinuation that Hitler’s genocide hadn’t been real), they were not acting out a harmless fantasy. They were encouraging murder. And, sure enough, the police did detain two people for breaching the peace – not Islamist protestors, you understand, but two counter-demonstrators who were thought likely to upset the marchers.   Now go back a couple of years, and look at two other policing decisions. When countryside demonstrators rallied in Parliament Square against the hunting ban, they were dispersed with baton charges. But when anti-capitalism activists descended on the same spot, tore up the grass and vandalised the statue of Winston Churchill, the police looked on amicably. I happened to be there, and watched open mouthed as police officers held up the traffic so that the anarchists could go about their business undisturbed.   Or consider the case of the case of the pensioner who was charged with “racially aggravated criminal damage” after scrawling “free speech for England” on a condemned wall. Perhaps equality awareness counsellors had so drummed into local policemen their mantra that “free speech can never be used as an excuse for racism” that the two things had become blurred in the coppers’ minds, and the very fact of demanding free speech was thought to be proof of racism.   I think these decisions are crackers; others doubtless applaud them. But, right or wrong, they are plainly subjective. These days, chief constables habitually make decisions that are – to borrow Michael Howard’s distinction – political rather than operational. They decide, for example, whether or not to treat the possession of cannabis as a crime. They presume to tell Parliament what kind of anti-terrorist laws in should pass. Yet we have no say over their appointment.   The result is that senior policemen can drift away from their publics. I remember a survey carried out six years ago, which asked a number of constabularies what their priorities should be, and then asked the general public the same question. Sure enough, the police replied that they ought to be concentrating on cracking down on sexist language in the canteen, hiring more ethnic minority recruits and so on. The rest of the world thought they should concentrate on being beastly to criminals.   As things stand, there is no way to reconcile these contrasting approaches; no mechanism to make the former subject to the latter. Hence the argument in favour of placing the police under local democratic control.   In June, I and a group of newly elected Tory MPs wrote “Direct Democracy: An Agenda for a New Model party” (www.direct-democracy.co.uk). In it, we set out a scheme for the comprehensive decentralisation of power in Britain. Among other things, we called self-financing councils, the repatriation of power from Brussels, a local sales tax and pluralism in education and healthcare. We also called for the democratisation of the powers of Crown Prerogative – an idea that David Cameron took up on Monday.   Central to our plan was the idea of locally elected Sheriffs, who would assume the powers currently exercised by police authorities and by the Crown Prosecution Service and control their budgets. To his credit, David Cameron has embraced this idea, too.   We don’t yet know what will be in the next Tory manifesto, of course, but the idea of accountable policing could transform the fight against crime and restore honour to our electoral process. Imagine that your local Sheriff had to choose whether to spend his budget on a dedicated patrol in your village, or on more speed cameras. Imagine that he had to decide what kinds of cases to prosecute – whether to go after home-owners who had defended their property with force, for example – and that he then had to stand for re-election on the basis of his record.   Ideally, the Sheriff would also be able to set local sentencing guidelines – although not to interfere in individual cases. This may well lead to pluralism (or “unfairness”, as opponents will call it). Suppose that the Sheriff of Kent wanted shoplifters to serve a custodial sentence, while the Sheriff of Surrey didn’t. One of two things might happen. Either Kentish crooks (and crooks of Kent) would flood across the county border in such numbers that Surrey would elect a tougher Sheriff, or the ratepayers of Kent would get sick of having to fund all the requisite prison places. Sensing his electorate’s mood, the Sheriff of Kent might conclude that rehabilitation is cheaper, in the long run, than incarceration. Or he might decree that, instead of going to prison, shoplifters should be made to stand outside Bluewater with a placard around their necks saying “shoplifter”, I don’t know what would happen. That’s the whole point. It would be up to each community to settle its affairs. I’ll tell you one thing, though: people would have an incentive to vote again.   And we should be frank about something else: there will be hard cases. Perfection is not to be had in this world, and there will be inept Sheriffs, just as there are innovative and creative ones. But at least it would be up to us. We would have rediscovered that vital principle that decision-makers should be accountable to their communities.   This splendid English notion has thrived in America but withered here – rather like those varieties of grape that survived in California while the phylloxera blight wiped out their ancestral stock in the Old World. It’s time to bring Sheriffs home.   What’s that? You don’t see what any of this has to do with Europe? You didn’t subscribe to these emails just to hear Hannan ranting on about domestic policy? Fair enough. But think about the logic of what David Cameron is doing. There is a consistent theme that links his various domestic policies, from Sheriffs, through the democratisation of the Prime Minister’s patronage powers, to the winding up of the regional assemblies and the downward transfer of their powers. In each case, he is seeking to bring decisions closer to the people they affect. Having established this principle at home, it can only be a matter of time before he extends it to the EU.   8 February 2006 back to top    A lonely dissenting voice   This is the text of Daniel Hannan’s speech in the European Parliament on 19 January 2005. MEPs voted by a large majority to push ahead with the implementation of the constitution by 2009.     ‘Mr President,   Listening to this debate, I am reminded of Bertold Brecht’s  lines:   “Wäre es da Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung Löste das Volk auf und Wählte ein anderes? ”   [Would it not be simpler to dismiss the people and elect another in their place?]   The peoples of two core, founding states have thrown your project out, my friends. I know it’s hard to accept rejection, but look at the figures. Fifty-five per cent French voters. Sixty two per cent of Dutch voters. Now you might try to argue that the voters have got it wrong; that they are suffering from what Marxists call false consciousness; that they need better propaganda, and that it is up to us, the Euro-elite, to take a lead. To which I say: do your damnedest. Current polls in the Netherlands show that 82 per cent of Dutch voters would now vote “No”: a tribute to the level-headedness of that brave people. But if you think you can turn them around, dear colleagues, be my guests. Doing so would at least prove your commitment to the democratic ideals you so frequently invoke. Far more outrageous would to push ahead with the implementation of the contents of the constitution without popular consent. Yet this is precisely what you are doing. Look at the number of policies and institutions envisaged by the constitution that have been, or are being, enacted regardless: the European External Action Service, the European Human Rights Agency, the European Defence Agency, the European Space Programme, the European External Borders Agency, a justicable Charter of Fundamental Rights. None of these has a proper legal basis outside the constitution. By adopting them anyway, you demonstrate that you will allow no force, internal or external—neither your own rule book nor the expressed opposition of your peoples—to arrest the rush to political assimilation. You vindicate the severest of your opponents’ criticisms. In the words of my countryman Oliver Cromwell, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken”.’    19 January 2005 back to top    The need for consistency You may have seen the recent press coverage concerning the Conservative MEPs’ relationship with the ultra-federalist European People’s Party. David Cameron has been attacked by several Euro-enthusiasts for promising to end this unhappy link. It is usually the way in politics that, when a change is proposed, its opponents become hyper-active while its supporters sit back and take things for granted. I hope, though, that, on this issue, those who support the leader’s line will give him public backing. If you are one of the overwhelming majority of Conservatives who would like to restore honour and consistency to our position in Brussels, please tell our new Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague. His email is [email protected]. You might also like to copy in the leader of the Conservative MEPs, Timothy Kirkhope([email protected]), and David himself: [email protected]. I am sure they will appreciate your support. For those unfamiliar with the issue, there follows a short briefing note. What is the European People’s Party? The European People’s Party (EPP) is a union of Centrist and Christian Democratic parties founded in 1976 to promote European integration. Its Basic Charter commits it to “compete for the realisation of a United States of Europe”. Its current manifesto advocates: ·        A European police force and army ·        Single EU seats on the UN, the IMF and the WTO ·        A European president and foreign minister ·        The abolition of the national veto ·        A pan-European income tax, to be levied by the European Parliament Isn’t the EPP the main Centre-Right grouping in Strasbourg? No. British journalists keep calling it “Centre-Right”, but the EPP itself angrily rejects the label. It insists that it is “the Party of the Centre”, steering a middle course between the command economy demanded by the Socialists and the free market supported by the Liberals. According to its Basic Charter, the chief goal of economic policy is “social solidarity, so that the fruits of economic success many be evenly distributed”. The EPP campaigns for a high minimum wage, strong trade unions, a larger EU budget, a barrage of “anti-discrimination” measures and an extension of the Social Chapter. Why do some Tory MEPs want to sit with the EPP? It is largely a generational divide. Many of the MEPs elected during the 1980s have a view of Europe not very far removed from that of the EPP. Their careers have been built within the EPP, and some of them now enjoy positions in consequence. They fear that, outside the EPP, they would have to start all over again. The Conservatives would still have the same per capita entitlement to committee posts, overseas delegations and so forth; but there is no guarantee that the same people would hold them, since the Tory Euro-philes would be the minority in a Euro-sceptic Group. Are there logistical advantages to being part of a large bloc? No; quite the contrary. The British Conservatives are entitled to staff and financing in proportion to their numbers. But all such resources go through the Groups. As things stand, the EPP “top-slices” the Tory financial quota and spends it on various pan-European projects—such as a campaign in favour of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. It even supported the “Yes” campaigns in the recent referendums. It is a similar story when it comes to employees. The British staff are paid by, and answerable to, the EPP. Many of them were hired during the 1980s on the basis of their commitment to federalism rather than any Conservative leanings and, far from answering to the Tory MEPs, they sometimes work directly against Conservative interests. Outside the EPP, the Tories would, for the first time, have significant resources with which to pursue their agenda. Where would Conservative MEPs go? They could either sit as Independents or form a new Group with like-minded parties. This is easily done: the rules of the Parliament stipulate that a Political Group must contain at least 19 MEPs from at least five member states. There are already 27 Conservative MEPs, and it would be a straightforward matter to attract respectable, Atlanticist parties from four or more other nationalities. In particular, many of the free market parties from Central and Eastern Europe have repeatedly sought to create a new Group under Tory leadership, and cannot understand why the Tories themselves are reluctant to leave the EPP. It is worth stressing that there is no question of sitting with extremist parties, or with parties that have a colourful past, such as Italy’s “post-fascist” Alleanza Nazionale (which is, incidentally, negotiating to join the EPP). It is also worth pointing out that several of the parties currently in the EPP are tainted by sleaze or extremism: Chirac’s UMP was involved in a number of funding scandals, while many of Silvio Berlusconi’s allies have been accused of corruption. Why can’t the whole question be left to the MEPs? It never has been before. Every past leader—from Margaret Thatcher onwards—has recognised that this is a question to be settled by the Westminster leader. The question goes wider than seating arrangements in Strasbourg: it encompasses the Tories’ relationships, as a whole, with other parties. Those who are currently taking this line strenuously argued the opposite when it suited them. When, in 2004, Michael Howard reversed IDS’s decision to leave the Group, pro-EPP Tory MEPs insisted that the question was up to him as the national leader. Isn’t leaving the EPP at odds with David Cameron’s modernisation agenda? On the contrary, nothing could be more modern than breaking with the 1950s federalist Euro-dogmas of the Christian Democrats. In forming a new Group, the Conservatives would be turning their backs on Old Europe and embracing New Europe. David Cameron has stressed the need for the party to change. It is striking that his fiercest opponents on this issue are palaeo-Tories of an earlier era: Geoffrey Howe, Michael Heseltine etc. When should the break come? Immediately. That was David Cameron’s pledge during the leadership contest. Suitable foreign allies are lined up and ready to go. If the issue is postponed, they may start to lose interest. Does any of this much matter? Yes. Leaving the EPP was the one firm commitment that David gave during the leadership campaign. He has since repeated it in public on at least four occasions. If he doesn’t deliver on the one thing that is in his gift as Opposition leader, voters will be reluctant to believe that he would deliver on his manifesto as Prime Minister. It is, as David himself has repeatedly said, a question of consistency and integrity. The Conservatives cannot say one thing in Britain and do another in Brussels.   14 December 2005 back to top    It's got to be Cameron I know these bulletins are meant to be about the EU but I hope you will forgive me if, just this once, I go off-piste and discuss the Conservative leadership race. Actually, the two questions turn out to be closely related, but I'll come to that in a moment. First, allow me to make a couple of general observations about the gravity of the Conservative condition. Many Tories appear to have settled into the comfortable belief that, at the last election, we turned the corner. The gain of 30 extra seats, and an apparent narrowing of the gap with Labour, might seem to justify a certain guarded optimism. But look more closely at the figures. The single most striking fact about the 2005 election, although one rarely commented on, is that almost every supporter alienated by Labour went over to the Liberal Democrats. Of 1,168,770 votes that Labour lost between 2001 and 2005, 1,167,724 - 99.9 per cent - were picked up by the Lib-Dems. In other words, the Tories' slight gain in seats was not based on any significant increase in our own vote. Let me make that same point another way. In 1997, the Conservatives secured 30.7 per cent of the vote. In 2001, 31.7. In 2005, 32.3 per cent. At this rate of increment, it will be the year 2042 before the Tories can hope to form a parliamentary majority. We can look at the result from any angle. We can prowl around it, trying to see it in a brighter light. But we keep coming back to the rude truth. People do not like the Conservatives. Consider the extraordinary fact that, after eight years in office, with a huge opinion poll lead, and with a parliamentary majority of 160, Labour's main argument was "Stop the Tories!" - and that it worked. It is in this context that we should turn to the question of whom we want to lead us. If we were 20 points ahead in the polls, we would doubtless want a "one more heave" candidate: a solid performer who could biff away at Blair and Brown until things came our way. Sadly, we are not ahead. Taken individually, our policies are popular enough: people like tax cuts, school choice, immigration controls and so forth. The problem is they do not believe we would deliver these things. They doubt that the Conservative Party stands for "people like me". Even when they substantively do agree with us, they distrust our motives. Of the five candidates originally in the race, only David Cameron seems not to have this problem. I am not sure why this should be. It may have to do with his speaking and media skills, with his age, or simply with the fact that he is not associated with previous Tory ministries. It may be because he gets an easier ride from the BBC. It may not be entirely fair; but we must live in the world as it is. Every measure of opinion, from superficial polls to in-depth studies conducted on the basis of video footage, reveals that people react more warmly to David Cameron than to any other Tory. A survey in Saturday's Daily Telegraph confirms what all recent polls have shown: voters prefer David Cameron to David Davis by a margin of four-to-one. That's all very well, you may say, but what would the chap actually do? There's no point in having him in power unless he would tangibly ameliorate our lives. Absolutely. The truth is that, on policy, there is not all that much to separate the candidates. They both believe in cutting taxes, liberalising the public services and strengthening the family (see their respective websites: www.cameroncampaign.org and www.modernconservatives.com). One of the slightly distasteful things about this election has been to hear people say "I'm voting for X because I don't like Y". Both candidates are attractive, and both deserve sympathetic attention. We should ask just two things: do we like what they are saying and, if so, which of them is likeliest to be in a position to implement his ideas? Both, of course, are so far speaking in general terms rather than making specific commitments. With an election four years away, they would be mad to do otherwise. That's the tricky thing about being leader of the Opposition: there is not much that you can do (as opposed to committing a future Government to doing). There is, though, one important decision that the new leader would face as soon as he took over, and it concerns Europe. As regular recipients of these bulletins will know, Conservative MEPs have spent the past 13 years in an unhappy mésalliance with the federalist European People's Party. To his credit, Michael Howard substantially improved the terms of the deal, but the essential problem has not gone away. As long as we sit with the most Euro-fanatic bloc in Strasbourg, people will not believe that we can be trusted on the EU. Voters will assume that we are saying one thing in Britain and doing another in Brussels - and, God forgive us, they will have a point. Here is an issue which is immediate and vital. It may not set the world alight, but it will be a token of a new leader's good faith - an indication, in Opposition, of how he plans to behave in Government. There is a clear division between the candidates on this question. David Cameron would remove us from the EPP grouping immediately; David Davis would leave the decision to MEPs, a majority of whom favour the status quo. With Cameron, we'll be out of the EPP by Christmas; with Davis, we'll still have this albatross dragging us deckwards at the next European election. That alone ought to answer those who wonder how much substance there is to David Cameron. On the one issue which he would have to decide within days of taking over, the one which he must have been most tempted to fudge, he has been unequivocal and bold. David Cameron's robustness on the EPP confirms my impressions of a man I have known since he gave me my first job 15 years ago. He is polite; he listens to other points of view; but, when he makes up his mind, he is resolute. To return to the basic problem: the Conservative Party, in its current predicament, needs a leader who is popular, untainted by the past, charismatic and decisive. In David Cameron, it can have one. 31 October 2005 back to top      Sovereign People   This is an edited version of Daniel's column in the Daily Telegraph (27 October 2005)   Today, the Norwegian King will take his leave of the British Queen. Both are monarchs, but only one is sovereign. The word “sovereignty” is often used nowadays as a loose synonym for power, but it has an exact meaning. In Norway, the 1814 constitution vests supreme legal authority in the Crown. In Britain, the 1972 European Communities Act shares sovereignty with the EU which now accounts—depending on how you measure it—for between 50 and 80 per cent of our laws. Sovereignty evidently suits the Norwegians. They are the richest people in Europe, with a GDP per head of £31,200 as against an EU average of £12,600. According to the UN, which measures infant mortality, literacy rates and so on, they are the healthiest and happiest people in the world. We are forever being told that Britain is too small to survive on its own: a post-imperial state, a speck of land on Europe’s fringe, blah blah. This is bilge, of course: we are the world’s fourth largest economy and fourth military power. But it is instructive to consider the situation of a country that really is small, and really is on Europe’s fringe. There are four-and-a-half million Norwegians, clinging to an icy strip of tundra on the uttermost edge of the continent. Yet, on every measure, they are outperforming their continental neighbours. At a time when France and Germany are struggling to comply with the Stability Pact, Norway is running an annual surplus of seven per cent. Its unemployment is less than half the EU’s. Its real interest rates are comfortably below those in the Euro-zone. Its inflation is low, its trade booming, its stock exchange soaring. A people two generations away from subsistence farming have become Europe’s new elite. Like blue-eyed sheiks, they buy vast houses in Chelsea which lie empty between their occasional visits to London (Norwegians, in the main, being tremendous Anglophiles). How have they done it? Much of the answer has to do with the deal they struck with Brussels. Norway is not in the EU, but the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). It participates fully in the so-called Four Freedoms of the EU’s single market—free movement, that is, of goods, services, people and capital. But it is outside the Common Agricultural Policy; it controls its own territorial resources, including energy and fisheries; it decides its own human rights questions; it determines who may settle on its territory; it is able to negotiate trade accords with third countries, and it makes only a token contribution to the EU budget. At this stage, my Euro-phile friends protest that we are nothing like Norway. “Look at all the fish they have”, they say. Indeed. Look at all the fish we would have, but for the Common Fisheries Policy. “Look at their oil”, my friends go on. Well, Britain is the EU’s only net exporter of oil. In any case, Norway’s extraordinary economic statistics are unrelated to its oil wealth: for the past 14 years, Norwegians have been stashing away their oil surpluses in the “Petroleum Fund”, which now contains nearly £100 billion, just in case a future government should face unexpected liabilities. “But what about trade?” protest the Euro-sophists. “If we weren’t part of the EU, we’d have no clout”. In fact, Norway benefits from all the preferential trade deals that the EU has signed with third countries. The difference is that, where it feels the EU is being unduly protectionist, it can go further. It has, for example, signed a free trade accord with Singapore, and is negotiating others with South Africa, Taiwan and South Korea. “Alright then, what about our trade with the EU?” comes the rejoinder. “Surely that depends on our membership”. Brace yourself for an astonishing fact. Every EFTA country exports more, proportionately, to the EU than we do. Norway sells twice as much per head to the EU from outside as does Britain from inside. The EU accounts for 73 per cent of their exports, 52 per cent of ours. Oh, and their trade is in surplus, whereas we have run a trade deficit with the EU, over 33 years of membership, of some £30 million per day. Norwegians must meet EU standards when they sell to the EU—as exporters the world over must do. But they are spared the expense of having to apply most of these regulations to their domestic commerce. You will sometimes hear that Norway has to assimilate thousands of EU laws, but these laws are generally of a technical and trivial nature. The 3,000 EU legal acts adopted in Norway since 1992 have required only 50 statutes in the Storting. And the people who make such a fuss of these 3,000 regulations neglect to mention the 24,000 that Britain has had to incorporate over the same period. Then comes the last-ditch argument. “Norway may be content to be a tiny country, but we could never abandon our global role”. At the risk of stating the obvious, nations are generally more influential if they have a foreign policy in the first place. Norwegian diplomats are playing the key role in, among other places, Sudan, Israel, Sri Lanka and South East Asia. Being outside the EU, Norway can use trade and aid as instruments of diplomacy. Britain contracted out the whole shebang to Brussels in 1973. Would the EU offer Britain as favourable deal as Norway? No: our terms would be better. This is partly because we are an existing member, with commensurate leverage, but mainly because of the trade balance. Since we joined, we have been in surplus with every continent in the world except Europe. It is not normal, in any transaction, for the salesman to have the upper hand over the customer. It is just conceivable, of course, that our ex-partners would so resent us that they would seek to limit this commerce, cutting off their noses to spite their faces. I don’t believe this: our neighbours are, for the most part, long standing allies of Britain whose interests in any negotiations would be the same as ours, namely to maximise prosperity. But if I am wrong, and they really are that vindictive, what on Earth are we doing with them? 27 October 2005 back to top    What is the point of voting?   The following is an English translation of Daniel's regular column in the German newspaper Die Welt, which appeared the day before the German election.     There is an elephant in the room. Your politicians pretend it isn’t there. They tiptoe around it, mouthing their slogans about unemployment and tax reform. But its great bulk leaves little room for any other issue.   The elephant, of course, is the EU. All the main parties agree about it, and it has therefore hardly featured in the campaign. But absence of this subject lends an unreal quality to the whole election. What is the point of voting Red or Black or Green when 80 per cent of your laws come, not from the German Parliament or Government, but from Brussels?   That is not my figure: it comes from the Federal Justice Ministry. In reply to a question by Johannes Singhammer, MP for the CSU, ministers were forced to concede that, out of 23,167 legislative acts passed since 1998, nearly 19,000 originated in the EU.   This proportion is not unique to Germany, of course. Similar studies in Britain and in other states have produced the same finding. But in most other countries, Europe is a lively political issue. What I find bizarre, watching your election campaign, is that no one has mentioned the EU at all – except tangentially through the question of Turkish accession.   You might argue that this is a good thing: that consensus is better than division, and that it is nice to see all the parties agreeing about something. But the idea that partisan bickering is harmful to the country has been the argument of every dictatorship in history, from Bonaparte onwards. When all the politicians agree, the rest of us should suspect a plot against the ordinary citizen.   Without all-party consensus – and this is true of all the Member States, not just Germany – the EU would never have got to where it is. Again and again, the EU has extended its competence into a new area, and then, much later, regularised that extension in a treaty. In other words, the politicians have agreed among themselves to transfer a new area of policy to Brussels, and then presented their electorates with a fait accompli. We have now reached a point where almost every area of political life is, to some extent, subject to EU jurisdiction: transport, energy, trade, competition, agriculture, fisheries, regional government, immigration, asylum, foreign affairs, employment law, social policy, defence. Of all your national departments, only two are wholly in control of their own affairs: the Ministry of Heath and the Ministry of Education.   This centralisation of power might have been justified if Brussels had done a better job than the nation-states, but it hasn’t. Look at its record in the fields of policy over which it has had exclusive control for longest. It has run agriculture since 1960, and given us the most wasteful, expensive, bureaucratic, immoral system of farm support in the world. It has run fisheries since 1972, and almost eliminated the fish stocks in its waters. It has run trade policy since 1956, and has held many African countries in poverty by closing its markets while simultaneously dumping its surpluses on them. Yet, despite the mess the EU has made of the policies it already controls, we carry on giving it new ones.   The funny thing is that, when I ask pro-European friends to tell me the purpose of the EU, they usually reply: “to spread democracy”. In reality, the European project has involved the steady transfer of powers, over 50 years, from elected national parliamentarians to unelected Brussels officials. It is commonplace to observe that the EU’s own structures are undemocratic, in that only the Commission may propose new laws. What is less widely observed is that European integration is also devaluing the democratic process within the Member States. None of your candidates can honestly promise to revive Germany’s countryside (because of the Common Agricultural Policy) or overhaul labour relations (because of the Social Chapter) or regulate your borders (because of Schengen) or even adopt a radically different economic policy (because of the euro and the Stability Pact).   Whether you vote for Mrs Merkel or Mr Schröder tomorrow, it will not affect any of the big issues. Some democracy. 19 September 2005 back to top     PAN-EUROPEAN POLITICAL PARTIES   Euro-judges rule in favour of integration (surprise, surprise)   Eighteen months ago, Daniel Hannan was one of 25 MEPs to launch a legal challenge against the proposal to establish state-funded European political parties.   The legislation provided for trans-national parties, to be supported by the taxpayer, contesting elections on a common and binding manifesto across the EU.   In order to qualify, a party would need to “accept the values of the EU, as set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms”— a clause evidently designed to bar Euro-sceptics from recognition.   Daniel, with a small group of pro-sovereignty MEPs, challenged the legislation, arguing that it was incompatible with the EU's stated commitment to democracy and pluralism.  As a Polish Euro-MP, one of Daniel's fellow plaintiffs, observed: "This is exactly how the communists maintained themselves in power in my country.  They didn't ban elections—we had elections every four years.  They just banned their opponents from contesting the elections".   Now, eighteen months after the challenge was launched, the Euro-judges have turned it down on a technicality, arguing that, since the plaintiffs had brought the case as individuals, they had no proper status before the court.  In order to have such status, the MEPs would need to try to establish a trans-national party themselves—then, if they were refused, they might be allowed to claim that they had suffered discrimination.   Obviously, as Euro-sceptics, the plaintiffs are unwilling to do this: the whole basis of our philosophy is that the democratic process should be played out within nation-states, not in Brussels.  So the legislation will go ahead.    Commenting on the ruling, Daniel said:   “I'm afraid I'm not surprised.  The European Court sees it as its role always and everywhere to support deeper integration, and rarely lets the dots and commas of the law stand in its way. But it is extraordinary that the Euro-judges should have taken a year-and-a-half to ponder this case before disqualifying us on a technicality. How can any citizen have confidence in such a system?”   Under the new rules, Labour is joining the Party of European Socialists, the Lib Dems the European Liberals and the Greens the European Greens.  But the Conservatives and the UK Independence Party have been frozen out.   Daniel added:   “Democracy means being allowed to vote for whomever you please. Once we start disqualifying parties on grounds of their opinions, we are on a very dangerous road.  Six years in politics has been enough to teach me that court cases are uncertain and expensive.  But if I'm not prepared to take a stand for democratic pluralism, what am I doing here?” 9 September 2005 back to top   TIME FOR AN AMICABLE DIVORCE The following article appeared in the most recent edition of The Sunday Telegraph.   If you ask an MP from any party where he stands on the EU, he is likely to say something like: “I want a Europe of democratic nations, working together, but keeping their own identities”. Fine. Who doesn’t? The trouble is that such a Europe is not on the menu.   When we politicians talk about “a Europe of nations”, we are being both presumptuous and dishonest: presumptuous because it is not in our gift to dictate how other countries relate one to another; and dishonest because we are holding out to our electorate the prospect of something that is not on offer.   The idea that the EU might abandon its founding ideology in order to humour Britain is one of our more enduring self-deceits. It lay behind Harold Macmillan’s original application in 1961, which was launched on the basis that “the effects of any eventual loss of sovereignty would be mitigated if resistance to Federalism on the part of some of the governments continues, which our membership might be expected to encourage”.   Even in Macmillan’s day, this was wishful thinking – although, with the EU not yet five years old, it was perhaps excusable. It is less excusable today, when we have half a century of hard evidence to the effect that the Treaty of Rome means what it says about “ever-closer union”. Yet still we delude ourselves, imagining that the other members are on the point of coming round to our point of view.   The funny thing is that there is always some apparently plausible reason for believing this. Every enlargement round, for example, was hailed as likely to lead to a looser Europe. In practise, of course, the EU has deepened each time it has widened: the accession of Spain and Portugal led directly to the Single European Act, that of the Nordic countries to the Amsterdam Treaty, and that of the ex-Comecon states to the European Constitution.   Alternatively, we are asked to believe that a domestic change of government somewhere on the Continent will lead to a more decentralised Europe. Absurd as it now seems, Jacques Chirac, Silvio Berlusconi, José-María Aznar and even Gerhard Schröder were all written up in advance of their elections as likely British allies.   Now we are being proffered a new reason for optimism. “These recent ‘No’ votes in France and Holland will change everything,” we are told. “The EU can’t just carry on as if nothing has happened”. Oh yes it can. It did after Denmark’s “No” to Maastricht and Ireland’s “No” to Nice; and it is doing so today. Most of the institutions that the constitution would have authorised are being set up regardless – the European Defence Agency, the External Borders Agency, the Human Rights Institute, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the European Public Prosecutor, politico-military structures, a collective security clause, a space policy, a diplomatic service.   What else does Brussels have to do to shake us out of our complacency? In its refusal to accept the verdicts of the French and Dutch electorates, the EU has demonstrated beyond doubt that it will allow nothing to divert it from deeper integration, neither its own rule book nor the expressed opposition of its peoples. Surely the time has come to admit to ourselves that the EU is set on full amalgamation.   The pertinent question is not what kind of Europe we might ideally like, but how we should work with the one actually on our doorstep. Are we content to submit ourselves to a European polity with its own president, constitution and military and policing capacity? And, if not, what kind of relationship ought we to have with it?   My sense is that most British people want to retain our trade links with the EU, and to accompany them with close inter-governmental co-operation, but not with political assimilation. Is it feasible to have our cake and eat it? Absolutely.   Consider, as an example, the members of the European Free Trade Area: Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein. Each of these countries has struck its own particular deal with Brussels, but the main elements are the same. They participate fully in the four freedoms of the single market – free movement, that is, of goods, services, people and capital. But they are outside the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies, they control their own borders and human rights questions, they are free to negotiate trade accords with non-EU countries and they pay only a token sum to the EU budget.   Unsurprisingly, they are much richer than the EU members. According to the OECD, per capita GDP in the four EFTA countries is double what it is in the EU. Euro-apologists are, naturally, quick with their explanations. “You can’t compare us to Iceland,” they say, “Iceland has fish”. So, of course would Britain, but for the ecological calamity of the CFP. “We’re nothing like Norway”, they go on, “Norway has oil”. Indeed; and Britain is the only net exporter of oil in the EU. Then my particular favourite: “But Switzerland has all those banks”. Yes. And Britain, in the City of London, has the world’s premier financial centre – although it is, admittedly, being slowly asphyxiated by EU financial regulation.   I am not arguing that Britain should precisely replicate the terms struck by these EFTA nations. On the contrary, we could do far better. We are a larger country for one thing, and, unlike the EFTA states, we run a massive trade deficit with the EU. Indeed, the easiest way to answer Tony Blair’s claim about the millions of jobs that depend on the EU is to point to the astonishing fact that the EFTA nations export more per head to the EU from outside than does Britain from the inside. EFTA stands as a living, thriving refutation of the assertion that we must choose between assimilation and isolation.   We can call it renegotiation, or associate membership or leaving the EU and striking a different kind of deal with it. What we call it matters less than the content. It is perfectly possible to enjoy full access to EU markets while freeing ourselves of the accompanying costs of membership. If 4.7 million Norwegians or 280,000 Icelanders are able, through bilateral free trade accords, to furnish their peoples with the highest standard of living in Europe, how much more could Britain achieve? 31 August 2005 back to top     THE CONSTITUTION IS IN FORCE You may have got the impression that the European Constitution was dead: that the French had felled it, and the Dutch pounded a stake through its heart. If so, think again. The constitution is being brought in, clause by clause, as if those two countries had voted “Yes”.   You’d be amazed how many EU leaders believe the constitution can still be ratified in its current form. Three countries – Cyprus, Malta and Luxembourg – have endorsed it since the two “No” votes. All right, these may not be the mightiest nations in the EU, but their approval means that 13 out of 25 states have now said “Yes”.   “This is a strong signal that a majority of the member states thinks that the constitution correlates to their expectations”, said the Commission President, José  Manuel Barroso as the result came in from Luxembourg. “The constitution is not dead”, added the Grand Duchy’s comical Prime Minister, Jean-Claude Juncker. The European Parliament has duly set up a committee to examine how to proceed with implementation.   The view that the constitution can be salvaged tout entier is, admittedly, a minority one. Most European leaders accept that it is no longer possible to proceed with formal ratification. So they have come up with an alternative wheeze: they are simply behaving as though the constitution were already in force. Numerous institutions that have no legal basis outside the constitution have been, or are being, established regardless. These include:   ·        The Fundamental Rights Agency, a Vienna-based institution charged with monitoring racism, xenophobia and discrimination across the EU.   ·        The European External Action Service, an EU diplomatic force with representation in third countries and in international organisations.   ·        The European Space Programme.   ·        The European Defence Agency, whose remit is harmonise arms procurement.   ·        An EU criminal code, accompanied by a European prosecuting magistracy called Eurojust.   ·        A mutual defence clause, which arguably makes redundant the cornerstone of the Nato alliance.   ·        A common European asylum policy based on harmonised rules on the assessment of claims and the rights of refugees.   ·        EU politico-military structures, and the deployment of uniformed EU troops in Macedonia, the Congo and Bosnia.   ·        An External Border Agency to monitor the Union’s “external frontiers” (as opposed to the borders between its members, now considered “internal frontiers”).   ·        A Foreign Minister: the silky Spanish socialist Javier Solana.   ·        The Charter of Fundamental Rights, which has no binding force outside the constitution, but which Euro-judges are already treating as justiciable.   Every time such a proposal comes before my parliamentary committee, I ask: “Where in the existing treaties does it say we can do this?” “Where does it say we can’t” reply my colleagues, giggling at their own cleverness like Mr Toad in Wind in the Willows.   Thus has the EU got to where it is. It extends its jurisdiction on the basis of summit communiqués, Council resolutions and Commission press statements. Several years can pass before it gets around to regularising these power-grabs in a treaty.   True, there are one or two aspects of the constitution that cannot be brought in through the existing legal framework, notably the new voting system an end to the rotating presidency. But these things can easily be rushed through in a miniature intergovernmental conference: all 25 governments have, after all, already agreed to them.   How do the Eurocrats justify going ahead in defiance of public opinion? By telling themselves that the referendums don’t count. The French and Dutch, I keep hearing, did not really vote against the constitution, but against something else: Chirac, or Turkey, or Anglo-Saxon liberalism. It is a variant of the Marxist idea of “false consciousness”. The people plainly misunderstood their true interests. They must be brought to see why the constitution is desirable. And, in the mean time, the project must continue.   It is in this context that we should understand those who claim, with Mr Juncker, that “the French and Dutch did not truly vote against the EU constitution”. We may find such statements hilarious. We may howl and retch with mirth at the collective act of hallucination taking place in Brussels. But, when the laughing stops, the constitution will be in place.   18 July 2005 back to top DISSOLVE THE PEOPLE AND ELECT ANOTHER IN THEIR PLACE In the last of these bulletins before the French referendum, I predicted that, if our neighbours voted "No", the EU would ignore the result and implement the constitution as though nothing had happened. Two weeks on, the Brussels elites have followed the script to the letter. To British eyes, it is the script of a comedy: José Manuel Durrão Barroso, Jacques Chirac, Barbara Windsor and Sid James present Carry on Regardless.  We smirk when we read the joint statement issued by the heads of the Commission, Parliament and Council calling on all countries "to proceed with ratification". We snort amusedly when we are told that the French and Dutch were really voting against something else: against Turkey, or against Chirac, or against Anglo-Saxon liberalism - against anything, in fact, except the proposition actually on the ballot paper. We throw back our heads and laugh freely when we see the Eurocrats insisting that the Poles and Danes and British must be allowed their chance to vote "Yes". And when they go on to describe their comprehensive defeat in two referendums as "a short-term difficulty", we clutch at our sides, we howl and retch. But, when the laughter dies away, they will be left with their constitution. This week, the European Parliament voted through dozens of Bills that cited the constitution as the source of their authority. One which happened to catch my eye was a report proposing that the British and French representatives on the UN Security Council be merged into a single EU seat. The judicial basis for such a development, said the report, was "the European Constitutional Treaty, which creates a legal personality for the Union and a European Minister for Foreign Affairs". No one was so indelicate as to point out that, without the constitution, the EU has no treaty-making powers. Instead, we carried on as though nothing had changed. The man whom the constitution would have made Europe's Foreign Minister, Javier Solana, is comporting himself as if he were already in office. "What we have to do is continue", the silky Spaniard told MEPs. "The worst that could happen is if you, or the leaders or citizens of the European Union, enter into a psychological paralysis". You may think this preposterous; you may find Mr Solana risible. But it is he, not you, who is in a position to decide what happens next. Almost to a man, Commissioners and MEPs have decreed that the process should continue. The EU is going ahead as though the French and Dutch electorates had voted "Yes", harmonising criminal justice, creating a European Public Prosecutor, establishing a diplomatic service, treating the Charter of Fundamental Rights as justiciable. The constitution is not being smuggled in through the back door; it is swaggering brazenly across the porch. Forgotten, now, are the apocalyptic threats that "Yes" campaigners made before the votes. Then, they argued that rejecting the constitution would mean rejecting the entire process of European construction. A "No", they said, would undo fifty years of peaceful collaboration. Now, though, they seem reluctant to follow their own logic. If the "No" votes really were, as they claimed, a "No" to the EU, they ought surely to be repatriating powers to the national capitals - starting with those parts of the constitution that they had implemented in anticipation of the referendum results. Instead, once the results came in, the Euro-sophists shifted their ground. Now they insist that the voters, in their ignorance, got the wrong end of the stick. Here, for example, is Jo Leinen, the chairman of the European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee: "The French were voting against President Chirac and the Raffarin administration, not against the European Constitution. France must have a second chance". Most Euro-zealots see history in deterministic, almost Marxist terms. To them, the goal of a united Europe is not simply desirable but inevitable. It follows that "No" votes are simply a bump on the road towards a fixed objective. The idea that politicians should respond to their constituents' wishes, rather than the other way around, would strike them as unconscionably populist. The role of elected representatives, as they see it, is to make voters understand their true interests. As Hans-Gert Pöttering, the amiable leader of the largest group in the European Parliament put it: "It is regrettable that the French have not been convinced of the advantages and usefulness of the constitution... the ratification process must go on". In other words, the French and Dutch must be cured of their false consciousness; and, in the mean time, we should ignore them. I do not make the parallel with Marxism lightly. Obviously the EU cannot be compared directly to the totalitarian states of the Iron Curtain: it does not take away our passports, or throw us into gulags. But it has in common with the old Soviet Bloc a belief that the end justifies the means - that the ruling ideology is too important to be be dependent upon election results. As in the Comecon countries, there is now a large apparat whose position depends on the maintenance of the status quo. The referendum results might seem to us to de-legitimise the project; but Brussels functionaries have never been especially interested in public opinion. To them, the goal of closer integration is self-legitimising. They will continue to pursue that project, whatever their peoples think, because, in truth, they are not programmed to act in any other way. (This also explains, by the way, why so many Eastern European apparatchiks are now passionate Euro-philes: with its 25-man politburo, its rubber-stamp parliament, its special passports and reserved shops for senior officials, its five-year plans, its black limousines, the Evropeiski Soyuz seems like a home from home.) I worry that the jubilation on this side of the Channel that has followed the "No" votes is premature. "The whole system is breaking apart", people say. "It can't work". That is what we said about the USSR and, in the long run, we were right. But it wouldn't have been much fun to have been born in, say, 1910 and lived through the process of it not working. It is possible that the EU is, as it were, in 1989; but it may be only in 1956, with the first stirrings of popular revolt. There's a deal of ruin in a Union.  16 June 2005  back to top POWER TO THE PEOPLE Canvassing at the recent election, I came across a man who wanted something done about speed bumps in his road. He had written to his MP who had referred him to his local council, which had blamed the county council, which had in turn blamed the Highways Authority. Now here was his MEP, too, telling him that he was powerless to help.   Is it any wonder that that man, like millions of others, has stopped voting? It is not, as some pundits claim, that he is apathetic; nor, as others assert, that he thinks all the parties were the same. It is simply that he no longer sees any connection between where he places his cross and the issues that concern him.   On doorstep after doorstep, I heard similar complaints. Voting for Boodle rather than Coodle wouldn't stop the incinerator being sited nearby, or get a child into a preferred school, or stop the tower block being built at the end of the road. The decisions that actually matter to people are no longer in the hands of any elected representatives whatever. Human rights judges lay down school uniform rules; police chiefs decide whether the possession of cannabis is a criminal offence; Eurocrats tell us whom to allow across our frontiers.   Many voters have simply given up on politicians. They hear the same promises year after year, but nothing ever seems to change - for the simple reason that, with the best will in the world, there is not much that MPs can do. The decisions that actually matter to people are these days in the hands of the Child Support Agency, the Financial Services Authority, the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Health and Safety Executive and a thousand other quangoes stretching all the way up to Brussels.   Tackling this sense of disempowerment is the most pressing issue in contemporary politics. To this end, I and a number of newly elected Conservative MPs have published a manifesto for reform. Our book, "Direct Democracy: An Agenda for a New Model Party" is being serialised in The Daily Telegraph this week, and is available from www.direct-democracy.co.uk. In it, we propose a massive devolution of powers, directly to the citizen where possible, to towns and counties where practical.   We propose a number of ideas: school vouchers, an end to the state's monopoly in healthcare, self-financing local authorities, elected Sheriffs, the wholesale repatriation of powers from Brussels, measures to tackle judicial activism, the use of referendums as a legislative tool and much else. But our precise proposals are less important than the philosophy that infuses them.   We base our approach on three principles:   Decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect Public officials should be directly accountable The citizen should be as free as possible from state coercion   This same approach naturally informs our attitude to European integration. If we believe that decisions should be made at the lowest possible level, they plainly ought not to be made in Brussels. If we want power to be exercised by directly elected representatives rather than quangoes, we can hardly subject ourselves to the biggest quango of the lot, namely the European Commission. If we believe in personal freedom, clean government and accountability at the ballot box, we cannot be part of what the EU has become.   This is not a question of being pro- or anti-Europe, but of being pro- or anti-democracy. The European issue was a malign, if largely unnoticed, presence during the recent election campaign. There it sat like Banquo's ghost, invisible to most voters, but shaking its gory locks at the party leaders, who knew that they had to draw up their manifestoes within the parameters allowed by EU law. No party could honestly promise to secure our borders, or rescue our countryside, or treat our fishing grounds like the renewable resource they ought to be, or respect the principle of free contract in employment law, because these things contravene EU rulings.   If elections are to mean anything, parties must be in a position to implement their manifestoes. In "Direct Democracy", I and my co-authors stress the importance of politicians being able to keep their promises. We set out a number of policy ideas that, as things stand, would be illegal under EU law: replacing VAT with a local sales tax, introducing an Australian style immigration policy, protecting parliamentary supremacy with a Reserve Powers Act. Having taken our stand on the accountability of politicians to their constituents, we can hardly drop these ideas simply because the Commission dislikes them.   Our attitude to the EU, in short, is the natural corollary of our approach to domestic reform. The repatriation of power from Brussels is not an end in itself, but the means to an end - that end being a freer and more democratic Britain. For six years, I have fought against closer European integration because I believe that decisions ought to be taken more closely to the people who will be affected by them. It is high time we applied that principle to our own country.   A fuller presentation of these ideas can be found at www.direct-democracy.co.uk.  The publication may also be ordered from this website (price £7).   Join the debate at [email protected] 14 June 2005    ARE EURO-SCEPTICS REALLY NAZIS?  The easy reaction is outrage. How dare Margot Wallström link national sovereignty with the Holocaust? How dare she insult the 70 per cent of Britons who oppose the EU constitution, the 50-odd per cent Frenchmen who plan to vote “non”, the millions more around Europe who, for decent and democratic reasons, want to uphold their parliamentary traditions? The Swedish Commissioner first claimed to have been misquoted, then doctored her website to remove the offending passage from her speech. But I have in front of me a copy of her original words at a ceremony to mark the liberation of the Terezin ghetto in the Czech Republic: “There are those today who want to scrap the supra-national idea. They want the EU to go back to the old purely intergovernmental way of doing things. I say those people should come to Terezin and see where that old road leads”. Outrage, as I say, is easy. Any comparison between Nazism and Euro-scepticism, even an indirect one, is disgusting. But we all make mistakes. Mrs Wallström said something stupid and hurtful, and obviously wishes she could take it back. And, in fairness to the Commissioner a visit to Terezin would throw almost anyone’s sense of judgment out of kilter. Known to the Germans as Theresienstadt, it was a holding camp for “privileged categories” of Jews: intellectuals and First World War veterans. Because it contained many writers and artists, a substantial corpus of its inmates’ work has survived. To study those poems and paintings today, to see the schoolwork of the children who passed through the camp on their way to Auschwitz, is almost unbearable. In the circumstances, Mrs Wallström might perhaps be forgiven her lapse. It is important, however, to challenge her main assumption, namely that the EU is the best way to prevent genocide. For this belief forms the basis of the entire European project. It is the last-ditch argument of all my Euro-enthusiast friends. Whenever I complain about corruption in Brussels, or the iniquities of the Common Agricultural Policy, or the undemocratic nature of the EU, I am told: “Even if you’re right, these things are a small price to pay for sixty years without conflict.” If European integration really were a prophylactic against war, that might justify a good deal. But is it? Although Euro-zealots insist that the EU has been the main cause of peace in Europe, it is surely at least as accurate to see the EU as a (itals)symptom(enditals) of a European peace born out of the defeat of Hitler and the spread of democracy, and guaranteed by the Atlantic alliance. When Commissioners speak slightingly about “nationalistic pride”, as Mrs Wallström did at Terezin, they distort history. Much of the resistance to the Nazi tyranny was inspired by “nationalistic pride”. Genuine patriotism is neither selfish nor inward-looking. During the Second World War, many British people saw themselves as fighting, not only for their own country, but for the freedom of nations everywhere. We had, after all, gone to war in the first place over Poland; and the liberation of Europe’s peoples was a constant refrain in Churchill’s speeches. British patriotism has often taken the form of active sympathy with other nations. In the Nineteenth Century, we championed national movements in Greece, Hungary, Italy and the South American republics. In the Twentieth, we twice embarked on ruinous wars because the sovereignty of a friendly country had been violated. It is a little hard now to sit and be lectured about being bad Europeans. The most terrible wars of the modern era have mainly been caused, not by national rivalries, but by trans-national ideologies: Jacobinism, fascism, Communism, Islamic fundamentalism. The nation-state is often the focus of resistance to totalitarianism, precisely because it is the unit in which representative government works best. The supra-nationalism which Mrs Wallström invokes has never yet found a way to coexist with democracy. The Habsburgs and the Ottomans, the Yugoslavs and the Soviets, ruled supra-national states. But as soon as their peoples were given the vote, they opted for self-determination. The EU, the outstanding supra-national entity of our age, also has inherent anti-democratic tendencies: it is run by unelected commissars who are happy to overturn inconvenient referendum results. It is founded in the belief that its ruling ideology is more important than the parliamentary and legal systems of its constituent parts. Once again, we face an “ism” that claims to be bigger than the nation. That, surely, is the true betrayal of Europe’s heritage.   A version of this email bulletin appeared in Daniel's regular column in The Sunday Telegraph.   18 May 2005 back to top   TAKING THE ARGUMENT TO BERLIN   For the past two months, Daniel has been writing a regular column in the German newspaper, Die Welt. His is the only Euro-sceptic voice in any of the mainstream German media. What follows is a translation of his most recent column, which appeared on Saturday.     A COUNTRY CALLED EUROPE   Forgive my asking, but why aren’t you being allowed to vote on the European Constitution? You are, after all, the most important country in the EU – not only in population terms, but as the biggest contributor to the budget. It seems rather unfair that you should have to sit there and watch as the French and the Dutch and the Czechs and the British vote on your future.   I am forever being told that referendums have no place in Germany’s constitutional arrangements. Well, neither have they in Britain’s. But eventually, against his wishes, Tony Blair was forced to concede that the European Constitution was a special case. For it is not simply another EU Treaty. On the day it comes into force, all past Treaties will be dissolved. The EU will cease to be an association of states, and become a polity in its own right, deriving its authority from its own constitution. It will acquire most of the characteristics that international law recognises as features of statehood: legal personality, defined external borders, treaty-making powers, accredited diplomats, a Head of State.   There is a paradox here. On the one hand, Euro-integrationists disparage the idea of nationalism, which they regard as being only one step removed from ethnic hatred and war. On the other, they wish to endow the EU with many of the traditional trappings of nationhood: a passport, a national anthem, a flag.   But the EU is not a nation. Very few people feel European in the same way that someone might feel Japanese or Norwegian. There is no European language, no common public opinion, no shared identity to which we relate when we use the word “we”. Nor is there any evidence that these things are developing. On the most empirical measure of all – participation at European elections – we are becoming progressively less European: every poll since 1979 has resulted in a lower turnout than the last, despite the European Parliament’s growing powers over this period.   This point was conceded last week by the unlikely figure of Margot Wallström, the Commissioner for Institutional Affairs. “There is no such thing as a European demos,” she told an audience of journalists. “Hopes and fears about Europe very often reflect national politics.” With awesome ambition, Mrs Wallström intends to change all this: she wants to construct trans-European media, and thereby make people think differently about who they are. Instead of reforming the EU, she plans to reform human nature.   It has been attempted before. Multi-national states usually seek to fabricate a sense of common identity among their citizens: the Habsburgs tried it, and the Ottomans, and the Yugoslavs and the Soviets. But nationhood cannot be invented by bureaucratic fiat. As soon as the peoples of these empires were allowed to determine their own futures, they opted for national self-government.   You may think it outrageous to compare the EU to such authoritarian states, even indirectly. Europe, you might protest, is accountable to the wishes of its peoples.   Really? Then why, whenever those peoples vote against closer integration, are they ignored? Why was the Danish “No” to Maastricht overturned, and the Irish “No” to Nice disregarded? Why are EU leaders even now planning to circumvent a French “No”? Why have they already started bringing in substantial elements of the Constitution in anticipation of the national referendums? And why are the 79 per cent of Germans who want a referendum of their own being brushed aside?   Democracy works within units whose citizens feel enough in common with each other to accept government from each other’s hands: that is, within nations. That is why the idea of representative government developed hand-in-hand with the idea of self-determination. A state can be a supra-national federation, or it can be an accountable democracy; it cannot be both.   Commissioner Wallström is right: there is no European demos. Take the demos out of democracy and you are left only with the kratos: the power of a system that, unable to appeal to civic patriotism, must compel obedience by force of law. That is the true betrayal of Europe’s patrimony.   29 April 2005 back to top   FRENCH MALAISE The Euro-sophists are getting in their excuses in advance. This vote in France, they say: it isn’t really about the EU constitution at all. If the French vote No on 29 May, it won’t be a rejection of Brussels, but of Chirac and his ministry. That’s the trouble with these wretched referendums, you see: people will insist on voting on the wrong question. In fact, they go on, the French don’t think the constitution goes far enough. What they think – and they’ve got a point, dear boy – is that it enshrines a British view of Europe. Odd to see you antis lining up with these ultra-federalists. Most British commentators, including a fair number of Euro-sceptics who ought to know better, seem to have swallowed this line. It makes for good copy, and allows the writer to flaunt his knowledge of French politics. But it bears very little relation to what is actually happening across the Channel. Let us deal, first, with contention the French and British No campaigns are pushing for opposite things. It is certainly true that the bulk of French opposition to the constitution comes from the Left (although by no means all of it: if there were not also substantial scepticism on the Right and in the Centre, the Yes campaign would be miles ahead).“Et alors?”, as the French say. So what if French socialists and British Tories have different visions of employment law, social policy or human rights? These are questions for general elections. What is at stake in the referendum is whether national parliaments should decide such matters, or whether they should be settled at EU level. On this issue, the French and British No campaigns – and, indeed, the Danish, Dutch, Czech and all the rest – are united. There were, admittedly, one or two French politicians who would have liked the constitution to go even further, notably the Centrist leader, François Bayrou. But they quickly fell into line behind the Yes campaign once the referendum was called, for the good reason that, from their point of view, the constitution represents a considerable improvement on the status quo. As during the Maastricht referendum in 1992, there is now a near-unanimous line-up of French politicians in favour of closer integration. Which brings us to the question of whether the referendum is really a rejection of the political class by everyone else – or, as they say in France, of the pays légal by the pays réel. Yes, of course it is. Of all the stereotypes that the British have of the French, one is outstanding in its accuracy: they are grumpy. And they have plenty to be grumpy about, being governed as they are by a self-serving cartel. The point is that they have accurately clocked that European integration is making their government even less accountable. They have grasped that the constitution, by transferring more powers from national parliaments to EU institutions, will remove decisions still further from the people. To put it the other way around, voting against the constitution means voting against a system of governance that elevates technocracy over democracy. The point is well made in that masterpiece, The House at Pooh Corner: “When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?” “What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?” “I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing,” he said. If you feel that administration is already too remote at home, you are hardly going to want to transfer powers to even more distant institutions. If you have had enough of unelected commissars and énarques in Paris, you don’t want to pushed around by another set of commissars and énarques in Brussels. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. “It’s the same thing”, he said. The French governing class is the chief beneficiary of the European system. For most of the EU’s history, French civil servants have dominated the Commission. Indeed, the timing of the Commission annual recruitment was timed to coincide with French exams. The very bureaucrats whom the French resent at home, in other words, are also the people who run Brussels. French souverainistes have been quick to make the connection. One of my friends in the Vendée is campaigning under the slogan “Do yourself a favour: vote no” (Faites-vous plaisir : votez non”). “People are fed up with the whole racket,” he told me. “With the unemployment, with the corruption, with Chirac, with their boss, with their wife or their husband. So I am inviting them to say no to the lot of them”. This also explains, by the way, why the Left is leading the No coalition this time, whereas the Right – in the shape of Philippe de Villiers and Philippe Séguin (who has since gone over to the Dark Side) – led the anti-Maastricht campaign thirteen years ago. When the socialists were in power, anti-politician feeling was concentrated on the Right; now it is the other way around. We do not yet know the result of course. My sense, having spent a week with the No campaign in the Camargue, is that they are ahead. But I could be wrong; I often am. In 1992, many voters were moved at the last minute by the pathos of President Mitterand’s announcement that he had cancer. And even so, it was the closest imaginable result. Indeed, the voters of mainland France narrowly rejected Maastricht, but the result was tipped by massive Yes votes in outre-mer and from French voters resident abroad. French Guyana registered a Yes vote of 74.2 per cent, Martinique of 67.4 per cent, Guadeloupe of 72.1 per cent, and there were similar results in the rest of France’s colonial archipelago. Quite why this should have happened has never been adequately explained. These are after all – at the risk of stating the obvious – non-European territories, many of which have a strong tradition of backing the Communist party, which was against the treaty. Could it simply be that the counts took place far away, in different time-zones, and with few scrutineers? It would certainly explain why President Mitterand was able to assure John Major that there had been a narrow Yes vote long before the polls had closed. But let us hypothesise, for a moment, that the souverainistes carry the day. What would happen next? Would the EU tear up the constitution, go back to the drawing board and try to come up with something better? Not a chance. This would not, after all, be the first time that the project had been rejected. It happened when the Danes voted against Maastricht, when the Irish voted against Nice and, indeed, when the markets voted against the ERM. On all these occasions, the EU simply carried on as before. There is no Plan B in Brussels; Plan A is simply resubmitted over and over again until it is bludgeoned through. Don’t take my word for it. Large parts of the constitution are already being implemented today, even though ten national referendums are still outstanding. The Charter of Fundamental Rights is being treated as justiciable, even though only four states have ratified the constitution that gives it binding force. Substantial elements of the proposed harmonisation of justice and home affairs are being carried out in anticipation of the referendum results. Now the EU is launching its own diplomatic service, despite the strong possibility that at least one country will reject the constitution that gives it a legal basis. It is little wonder that the French, in common with every other nation in Europe, feel taken for granted. When people complain that politicians are all the same, that it doesn’t matter how you vote, that the élites will go ahead and please themselves regardless, they are not simply letting off steam; they are accurately appraising the conduct of European policy over the past half century. The founders of the EU deliberately designed the system that way. They knew that their project – the merging of Europe’s nations – would never come off if it had to be periodically referred to the national electorates. So they evolved a method whereby harmonisation could be effected in smoke-filled rooms (or, these days, smoke-free rooms) and then presented to the peoples as a fait accompli. A No vote, on its own, will not be enough. As long as the same governments remain in power, they will pursue their existing European policy, even if it must formally be done through the old treaties rather than through the constitution. The only way to change the direction of the EU is to alter the complexion of national parliaments – to put majorities in place who believe in decentralisation and democracy. The trouble in France is that, with the exception of Philippe de Villiers’ Mouvement pour la France, there is no such party. But in Britain, happily, there is. That is why the decisive vote in this country is not the putative referendum next March, but the intervening general election. 14 April 2005 back to top   THE COST OF EUROPE I have found it: the philosopher’s stone of politics, the fiscal elixir or life, the magic formula that has eluded democratic governments for centuries. There really is such a thing as a pain-free spending cut. The two parties are currently arguing about whether it is possible to trim £12 billion a year from government expenditure. The Tories say that it can be done with a few nips and tucks, and that we won’t feel a thing. Labour says that slicing off such a sum will mean patients sleeping in corridors and leaky school roofs and unemployed civil servants holding out their bowler hats on street corners. I was pondering these claims when I noticed something: £12 billion is precisely the amount that we pay the EU each year. Quite a coincidence, when you think about it. I mean, Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin are accused of lying because they think that £12 billion can be wrung from the entire budget. If Labour does not actually call them shysters, the epithet is implicit in its poster campaign. And yet here we are meekly handing over an identical sum to Brussels. If ever there was a painless excision, a tax cut with no losers, surely this is it. For some reason, though, the question of our financial tribute to the EU has disappeared from the political agenda. It seems such an Eighties issue, redolent of Galtieri and Soft Cell and Rubik’s Cubes and those hideous leg-warmer things that girls used to wear. To the extent that we think about it at all, we tend to assume that the sums are fairly small, and are a sort of admission fee for our participation in the single market. After all, the whole thing was settled when Margaret Thatcher got us our rebate. Wasn’t it? Not according to Treasury figures. In the 20 years since the rebate was negotiated, we have contributed £170 billion gross (£50 billion net) to the EU budget. A billion here, a billion there: pretty soon it starts to add up to real money. Our annual financial transfer to the EU is equivalent to the entire Home Office budget. If we stopped our payments, we could give the whole country a 60 per cent cut in council tax. Or, if we preferred, we could abolish capital gains tax and inheritance tax and still have enough left over to scrap stamp duty. It is true that £12 billion is the gross figure. The more commonly cited sum is our net contribution, which last year amounted to £4.2 billion. But why commentators should prefer this second measure is a mystery. They don’t do it in any other field of public life. No one argues, for example, that income tax, rather than being 22 pence in the pound, is in fact zero, because the whole sum is “given back” in roads, schools and hospitals. So what if £8 billion of EU funds is spent in the UK? It does not go on projects that we would have chosen for ourselves. Indeed, it is often devoted to schemes whose chief purpose is to glorify the EU: public works where the blue flag will be prominently displayed next to busy roads, for example. Sometimes, the money is spent more or less overtly on advertising, as when the organisers of an exhibition cash in simply by printing the twelve star symbol on their programme. Sometimes it disappears into private bank accounts. Ah, say the Euro-apologists, but that’s our own fault. The funds may be allocated by Brussels, but they are often disbursed by national authorities. This is true. But, precisely because the money is not seen as ours, it is rarely treated with much respect. Quangoes and local councils spray Euro-grants about with abandon, and the Commission carries on signing the cheques in the fond belief that it is buying popularity. Thus, to quote an example from my own patch, Brighton Council recently advertised for a six-month EU funded project “to study the impact of gender mainstreaming in the field of waste management”. No councillor would dare spend his constituents’ money on such a scheme. But, when it’s Europe’s money, who cares? Only, of course, it isn’t Europe’s money. It’s ours. It has simply been sloshed through the various tubes and compartments of the Brussels machine, leaking all the way, before coming back to these shores. This criticism applies even when the money goes on impeccably worthy projects. As an MEP, I like to think that I have helped a number of honourable applicants to open the Commission’s spigots. But I never do so without wondering what their youth orchestras or training schemes have to do with Brussels.  If we had hung on to our own resources in the first place, we should be able to pay for all these things with several billion pounds to spare. If £12 billion really were the ticket price for single market membership, it would be hard enough to justify. In the 20 years since the rebate, we have run a total trade deficit with the EU of £220 billion – a deficit we have had to make up through our healthy surpluses with every other continent in the world. In reality, though, the EU budget has nothing to do with international commerce. I recently wrote in these pages about the happy condition of Iceland which, through its membership of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA), is fully covered by the four freedoms of the single market – free movement, that is, of goods, services, people and capital. Its payments to Brussels amount to just 0.07 per cent of the island’s GDP. The other three EFTA countries also make only token contributions. Yet every one of them exports more per head to the EU than does Britain. Luxembourg, meanwhile, which is easily the EU’s wealthiest state, has been a massive net beneficiary from the budget. Indeed, for most of the 32 years of our membership, Britain and Germany have been the only significant net contributors. Some admission fee! Our budget contribution does not purchase market access. Rather, it funds the CAP, the CFP, the EU’s overseas aid budget, the structural funds and so on. Withdraw from these things and we would truly get our money back – including the two million-odd pounds that we handed over while you were reading this email. It’s worth a thought. A version of this email bulletin appeared in The Spectator magazine   1 April 2005 back to top   BRUSSELS OWNS UP TO LAWBREAKING   Regular recipients of these bulletins may remember reading about some of the more colourful ways in which the EU tries to buy itself popularity. There was, for example, the infamous booklet aimed at young children, entitled “Let’s draw Europe together”, whose opening exercise involved writing “Europe – my country” in the various official languages. There was the fund dedicated to flying local and national journalists out to Brussels and showing them a good time. There were the bungs given to federalist pressure groups, such as the European Movement. And – my personal favourite, this – there was the hilarious Tintin-style comic book, Troubled Waters, featuring the adventures of a feisty MEP called Irina. This, you may recall, was the book that contained such sizzling lines as “You can laugh! Wait till you’ve seen my amendments to the Commission proposal!”   Over the past four years, I and other Conservative MEPs have tried – without much success, I’m afraid – to reduce the amount of your money being spent on all this. Yet it now turns out that much of the EU’s propaganda is not only irksome, but illegal. Don’t take my word for it: listen to the EU itself.  The following excerpt is from a legislative proposal “to promote active European citizenship” which is currently clunking its way through the Brussels machinery:   “For several years, support has been provided for promoting active European citizenship, especially under headings in Part A of the budget: ·      Heading A-3020 co-finances the costs of the “Our Europe” Association ·      Heading A-3021 co-finances the operating costs of European think-tanks and organisations advancing the idea of Europe ·      Heading A-3024 co-finances the activities of associations and federations of European interest ·      Heading A-3030 co-finances the operating costs of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles ·      Heading 3036 co-finances the operating costs of the Jean Monnet House and the Robert Schuman House ·      Article A-321 supports town-twinning schemes in the European Union Most of these operations have hitherto been carried out without any legal basis.” [emphasis added]   What is most striking about this is the blatancy. There is nothing new, alas, in the EU acting first and legislating later. On the contrary, this is the normal way for it to proceed. The extension of Brussels jurisdiction into environmental policy happened during the early 1980s, and was retrospectively legalised in the Single European Act. The Common Foreign and Security Policy was forged during the late 1980s, but only formally recognised in Maastricht. The integration of justice and home affairs had begun well before it was given a legal basis in Amsterdam. As often as not, new European treaties are there to give de jure approval to a de facto extension of EU competence.   But I can’t remember seeing such a brazen admission before. Here is the EU saying, in effect: “Oh dear: we’ve been spending all this money to make people love us without any basis in the treaties. But rather than now complying with the law, we will change the law so as to comply with what we are doing”.   Is it surprising that an organisation which takes such a casual view of its own rules is rather hopeless at cracking down on fraud, corruption and other abuses? Is it wise for Britain, which has a strong tradition of the rule of law, to hand more and more powers over to such a body? Is it sensible  to be part of a project which proceeds on the basis of making up the rules as it goes along?   22 March 2005 back to top   TIME FOR REGIME CHANGE IN EUROPE   It was hardly the speech we had been hoping for. George W Bush, as any fule kno, is a conservative hard-man, a scourge of international lawyers, a unilateralist. If he has one guiding principle in foreign affairs, it is a preference for national democracy over supra-national bureaucracy. On Kyoto, or the International Criminal Court, or the UN, he takes the robust view that elected politicians are preferable to unaccountable fonctionnaires. Yet here he was in Brussels lauding perhaps the most backward and anti-democratic project in the Western world. European integration, he says, is a force for peace and freedom on Earth. Really? Where, exactly? In Iran, where the EU is cosying up to murderous ayatollahs who, among other things, recently sanctioned the execution of a teenage girl? In China, where it is collaborating with a Communist tyranny in developing satellite weapons systems? In Cuba, where it has a soft spot for the Castro regime? Or perhaps within its own borders where, through the proposed constitution, it plans to transfer yet more powers from elected national assemblies to unelected Brussels commissariats? One of the mysteries of modern diplomacy is America’s continuing public support for a development that seems so inimical to its own interests. In every other field, Washington has adjusted to the realities of the post-9/11 world. During the Cold War, the State Department was prepared to back several odious dictators on grounds that they were anti-Communists (“he may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s our son-of-a-bitch”). George Bush, however, takes the more modern view that indulging these tinpot tyrants is not in fact in America’s interests, since unstable regimes tend to export violence, however nominally pro-Western their leaders. Better, he reasons, to deal with free democracies than to prop up local strongmen in the name of “stability”. When it comes to the EU, however, Washington is still frozen in the Cold War, preferring to humour remote elites than to encourage democratisation. What is especially worrying is that the speech that the President delivered on Monday seems to have been toned down. Early drafts apparently included a specific endorsement of the proposed constitution, which was taken out after a ruckus in the White House. The idea of such an endorsement may have come from Peter Mandelson, who had been in Washington the previous week. Mr Mandelson no doubt remembers how useful it was during the 1975 Common Market referendum to have the Commonwealth leaders publicly calling for a “Yes” vote. If the leader of the English-speaking world were to say something similar today, it would surely sap the morale of anti-constitution campaigners. Equally, though, there is a horrible possibility that the idea emerged in Washington without any European encouragement. Plenty of Americans – including a good many Republicans who ought to know better – go along lazily with the idea that European integration must be a good thing, since it means that American forces will not have to intervene to sort out European wars again. Others argue that, whether or not it is a good thing in its own terms, it is better, from a US point of view, to have the Brits inside sticking up for the Atlantic alliance. (This argument seems more reasonable, but ignores the way in which the British representatives in Brussels go native: their participation, in other words, has far more impact on Britain’s orientation than on Europe’s.) Still others see the process as an echo of their own early federation, and look on the European constitution as equivalent to the American one. After all, did not its principal author, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, describe it as “our Philadelphia moment” – a reference to the drafting of the US Constitution in 1786? The briefest glance at the document would disabuse them of any such idea. The US had the enormous good fortune to draw up its constitution in an era when notions of personal freedom and limited government dominated Western thought. Alas, the EU constitution, too, is a child of its time. Where the US constitution is chiefly concerned with the rights of the individual, the European constitution is chiefly concerned with the powers of the state. Where the US constitution (in my version) is eleven pages long, the European constitution (in the official English publication) runs to 438 pages. Where the US constitution restricts itself to delineating the authority of Government and establishing a proper balance between federal and state jurisdiction, the EU constitution busies itself with such minutiae as marine biology and the status of the disabled. Where the Declaration of Independence offers “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights (which forms part of the constitution) guarantees the right to “strike action”, “non-discrimination” and “affordable housing”. President Bush, who is currently reading a biography of Alexander Hamilton, can hardly have failed to spot these differences. Perhaps he takes the view that, if the Europeans want to lumber themselves with a top-heavy and illiberal system of governance, that is their business. He ought, though, to ask himself whether the European constitution is in his own country’s interests. Anti-Americanism was built into the foundations of the EU. Even as US troops fought their way across occupied Europe, the future patriarchs of the EU were discussing the need to “contain” or “counterbalance” American power. For the next fifty years, the immediacy of the Soviet threat pushed such thoughts to the back of European minds. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, EU leaders have been speaking openly of the need to develop a powerful EU in order to prevent “a unipolar world”. I saw an early sign of the new mood when, as an undergraduate in 1992, I worked with the “No” campaign in the French referendum on the Maastricht Treaty. Alarmed by the opinion polls, the Socialist Government launched a poster showing a cowboy in a stetson hat squashing the globe, and carrying the slogan “faire l’Europe c’est faire le poids” (“building Europe gives us weight”). It worked. Today, similar sentiments are routinely trotted out as an argument for voting “Yes” to the constitution. Every superpower is resented, of course, as Britain once learned. But there is more to this than envy. Anti-Americanism in Europe has an ideological basis. Consider the areas where EU policy is most directly at odds with that of the US: Iran, China, Cuba, Israel. There is a common theme linking these countries: in each of them, the EU favours stability over democracy. It has spent a decade appeasing the mullahs in the vain hope that constructive engagement would stimulate internal reform in Teheran. Not only is it planning to lift its arms embargo on Beijing; it is actively co-operating with China on a new satellite navigation system called Galileo, designed explicitly to challenge the “technological imperialism” of America’s GPS. Having fiercely opposed US attempts to isolate Cuba economically, it has now withdrawn its support for anti-Castro dissidents. It boasts of having been Arafat’s chief sponsor. It comes as no surprise, then, that the EU should itself be on the point of adopting a constitution that strengthens the rulers at the expense of the ruled. When American critics accuse the EU of hypocrisy for cuddling up to Third World tyrants, they are missing the point. Europe’s apparatchiks have never been wild about democracy (or “populism” as they call it). When they get a result they dislike – as when Danish and Irish voters rejected EU treaties, for example – they ignore it. It is only natural that they should extend the same way of thinking to, say, Iraq or Palestine. Why on Earth, though, should President Bush go along with their agenda? At home, he has worked to diffuse power, to localise decision-making, to curtail judicial activism. His foreign policy, too, has been guided by a belief that it is better to deal with democracies than with juntas. He has no time for international quangoes. Yet, in supporting the EU constitution, he would be endorsing a project based on the idea that technocrats are better guardians of the public weal than the rogues who have conned people into voting for them. Perhaps the President wants to reward Mr Blair for his support during the Iraq war. If so, he has found a clever way of doing so. Mr Bush’s direct electoral endorsement would do his British auxiliary no favours; but helping him win the referendum would allow him to retire as one of the most successful of all Prime Ministers. The President has good reason to feel grateful to Mr Blair, who unwontedly swam against the current of public opinion over Iraq. But, before bestowing this particular prize on his friend, Mr Bush might care to cast his eye over Article I-15 of the proposed constitution: “The EU Common Foreign and Security policy shall apply to all aspects of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union’s security. Member States shall support the Common Foreign and Security Policy actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity”. It is worth asking whether, if this clause had already been in effect, Britain would have been allowed to join the invasion. back to top     MacShane is onto me   Denis MacShane is cross with me. Very cross indeed. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that Her Majesty's Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (With Special Responsibility for Europe) is in a bait. He has grumbled about me in the House of Commons and followed up his complaint with a series of letters to local newspapers in the South East.   What seems to have irked him is a bulletin that I recently sent to you, dear friends, and which I later followed up with an article in the Wall Street Journal Europe. In it, I suggested that, were Britain to vote "no" to the proposed constitution, it might improve its relationship with the rest of the EU. I went on to look at some of the countries that participate in the common market without giving up their independence: Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. I noted that every one of these countries is considerably more prosperous than those in the EU. And I suggested that the United Kingdom would be able to strike an even more attractive deal than these EFTA states, partly because of our greater size and importance, and partly because we are running a massive trade deficit with the rest of the EU, which ought to give us a pretty strong negotiating hand.   Mr MacShane took all this very badly. With what seems to me a singular lack of diplomacy for a Foreign Office Minister, he poured scorn on the Norwegians and the Swiss. These were paltry little countries, he said. They were eking out a miserable existence in the shadow of the mighty EU. They had to sign up to a whole lot of rules over whose drafting they had had no say. They were forced to pay squillions of euros into the EU budget without getting anything back. If ever we were so foolish as to do what they have done, 72,000 jobs in the South East would be at stake.   The short answer to Mr MacShane is contained in the graph below, which I reproduce from an earlier bulletin. Income per head in the EFTA countries is twice that in the EU. Even if we leave out the ten new member states, the EFTA states have comfortably outperformed the EU: their unemployment is lower, their stock markets stronger, their growth more impressive and their interest rates below those in the euro-zone. Oh yes, and they're also sovereign democracies. Now let us turn to the Minister's specific claims. Mr MacShane attests that Norway has had to sign up to hundreds of rules which it played no role in framing. This is true as far as it goes, but the rules in question are almost all trivial matters to do with technical standards. Norway has adopted some 3000 EU legal instruments over the past twelve years; but this has required only 50 Acts of Parliament, since most of the regulations were too minor to require legislation. Norwegians are bound by common standards on the labelling of ketchup bottles. But they are outside the Common Agricultural Policy, they control their own fish stocks and energy reserves, they maintain their own frontier checks and immigration policy, and they settle their own human rights questions.   In any case, the Norwegian Parliament, the Storting, can always refuse to implement an EU directive. This option is not open to Britain: even if our Parliament explicitly rejects an EU law, our courts are obliged to give it force. This happened, for example, over the Merchant Fishing Act of 1991, which was intended to protect some of our territorial waters from Spanish quota hoppers; and again, more recently, during the Metric Martyrs ruling. In both cases, EU law was held by our own judges to be supreme over parliamentary statute.   If even Norway is too communautaire for your taste, consider Switzerland, which has succeeded in negotiating an even looser relationship. It maintains its membership of the single market through a series of bilateral treaties. When it likes what Brussels is doing, it voluntarily synchronises its own legislation with that of the EU. When it doesn't, it doesn't. In practise, there are many occasions when it makes sense for Switzerland to harmonise its practises with its trading partners. But when the Swiss want to do something their own way - keep their low VAT rates, for example, or set their own financial regulations, or hold local referendums - they do so.   It's a similar story when it comes to budget contributions. It's true that Norway pays Brussels a fair amount (although less, per capita, than we do). But this is because the Norwegian Government has chosen to do so. Norway has opted into a series of EU schemes, ranging from overseas aid to research and development, not because it is forced to, but because it sees advantages in doing so on a case by case basis. Iceland has negotiated the same relationship with the EU as Norway, but declines to elbow its way into so many common initiatives. In consequence, its total contribution to the EU budget is nugatory: less than £40 million, as against the £12 billion that we have to cough up. Nor is the cash-flow all one way: Icelandic and Norwegian companies can, for example, compete for EU research grants on exactly the same terms as EU firms.   So let us now come to the gravest charge of all: those 72,000 home counties jobs. This is a scaled down version of Tony Blair's assertion that "three million British jobs depend on the EU" - a claim so patently ludicrous that Labour spin-doctors have clearly decided to come up with a lower figure.   There is a very easy refutation of this claim. Every EFTA country exports more per head to the EU than does Britain. Let me repeat that: EVERY EFTA COUNTRY EXPORTS MORE PER HEAD TO THE EU THAN DOES BRITAIN. The Swiss, for example sell twice as much, proportionately, to their EU neighbours from outside as we do from inside. Assuming that Mr MacShane is correct in claiming that 72,000 jobs in the South East depend on trade with the EU - and I am not at all sure he is, but that is another story - it is a preposterous non-sequitur to conclude that this commerce would dry up if Britain rejected the EU constitution and repatriated substantial elements of policy from Brussels. Britain, don't forget, runs a massive trade deficit with the rest of the EU, amounting to some £30 million a day. For most of the past thirty years, we have been in surplus with every continent except Europe. To put it crudely, the other states benefit more from our membership, in strictly commercial terms, than we do. It is inconceivable that they would wish to cut off their nose to spite their face by erecting trade barriers against us. And even if they wanted to, they would find that WTO rules prevent it.   No, the only jobs that would disappear in the South East are those of a few dozen British Commission officials, some SEERA Euro-consultants and a handful of lobbyists - as well as (ulp!) mine.   Mr MacShane's attack on me is interesting in what it reveals of Labour's strategy for the referendum. Supporters of the constitution have given up trying to find any intrinsic merits in the document. Instead, their argument in effect runs as follows: "Whether or not you like this constitution, the only alternative is to be completely isolated; and anyway, the people opposing it are little better than football hooligans".   Mr MacShane has suggested on a previous occasion that opponents of the constitution are "motivated by a xenophobic hatred against Germans or the French". This must mean me, I suppose. I had innocently thought of myself as a pretty good European: I speak French and Spanish and have lived and worked all over the Continent. But, no: the fact that I oppose the constitution makes me, ipso facto, a bigot.   And even if it didn't, my bigotry could, according to Mr MacShane, be inferred from my nationality. The British, he says, "have got a dark streak of racism and xenophobia in their mentality". This strikes me as itself a rather racist argument. Try substituting "The Arabs" or "The Jews" for "The British" in that sentence and you'll see what I mean.   Perhaps Mr MacShane can be forgiven his tetchy outburst. After all, the poor fellow can read the opinion polls as well as anyone else. He knows that we are likely to vote "no" when the time comes.   But let him at least be consistent. If, as he claims, the referendum is really about our whole relationship with Europe, then, having thus defined its terms, he must accept its verdict. If this is indeed a surrogate referendum on everything has happened over 32 years of British membership then, by his own logic, a "no" vote is a vote for a wider repatriation of powers from Brussels.   If there is a "yes" vote, I shall grit my teeth and accept the result with as much good grace as I can muster. If there is a "no" vote", Mr MacShane will presumably do the same. Won't he?   19 January 2005 back to top     PRESS RELEASE     NOT IN MY NAME DANIEL HANNAN LEADS ANTI-CONSTITUTION PROTEST IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT Opponents of the proposed constitution from across the EU protested in the European Parliament today against the Parliament's decision to back national "yes" campaigns.   The protest was led by the Conservative MEP for South East England, Daniel Hannan.   Daniel was objecting to the Parliament spending hundreds of thousands of euros to promote the constitution in advance of the national referendums.   As the result of the vote was announced, some sixty Euro-sceptic MEPs unfurled banners in the chamber proclaiming "Not in my name": a reference to the fact that, while the constitution enjoys overwhelming support among Brussels elites, this does not reflect public opinion across Europe.   They were also complaining about the decision to spend €340,000 on a lavish party to launch the constitution at a time when the EU is looking to find funds for disaster relief following the tsunami tragedy.   The protest was organised by the Referendum Group, an alliance of Euro-MPs opposed to the constitution, of which Daniel is chairman. Its members come from across the political spectrum. MEPs from the ten states holding referendums also released balloons with "Vote No" in their respective languages, while their supporters hung banners from the windows with the same message.  Two female assistants were injured when security staff snatched their placards.   The constitution will give the EU all the attributes of statehood: legal personality, a Head of State, a Foreign Minister and Diplomatic service, a judicial system, recognised external borders, a military capacity and a police force.     back to top   CHRISTMAS VOTE FOR TURKEY   This week was to have seen the most lavish party ever thrown by the European Parliament: fireworks, a laser display, an orchestra and a succession of dignitaries (splendidly described as "grands penseurs" and "grandes plumes"). The purpose? To mark the ratification by the MEPs of the European Constitution. The hemicycle of the Parliament is perhaps the only place in Europe where that document is guaranteed overwhelming support, and no one is bothering with any pretence at neutrality. Indeed, one of the proposals is for a light show that will illuminate the building's exterior with "VOTE YES" in various languages. The total cost of the festivities, including the flying in of hundreds of local and national journalists, is 340,000 euros (£240,000).   The ceremony has been postponed, and will now take place in January. The reason is that the vote would otherwise have clashed with that on Turkey's accession, and the last thing that supporters of the constitution want is to conflate those two questions in the minds of voters. Already, French Euro-sceptics are campaigning under the slogan "No to Turkish membership, No to the constitution". They argue that the two questions are necessarily linked, since the constitution introduces the principle of population-based voting in the EU, and, while the rest of Europe is shrinking demographically, Turkey is teeming.   Turkey is an issue that cuts across the normal conservative/socialist and sceptic/'phile axes in Europe. Many Left-wingers oppose Turkey's admission because of its record on human rights and equality between the sexes (rather unfairly, it has always seemed to me: Turkey has a better record on women's rights than many existing EU states, and had its first female Prime Minister at around the same time that Britain did). On the other hand, several Right-wingers fret about the consequences of more immigration from a Muslim country. And, while some Euro-sceptics see the prospect of Turkish accession as yet another stick to beat Brussels with, others take the view that admitting a country which is so different from the existing ones will make the application of uniform EU policies impossible. How, they ask, could we possibly extend the Social Chapter to Turkish workers? Or the Common Agricultural Policy to a nation whose food production is so much cheaper than our own? Or common residence rights to a country which will soon have 120 million people? Admitting Turkey will necessarily mean devolving some powers back to the national capitals.   On balance, I incline towards this view. The EU has always defined itself geographically rather than culturally: that is why we are expected to sit alongside Greece and Slovenia, but not Canada or New Zealand. It cannot now have it both ways. The Eastern frontiers of Europe are the Urals, the Caucasus and the Bosphorus. This being so, not only Turkey, but Armenia, Azerbaijan and even Kazakhstan qualify. It seems to me that an EU that comprised all these countries, as well as Russia, could not be a superstate. Indeed, it would hardly be the EU at all, but a loose association of states, along the lines of the Council of Europe.   There are few people in the world as touchy about their sovereignty as Turks. I cannot think of any other state in history that has, as it were, seceded from its own empire. Before 1921, Ottoman Turkey was a supra-national union of many different peoples. Ataturk's revolution was based, not only on the principle of secularism, but also on that of nationality: the notion that every people had the right to a self-governing state. That has remained a precept of successive Turkish governments to this day, which is what scandalises so many Euro-federalists.   Turkey has historically been a good friend to Britain. Even the one occasion that we went to war, in 1915, was a far better-natured affair than what was going on simultaneously on the Western Front. Despite repeated promptings from their German allies, the Turks refused to use gas against our soldiers, and there were acts of conspicuous gallantry on both sides. Since then, Turkey has been a reliable ally of Britain and Nato. It is the only successful Muslim democracy in the world, and thus a beacon to other Islamic states. It seems to me that, if Turks want to strengthen their Western orientation by joining the EU, there are sound strategic reasons to back them.   Not that it much matters what I think. For all the grandiose talk, and despite the "yes" vote in the chamber on Wednesday, it is inconceivable that Turkey will actually be allowed in. Until now, people have been going along with the idea with their fingers crossed behind their back. But, under EU rules, it takes only one of the 25 member states to deploy a veto. Sooner or later, one of these countries - possibly one with historical reasons to be anti-Turkish - will say no. One can only imagine the consequences of such a rejection in Turkey, which will by then have spent over a decade reforming its political and economic structures so as to comply with EU rules. The resentment could last for a very long time.   Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year!   20 December 2004   back to top   What a Shower!   Now that they are firmly ensconced at their desks, let us review our new Commissioners. Six of the 25 are former Communists. Three have recently lost elections, again demonstrating that the Commission is not so much undemocratic as anti-democratic, attracting politicians who have been explicitly rejected by their voters. Twenty have said that they intend to implement parts of the EU constitution without waiting for the referendum results. Several managed to get through their hearings only by sticking rigidly to prepared briefs. The Agriculture Commissioner makes money from the CAP, the Competition Commissioner was forced to stand aside from a case after only two days in office owing to her numerous conflicts of interest and the anti-corruption Commissioner was recently involved in a corruption case (although he was eventually acquitted). All this in the same week that the EU’s Court of Auditors, for the tenth year in a row, refused to endorse the Commission’s accounts.   In the circumstances, you might have expected MEPs to be pretty worked up when the moment came to vote for endorsement. And so they were. But the target of their anger was not the line-up of dolts and retreads in front of them, but a British MEP called Nigel Farage. Farage, capo of UKIP’s 12 MEPs, claimed in the chamber that the transport Commissioner, Jacques Barrot, had been convicted in 2000 in an illicit funding case. Although this turned out to be true, it seems that no one is allowed mention it: along with numerous other French politicians, Barrot has been pardoned by President Chirac, which makes it an offence, under French law, to draw attention to his conviction.   I hold no brief for Farage, the pied piper of my Home Counties region. His party is doing Blair’s work for him, propping up federalist Labour MPs and blocking the election of a number of Euro-sceptic candidates who were campaigning against Brussels long before UKIP existed. None the less, the way in which MEPs reacted to his revelation was horrible. One after another, they rose to threaten him with legal action. Graham Watson, the Liberal leader, likened him to the British football hooligans who had disgraced Britain in Europe. A French former minister, Jacques Toubon, rushed up and down the aisle apparently looking for someone to punch (Robert Kilroy-Silk, recognising him as the man who had tried to ban the English language from French airwaves, teasingly told him that no one would understand him unless he switched to English, which sent him into a spasm of rage). Even the Speaker joined in, warning Farage of the “serious judicial consequences” of what he had said, and inviting him to retract.   This, remember, is a parliament which has spent the past month congratulating itself on having come of age. Yet as soon as one of its members tries to carry out the primary role of a legislator – that is, to hold the Executive to account – he is howled down. Why? Because the ruling ideology – closer integration, always and everywhere – is considered more important than either the competence or the probity of the people advancing it. None of the big parties had looked into Barrot’s background because, deep down, they didn’t want to find anything. And even now that they know, no one is calling on him to hit the road, Jacques. It is reminiscent of the way Euro-MPs reacted when they found that Kohl and Mitterrand had been supporting the European idea through hidden slush funds. These men, they said, had not enriched themselves personally. Whatever they had done, they had done for Europe.   So strong is the “Europe right or wrong” mentality among MEPs that virtually any vice can be forgiven in a Commissioner provided he supports the project. If you think I am exaggerating, look at the personnel changes made in the line-up. Other than Rocco Buttiglione, only one nominee was dropped: Ingrida Udre, from Latvia. Her crime was to make clear at her hearing that she supported tax competition. She has now been ditched and replaced by a lifelong Hungarian Communist. There you have it. It is all right to have supported a totalitarian state, to have a conviction, or to be a witless dullard. But a Euro-sceptic? That’s going too far.   29 November 2004 back to top What would happen if we voted 'no'? What would happen if Britain voted “no” to the EU constitution while most or all of the other countries wanted to go ahead? Would the other heads of government tear up the draft in deference to the British? And, if not, where would that leave us? Staying where we are would not be an option, since the existing treaties would no longer exist: they would all have been folded into the new constitution. So we should presumably have to negotiate a different relationship with those states that wanted to adopt the constitution. Europe’s leaders have been admirably frank in spelling this out. Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and others have made clear that, if Britain persisted in rejecting the draft, the other countries would offer it a form of associate membership, based on membership of the free market but not of the new political structures. The Commissioner who has gone furthest in adumbrating exactly how this would work is Pascal Lamy, who holds the trade portfolio. Britain, he said, would be offered a status rather like Switzerland’s. Since this is the clearest definition we have, it is worth looking at exactly how Switzerland – and its three EFTA partners, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein – manage their relations with the EU. These states are not identical, of course. Each one has struck its own deal with Brussels. In particular, there are important differences between Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, which maintain their membership of the single market through the European Economic Area, and Switzerland, which does so through a series of bilateral treaties. None the less, they have several characteristics in common. The EFTA states are all covered by the four freedoms of the single market: free movement, that is, of goods, services, people and capital. They are able to opt into other common policies on a case-by-case basis, whether on research and development, classification of medicines, border-free travel or whatever. Yet they are spared the huge costs and inefficiencies of the Common Agricultural Policy. They are free to control their own fisheries and their own energy reserves. They are able to sign free trade deals with third countries. They are outside much EU social and employment regulation (all of it, in the case of Switzerland). They have their own foreign policies, immigration controls, legal systems and civil rights. Their parliaments are sovereign. And they pay only a token amount to the EU budget. It is often argued that the EEA countries are forced to assimilate a great deal of EU regulation over which they have had no say. This is true as far as it goes. But the regulation covers only a small and clearly delineated part of their public life. Although more than 3000 EU directives have been implemented by the three EEA states since 1992, they have required only 50 legislative acts in Norway and Iceland (and fewer in Liechtenstein, which joined later). Most of them are highly technical rules on standard labelling. In any case, the parliaments of the EEA countries can always decline to implement regulations that they deem deleterious to their interests. Their courts do not give direct effect to EU legislation as ours do. Unsurprisingly, the EFTA countries are considerably wealthier than the EU states. Indeed, their citizens are, on average, more than twice as rich as those in the EU (see the accompanying table). Every EFTA country has a higher GDP per capita than every EU nation except, in some cases, Luxembourg. It is also interesting to note that every one of the EFTA states exports more per head to the EU than does Britain. I am not arguing that Britain should exactly replicate what the EFTA countries have negotiated. On the contrary, I believe that Britain would be able to strike a much more favourable deal than any of these countries, for three reasons. First, as readers of eurofacts will be well aware, Britain is structurally in deficit with the rest of the EU. In the years since we joined, we have run an average deficit of more than £30 million per day. For most of that period, we have been in surplus with every continent in the world except Europe. It is not normal, in any transaction, for the salesman to have the upper hand over the client. Second, we are much larger than the EFTA states. Switzerland has a population of 7.4 million, Norway 4.6 million, Iceland 280,000 and Liechtenstein just 18,000. Our greater weight and diplomatic experience should give us a powerful negotiating position. Third, we are an existing member of the EU. We cannot legally be excluded from the existing rules on the single market. We would not be approaching as supplicants from the outside, but negotiating terms on which other states would be free to adopt the constitution without us. Voting “no” to the constitution would not simply be a vote for the status quo. Rather, it would be a vote for better terms, allowing us to repatriate substantial powers from Brussels while remaining linked to the other states through the constant nexus of the free market. In order to achieve this, though, we need a Government that will demand it. That is why the really vital vote is not the referendum, but the intervening general election. Voting on the constitution: What Britain should know about the consequences by Daniel Hannan MEP is published by Politeia, 22 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0QP. 23 November 2004  back to top The Parody of a Parliament    “Who that admires, and from the heart is attached, to true national assemblies, but must turn in horror and disgust from such a profane burlesque, and parody of that sacred institution”. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France   It is, say breathless commentators, a triumph for democracy—which, even by Brussels standards, seems a curious way to describe cancelling a vote because you might not like the outcome. The European Parliament, we are told, has at last come of age. By forcing José Manuel Durrão Barroso to withdraw his intended Commission, MEPs have shown that they deserve to be taken seriously. It is a fair bet that the people writing this guff were not actually present at Wednesday’s session. If they had been, they would have seen the European Parliament at its most puerile. The drama of such moments makes Euro-MPs behave like children at a panto. We revel in the unwonted attention, whooping and banging our desks whenever we agree with something, jeering and catcalling when we don’t. The air becomes thick with polyglot cries: “¡Basta ya!” “Disgrace!” “Prodi a casa!” “Tais-toi!” The Speaker, Josep Borrell, was painfully out of his depth. An amiable Catalan who was not even an MEP until June, Mr Borrell was catapulted into the top job following a deal between the Christian Democrats and the Socialists. Sensing that the poor booby had lost his grip, we acted up like schoolboys before a weak supply teacher. Robert Kilroy-Silk kept jumping to his feet and bellowing “Is this a proper parliament?” Everyone yelled at him to shut up, while the Speaker stared miserably into space. Not that our behaviour dented our self-confidence. One after another, we rose to tell each other how important we were. “Today, this House on the River Rhine grows in stature,” said the Liberal leader, Graham Watson. “Its will was tested. Its will prevailed”. Actually, Mr Watson’s own will had seemed to fluctuate on an almost hourly basis as the deadline loomed, but the chamber cheered him all the same. Observing my cynical mien, a federalist German MEP ticked me off. “You English should appreciate more than anyone what is happening today,” he said. “It is like what happened in your parliament in the 1640s. We have finally established our authority over the Executive.” No doubt there is something in this. The passage of years can endow events with a grandeur that may not have been apparent at the time. It may well be that, at the presentation of the Grand Remonstrance, parliamentarians were bawling at the Speaker to hurry up because they wanted their lunch. It is possible that, as Charles I and his soldiers came in search of the five members, MPs greeted them by smirking and shouting “Oh-ho!” Even so, though, I feel my German friend’s parallel is misplaced. Other than a suspicion of “jesuited papists”, the two assemblies have little in common. The Parliament Men of the 1640s wanted limited government, political pluralism and, above all, a proper respect for legal process. Their Strasbourg equivalents want more power for the centre, zero tolerance for opinions which they consider disreputable, and the freedom to ignore their own rules of procedure. There is no legal basis for what the European Parliament has just done. The EU Treaties lay down a mechanism for the confirmation of a new Commission. They allow for the possibility that the Parliament might vote against the nominees. But they do not allow MEPs simply to refuse to vote. On 1 November, the rules on the new one-member-per-country Commission come into force. From that moment, either Neil Kinnock or Chris Patten will be redundant and should, according to the rules, have his salary stopped. But no one expects this to happen. When the EU decides on something, it rarely allows the dots and commas of the law to stand in its way. What is it that has driven Euro-MPs to act in this unprecedented manner? Were they dismayed by the lamentable performance of some of the candidates, who managed to limp through their hearings only by reading prepared briefs? Were they concerned by the apparent conflicts of interest that some of the incoming Commissioners will bring to their portfolios? Were they horrified by the prospect of admitting seven former Communists to the EU’s politburo? Did they resent the fact that 19 of the 25 nominees have said that they intend to start implementing the constitution at once, without waiting for the national referendums? No. All these things are evidently pardonable. But Rocco Buttiglione’s views on homosexuality were held to be, so to speak, a blasphemy against the Holy Ghost that shall not be forgiven unto man. Whatever your views on Mr Buttiglione’s convictions, is it not extraordinary that, faced with a team of retreads, apparatchiks and dullards, MEPs should have singled out an obviously competent man on the basis of his private beliefs? Ah yes, say critics, but these are not just his private beliefs. He caused wanton offence at his hearing when he described homosexuality as a sin. In fact, contrary to most press reports, he did no such thing. It was a Left-wing Euro-MP who introduced the s-word, asking Mr Buttiglione how he could reconcile the Vatican’s teaching on homosexuality with his role as the anti-discrimination Commissioner. Mr Buttiglione gave the only reply that, as a Christian, he conscientiously could, saying that that there is a difference between morality and legality, and that, whatever his religious opinions, he would champion the rights of all minorities. If Mr Buttiglione’s faith makes him unfit for office then, by extension, no Christian or Jew, Muslim or Hindu is eligible to work for Brussels. Let us be clear, then, about the nature of this newly authoritative Parliament. Over the past week, it has shown itself to be contemptuous of democracy, heedless of its own rules and intolerant of dissent. Yes, we MEPs are stronger now than we were. But our powers have not been wrung from the Commission; they have come at the expense of you, the citizen. 29 October 2004  back to top   Blue-eyed Sheikhs   Britain, we are forever being told, is an offshore island, too small to survive except as part of a larger European entity. Euro-sceptics have a well-rehearsed retort to this charge, pointing out that we are the world's fourth largest economy, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a member of the G8 and so on. In fact, they continue, we are not even small in the literal sense, being the seventh largest island on the planet.   All these things are true. But it is perhaps more interesting to contemplate the condition of a country which really is a small offshore island. Iceland stands at the uttermost tip of Europe, straddling the tectonic line that divides our continent from America. It has a population of 285,000, roughly that of Croydon. It is cold, treeless and dark for much of the year. Yet Icelanders have just overtaken their Norwegian cousins to become the richest people in Europe. They are busily buying up British firms: Oasis, Karen Millen, Somerfield and Hamleys among others. They have the highest life expectancy in the world. And -- here's the thing -- they have managed all this while remaining outside the EU.   When I first visited Iceland ten years ago, it had just joined the European Economic Area. The Icelanders I met were pretty pleased about this, and with good reason. Under the terms of the EEA treaty, they were to enjoy the benefits of the single market with few of the associated costs. Iceland is covered by the so-called four freedoms of the EU: free movement of goods, services, people and capital. But it is outside the common agricultural and fisheries policies, and exempt from a chunk of European social regulation. It is free to negotiate free trade accords with third countries. And, unlike Britain, it makes only a token donation to the EU budget, amounting to 0.07 per cent of its GDP.   The years since the EEA accord have seen an extraordinary boom on the edge of the Arctic Circle. People one generation away from subsistence farming and fishing have become international tycoons, blue-eyed sheikhs. Many of then own houses in Chelsea that lie empty between their visits to London. For Icelanders are unusual in being, for the most part, genuine Anglophiles. They see us as we are, with all our crimes broad blown, as flush as May; and yet, on balance, they like us. Indeed, several Icelanders are probably reading these words, for I have never come across such a high density of Spectator readers as in Reykjavik.   Euro-fanatics dismiss Iceland's prosperity as being based solely on fisheries, and it is true that an ingenious quota system has turned Iceland's fish stocks into a profitable renewable resource. But there is far more to it than that. Being outside the EU, Iceland has been able to cut taxes and regulation. For seventy years, its politics have been dominated by the splendidly named Independence Party, which has pursued the kind of Thatcherite policies which are off-limits to EU members because of the Social Chapter. Unsurprisingly, the Independence Party is deeply opposed to accession.   The EEA is not perfect. Iceland, like Norway, Liechtenstein and, to a lesser extent, Switzerland, is obliged to accept many regulations that it has played no part in formulating. Yet all four of these states enjoy a far higher per capita income than those in the EU. As an official in Iceland's Foreign Ministry told me: "We are a hard-headed people. We don't look for Utopia. There are plenty of arguments against the EEA in theory, but they don't apply in practice".   Whenever I suggest to Euro-phile friends that Iceland seems to be doing awfully well outside the EU, they reply that it is a unique country. Well, in many ways it is. Icelanders have no surnames, for example, instead using patronymics. Their language has barely changed since the tenth century. Their word for computer translates literally as "number seeress", while a tank is a "crawling dragon". Their landscape looks like a set from Star Trek. But none of these things explains why Iceland is doing so much better than countries in the EU.   "You can't compare us to Iceland", say British federalists, "they have fish". So, of course, would we, but for the Common Fisheries Policy. "We're not like Norway: they have oil". And we are the only net oil exporter in the EU. "Switzerland is a special case: look at their banking sector". Look at the City of London.   Then, in a delicious back-flip, the Euro-zealots trot out a new objection. "But we're nothing like these EFTA countries: they're much smaller than us".   What they mean is that Britain, unlike the tiddlers, is a country with global interests, and so cannot afford to give up its place at Europe's top table. Yet even this argument doesn't stack up. Switzerland, being outside the EU, manages to host some of the biggest international organisations, including the Red Cross and much of the UN. Norway is shaping policy in the Middle East, Sudan, Sri Lanka and South East Asia. As a Norwegian diplomat put it to me: "Our worst time was just before the 1994 referendum, when we were expected to join the EU. I was always being asked to meetings along with my fifteen European counterparts, and I often wouldn't even get to speak." At the risk of stating the obvious, influence in international affairs depends on having your own foreign policy in the first place.   But the 'philes are on to something when they point out that being small has its advantages. Most of the richest places in the world are bonsai states: Brunei, Monaco, the Channel Islands and so on. Indeed, the one big exception is the United States, which pulls off the trick of governing itself like a confederation of tiny statelets. What a pity that the EU is bent on going in the opposite direction.   Iceland's most famous novelist, Halldór Laxness, won the Nobel Prize for his epic story, Independent People. That phrase -- Sjalfstætt Folk -- has a resonance in Iceland that is hard to convey. Icelanders have grasped that the independence of their state is linked to their own independence from the state. Freed from the burden of international regulation, they have become perhaps the happiest, freest and wealthiest people on Earth. Long may they remain so. 29 October 2004 back to top   Another Brussels Ban     The EU is surprisingly adept at spreading worst practice. National governments see it as a way of avoiding tough decisions at home. Rather than deregulating their markets, they can simply export their costs to their chief rivals.   An interesting example is the proposal to ban advertising aimed at children. Sweden already has such a law, and doesn't see why the rest of Europe shouldn't follow suit. Such adverting, runs the argument, is unfair to children from poorer backgrounds. It dangles baubles in front of them that are beyond their parents' reach, thus putting the parents under intolerable pressure to spend more than they can afford.   This argument is so silly that it is hard to know where criticism should begin. Set aside, for a moment, the vexed question of what precisely constitutes advertising aimed at children (are we talking only of toys, or should all confectionary be counted too?) Disregard, too, the objection that parents ought to be able to say "no" to their offspring without having to call in the full force of the law to do it for them. Ignore, if you can, the fact that such matters could perfectly well be decided by elected national parliaments rather than by Eurocrats.   Clear all these things from your mind, and instead ask the most basic question of all: why stop at children? If advertising is so deleterious, ought it not to be banned outright?   After all, we do our children no favours if we fail to prepare them for the life they will lead. As adults, they will often see luxurious items being advertised that are out of their price range. Ought we not to accustom ourselves to the idea that we cannot always have everything that we want?   In reality, of course, the logic of those backing the ban applies equally to adults. In private, they often admit this, arguing that advertising is hurtful to the poor. Their objection, in other words, is not to an intrusion into childhood innocence, but to the capitalist system itself. Theirs is, of course, a perfectly consistent point of view. It has even been tried in practice, although it has tends to require the apparatus of a police state to make it work. None the less, let us be clear that what is being proposed is an attack on consumer choice on principle; and let us hear no more schlock about "the kids". 14 October 2004 back to top       TEN THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION     ·        "This constitution shall have primacy over the laws of the member states" (Article 5a)   ·        The European Commission will be given power over Britain's economic and employment policies, making the question of whether we keep the pound largely redundant   ·        The constitution creates a European foreign policy, complete with an EU Foreign Minister and diplomatic corps   ·        "Member states shall support the EU's common foreign and security policy actively and unreservedly in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity" (Article 15)   ·        The constitution creates a European criminal justice system, with a European Public Prosecutor and an EU legal code; this runs directly counter to our own common law tradition   ·        43 national vetoes will be abolished, and the powers of MEPs extended to 36 new areas   ·        Brussels jurisdiction is specified in virtually every area of government policy: transport, energy, public health, trade, employment, social policy, competition, agriculture, fisheries, defence, foreign affairs, asylum and immigration, space exploration, criminal justice   ·        "Member states shall exercise their competence to the extent that the EU ceases to exercise, or chooses no longer to exercise, its competence" (Article 11)   ·        The day that the constitution enters into force, all previous EU treaties will be dissolved; the Union will cease to be an association of states bound by international treaties, and become a state in its own right   ·        "The Union shall provide itself with the means necessary to carry through its policies and pursue its objectives" (Article 52)   23 September 2004 back to top       WHO ARE OUR TRUE FRIENDS?   The first item on our agenda, as we begin a new parliamentary session, is where to sit. This may seem the most abstruse of issues: "Inside the Beltway" as the Americans say. But, during the recent election campaign, it became extremely controversial. It was raised repeatedly on doorsteps and at public meetings, as well as in the press (see, for example, Charles Moore's article, Sunday Telegraph, 5 June 2004).   At present, Conservative MEPs are in an unhappy mésalliance with the European People's Party (EPP). The EPP prides itself on being the most federalist party in Europe, advocating, among other things, a common European army and police force, a single EU seat at the United Nations and a pan-European income tax to be levied by MEPs. Needless to say, it is also a passionate supporter of the euro and the proposed EU constitution.   You will often see the EPP described by British journalists as "Centre-Right", but it has always rejected this label, insisting that it is a party of the Centre. It has good cause to do so, since its programme includes commitments to a high minimum wage, powerful trade unions, maximum working hours, the Social Chapter and redistributive taxation.   As you will imagine, our affiliation with the EPP has been the subject of lively discussions over the years. I have never hidden my own opposition to the link. Equally, though, I will not disguise from you the fact that many of my colleagues take a different view, arguing that association with the EPP gives us more influence.   This is a perfectly honourable argument, but not one which I find persuasive. I believe we would maximise our influence by forming a conservative bloc of mainstream Centre-Rght parties which believe in the free market and in national independence. The recent enlargement round has brought several such parties into the European Parliament, particularly from Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic States. As the leading force in such a grouping - an alliance of New Europe, if you like - we would hold the balance of power in the Parliament. We would have a vehicle to advance our vision of a Europe of nations. And, not least, we would be able to answer the charge, so often thrown at us at home, that we say one thing in Britain but do another in Brussels.   I should be very interested in your own opinion of this matter, especially if you are a member of the Conservative Party. This, after all, is a matter which touches the entire party, not simply our 28 MEPs. Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me what you think. Please indicate your Association and branch when you reply.   7 July 2004 back to top VOTE NO!   Join me in a little thought experiment. For several months now, Tony Blair has been insisting that the European constitution would be a defeat for Euro-federalism. Within hours of appending his name to it, he announced that, far from creating a superstate, the constitution was about "sovereign nation-states co-operating together".   Let us play along with the Prime Minister for a moment. Let us imagine that he really has seen off the Euro-zealots and protected the supremacy of national governments. What, in these circumstances, might we reasonably expect the constitution to contain?   First, there would be a proper division of powers. The EU would be confined to cross-border matters, while what one might call "behind border" issues would devolve back to the member states. Brussels would continue to have a role in such areas as international trade, environmental pollution, and elements of aviation. But the nations would retrieve control over swathes of policy currently within EU competence: agriculture, fisheries, social policy, industrial relations, employment law, indirect taxation, immigration, defence. This is not to say, of course, that countries would be prevented from adopting common initiatives in these areas. But no longer would sceptical states be dragged à contre cœur into policies that their people disliked. The more federally-minded governments would be free to use EU structures and institutions to amalgamate to their hearts' content, with no pressure on the more reluctant nations to join them.   Having made this distinction, a skilfully drafted constitution would include checks and balances to prevent the EU extending its own powers. Wise founding fathers know how to anticipate the power-hunger of politicians. Euro-integrationists might argue, for example, that since fish do not recognise national borders, it is vital to have the Common Fisheries Policy (oddly enough, this logic seems to apply only to British fish: the EU's Baltic and Mediterranean waters have remained outside the CFP for 30 years). Or perhaps they might claim that, since low taxes in one country put pressure on others, we need a Common Fiscal Policy.   Until now, such questions have been settled by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Under a quirk of the rules, you don't actually need to be a judge to be appointed to Europe's supreme court. Many on the ECJ bench are academics or politicians who have never heard a case in their home countries. Unsurprisingly, they think more like legislators than judges, missing no opportunity to widen the scope of their authority. Indeed, some of them have admitted, extra-judicially, that they see the goal of "ever-closer union" as more important than the dots and commas of the treaties.   A truly decentralising constitution would tackle such judicial activism. This could be achieved by referring all questions touching on sovereignty to a tribunal made up of leading jurists from the member states: the President of the Conseil d'Etat in France, the head of the Bundesverfassungsgericht in Germany, the Master of the Rolls from this country and so on. The tribunal would meet for only a couple of weeks a year, leaving its members free to run their home jurisdictions the rest of the time. They would therefore be less likely to go native than Luxembourg-based judges who depend on the EU for their livelihoods.   While we're at it, why not apply the same principle to the European Parliament? Instead of having specialist Euro-MPs who justify their salaries by passing laws at EU level, a non-superstate constitution would surely propose a return to the pre-1979 system, with an assembly comprising seconded national parliamentarians, elected on respectable turnouts, meeting for three or four days a month. When I suggested this to an MEP the other day, his face became mottled with outrage. "This is a full time job", he rasped. "If they were only here one week in four, they'd never get through all the legislation". Precisely so.   And what about the European Commission? Is it not outrageous that an unelected politburo should have the right - let alone the sole right - to propose new laws? A genuinely democratic constitution would place the right of legislative initiative with accountable national governments. Any state which wanted to propose a common European policy would be free to do so, and invite like-minded governments to join it. The Commission would be left as a civil service carrying out the will of elected ministers.   Finally, a well-crafted constitution would be short. It would not seek to impose the transient values of one generation on posterity. Rather, it would confine itself to delineating the frontier between the EU and the member states, leaving all residual powers to the citizen.   With this Platonic ideal of a constitution in our minds, let us now turn to what Mr Blair has actually signed. Our suspicions should at once be piqued by the curiously negative way in which he is promoting it. This constitution is good for Britain, he says, because of all the things it doesn't do. There will be no European army; we've thwarted plans for tax harmonisation; we've kept our veto in social security. Even if all these things were true - and, as we shall see, some of them are pretty questionable - they hardly add up to an argument for ratification. In what ways will the United Kingdom be positively better off? Are we so reduced as a people that we are expected to thank Brussels for letting us levy our own income tax?   Something else should be niggling at us. If all these proposals have been kept out of the document, then what is in it? Surely it doesn't take 333 pages, plus hundreds of codices, to say that there will be no European army. Let us look, then, at what it does contain.   We can do this easily enough. The full text is available on-line, and in a reader-friendly version, at www.euabc.com. We don't have to read very far before we discover some things that Mr Blair has neglected to mention. Alarm bells should start ringing by the third page. "This constitution," says Article I-5a, "shall have primacy over the laws of the member states".   Ah yes, say the Euro-philes, but there's nothing new there: the superiority of EU law was already established when we joined in 1973. Oddly enough, I can't remember them saying this at the time, but we'll leave that aside. The doctrine of the supremacy of EU law is an invention of the ECJ. It has never been recognised in a treaty, and has been rejected by most national supreme courts. Germany ruled in 1992 that EU law had force in that country only to the extent that it complied with German Basic Law. The French Justice Minister made the same point in 1996: "This primacy does not apply to the [French] constitution. Indeed, it could not be otherwise, since it is from Article 55 of our constitution that international commitments derive their authority". Two years ago, in the metric martyrs case, our own Court of Appeal ruled that EU law could not override parliamentary sovereignty.   Yet, in a little-noticed declaration tacked on to Article I-5a, EU governments have effectively sided with the ECJ against their own judges, recognising its claim to supremacy, not only over parliamentary statutes, but also over national constitutions. In legal terms, this makes the EU a state. It will henceforth derive its authority, not from a series of international treaties - on the day the constitution enters into force, all existing EU treaties are dissolved - but from its own founding charter. This point is reinforced by the next clause, Article I-6, which bestows legal personality on the Union, enabling it to act as a state under international law.   Any lingering doubt is removed by Article I-11: "The member states shall exercise their competence to the extent that the Union has not exercised, or has decided to cease exercising, its competence". There follows a list of areas where Brussels jurisdiction is specified: transport, energy, trade, competition, agriculture, fisheries, space exploration, social policy, public health, employment policy, consumer protection, asylum, immigration, criminal justice, foreign affairs. No wonder Mr Blair keeps wittering on about "schools'n'hospitals": they're pretty much all he'll have left.   When the Prime Minister claims that there will be "no federal superstate", he is half right. It will be a superstate all right, equipped with every attribute of statehood that international law recognises: a defined territory, common borders, a citizenry, a legislature, a legal system and supreme court, a constitution, treaty-making powers, a head of state and a defence capability. Article I-6a also gives it the outward symbols of statehood: a flag, a national anthem (Ode to Joy), a motto ("United in diversity") and a national day (9 May). But Mr Blair is right to say that it is not federal. In federations, there is a clear demarcation between central and state authority. Under the proposed constitution, by contrast, the EU can itself extend its jurisdiction without reference back to the nations.   There was a great deal of self-congratulation when Mr Blair removed the word "federal" from the draft. But, as things stand, its inclusion would have been an improvement; for this is the constitution, not of a federal state, but of a unitary one. Once it comes into force, the nations of Europe will in many ways have less freedom of action that, say, US states, which can decide such issues as indirect tax rates and whether to retain the death penalty.   I cannot think of any national constitution that busies itself with housing policy, the right to strike or the treatment of the disabled. Yet the EU constitution, by incorporating the Charter of Fundamental Rights, has a great deal to say about all these questions. No wonder God has been excised: the awesome presumption of the constitution's framers leaves no space for Him.   Britain is still plaintively insisting that the Charter will not be directly justiciable. But the senior judge at the ECJ has helpfully told the FT that the Court will recognise not only the Charter, but also the Common Foreign and Security Policy - and it is he, not Mr Blair, who decides.   Let us deal, finally, with the argument that the constitution simply rehashes the existing treaties. On one level, this is untrue. The constitution abolishes 43 national vetoes and extends the competence of MEPs to 36 areas; it creates an EU foreign minister and diplomatic corps; it establishes a criminal justice system, with its own prosecuting authority and police force, as well as common rules on asylum and immigration.   But even where it is true, so what? The fact that something appeared in a previous treaty does not make it right. If we objected to, say, the Common Agricultural Policy, we should have used the constitution as an opportunity to junk it. The whole point of the exercise was to design a lasting European settlement from first principles.   Supporters of the constitution complain that the "no" campaign is based, not on a specific dislike of the constitution, but on 30 years of accumulated prejudice against Brussels. There is an element of truth in this. But the constitution confirms and extends all the things that people dislike, but have not hitherto been asked about. That is why, despite all his protestations about facts and myths, Mr Blair is so reluctant to be drawn on detail, preferring windy generalities about "making Europe work", "being fully committed" or - my particular favourite, this - "three million jobs at stake".   Like previous British leaders, he is seeking to sell the deal as the opposite of what it really is, claiming, Major-like, to have defeated the Euro-fanatics. His trouble is that, between now and the referendum, people may glance at the text. They won't be duped again. 25 June 2004 back to top WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?   First, consider the broader picture. Turnout across the EU was down again, dropping from 50 per cent in 1999 to 44 per cent last week. The claim that, if only MEPs were given more powers, people would learn to love us, has again been disproved. Turnout has fallen at each successive election since the first Euro-poll in 1979, despite compulsory voting in some member states. Yet, over the same period, the European Parliament has been steadily accumulating powers. The more we Euro-MPs do, it seems, the less people like us.   Perhaps this explains why this will be the first European Parliament with a substantial Euro-sceptic bloc. I don't want to exaggerate: most MEPs are still Euro-fanatics, for the simple reason that people who oppose closer integration are less likely to stand in European elections. But there are more dissidents than ever before: Danish and Swedish Euro-sceptics, free marketeers from Poland and the Baltic states, conservatives from Portugal and the Czech Republic, French Gaullists, Christian parties, Greens and even some Communists. We shall, of course, disagree with each other on many issues, and we shall still be a small minority. But at least we can act as some kind of Official Opposition to the federalist majority.   Now ponder the situation in the United Kingdom. This was the first election since we joined the EU, national or European, in which the Euro-sceptics out-polled the pro-Brussels parties. The Conservatives, Greens and UKIP all stood on platforms of opposing the EU constitution and repatriating powers from Brussels, and won 53 per cent of the vote among them. Labour, the Lib-Dems, Plaid Cymru and the SNP stood on pro-constitution manifestos, and tallied only 39 per cent. The disparity grows still wider if we count the Ulster parties, the BNP, the English Democrats and the rest of Rabbit's Euro-sceptic friends and relations.   This has implications on several levels. First, and most immediately, it gives Tony Blair the clearest possible mandate to block the EU constitution this weekend. More widely, it challenges that dearest of Europhile assumptions, namely that closer integration is "inevitable" since, when the chips are down, people will always vote for pro-EU parties.   But there is a challenge here for Euro-sceptics, too. If the anti-federalist vote shatters across a prism of small parties, we shall be unable to convert public sympathy into electoral success. That is the reality of Britain's first-past-the-post voting system. If people voted at the general election in the same way that they did last week then, while the Euro-sceptics would have won more votes, the Euro-zealots would have won more seats.   I met many people on the doorstep over the past month who were planning to support UKIP, but who told me that they longed to vote for a Euro-sceptic Conservative Party. When I protested that we had made clear our determination to bring powers back from Brussels, they often refused to believe me. Even when I quoted relevant bits of our manifesto, or of Michael Howard's speeches, they would often say something like: "Well you would say that during an election campaign, wouldn't you, but then you'll get back to Brussels and carry on signing everything away". Often, in this context, they would refer to our unhappy alliance with the federalist European People's Party, holding it up as evidence that we say one thing in Britain, but do another in Europe.   The challenge for the Conservative Party is to correct this impression before the next general election. This may involve altering some aspects of our European policy. But it is equally important that we set our attitude in its proper context. Voters will be more willing to believe us on Europe if they perceive that our approach follows naturally from our general philosophy of life.   For example, we oppose deeper union on the ground that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect. So we should stress that this is also our approach to local democracy: we should propose a programme of radical decentralisation, giving elected councillors direct control over such issues as policing and welfare, and creating a genuine link between taxation, representation and expenditure in town halls.   We dislike the Brussels system because it is run by unaccountable civil servants. We should apply the same principle at home, looking again at the powers wielded by thousands of quangoes from the Child Support Agency and the Financial Services Authority to the Equal Opportunities Commission.   We resent the fact that the EU seeks to micro-manage our commerce and industry. Let us, then, take an axe to our domestic regulation-generators, staring with the Health and Safety Executive.   We believe that the EU gives too little freedom to its citizens. Accordingly, we should seek to liberate our own people, too, giving them real choices whether as parents, patients or pensioners.   We dislike the fact that we hand over some £12 billion a year for the European Commission to pour away on wasteful and fraudulent schemes. We should cut tax at home on the same principle.   In doing these things, we would be demonstrating that the Conservative Party's Euro-scepticism is part of a comprehensive Weltanschaaung. We do not oppose further integration out of simple stubbornness, let alone out of jingoism. We oppose it, rather, because it is at odds with the principles of freedom and democracy. We have an elevated and optimistic vision of how an independent Britain could flourish once free of the Brussels system. And, as a potential party of government, we can realise that vision. Let us get out there and sell it.   18 June 2004 back to top    MEANWHILE IN BRUSSELS ... Tony Blair's referendum announcement has understandably driven other European stories off the news pages. But, now that we know we shall have the chance to vote, it is worth standing back and taking a look at how the EU actually works. After all, there is no better way to judge an institution than by its record.   Here, then, are three separate items which, in a quieter week, might have received rather more media attention. Considering them collectively, we can infer a good deal about how Brussels operates.   First, there is the amazing case of Hans-Peter Tillach. Mr Tillach is a respected German investigative reporter, who has been working for some time on the Eurostat affair. Diligent readers of these bulletins will know that Eurostat is at the centre of gargantuan corruption allegations, involving the apparent loss of millions of euros from Commission accounts.   Last week, Mr Tillach's flat was raided by the Belgian police. He was taken into custody and his notebooks, files telephone and computer seized. He was denied a lawyer and questioned for ten hours. Even his private bank statements were impounded.   Needless to say, no such treatment has been meted out to the accused fraudsters. In the looking-glass world of Brussels, it is those investigating sleaze who are harassed and bullied. A clear message has been sent out to the entire press corps. Stick to copying out Commission press releases and you'll be well looked after. Make trouble and you'll end up in a police cell.   Next, consider the case of an Austrian MEP, confusingly called Hans-Peter Martin. Mr Martin recently scandalised the European Parliament by revealing that he had been keeping a record of which Euro-MPs signed the daily attendance register and when. On top of all their other perks, MEPs are entitled to €250 a day simply for being on parliamentary business, whether in Brussels or on an official visit. To claim it, they must sign in.   Longer-standing readers may be thinking that, next to some of our expenses, this is pretty small beer. None the less, Mr Martin had noticed that a number of MEPs were in the habit of arriving late at night, signing on, and then signing on again in the early morning on their way to the airport. It struck him as unreasonable that so many people should be clocking in when they were plainly not attending meetings.   Needless to say, MEPs saw it rather differently. Mr Martin has made himself the most unpopular man in Brussels since... well, since my own article about MEPs' expenses in The Daily Telegraph. One Labour MEP even knocked him over on his way out of the room where the central register is kept.   Finally, my friends, contemplate the strange case of the Commission censure vote. I and a group of MEPs had put down a mildly critical motion, bemoaning the Commission's failure to get to grips with the Eurostat scandal. Our motion never had the slightest chance of success: the federalists in the big groups were bound to vote it down. But, rather than accepting this mildest of rebukes, Commissioners and the leaders of the big groups went into overdrive, menacing and cajoling anyone who had signed. Some MEPs were threatened with de-selection as candidates if they kept their names on the motion. In the event, around 30 people removed their signatures, although there were just enough of us left to force the motion to be debated. What all these incidents have in common is the EU's utter inability to accept reproach. In each of the three cases, criticism was coming from broadly pro-European quarters. Hans-Peter Tillach is a paid-up Euro-phile. Hans-Peter Martin might conceivably qualify as a sceptic by Austrian standards, but would be a Euro-fanatic by anyone else's. And, while many of the signatories of the censure motion were established troublemakers like me, a fair number were principled Euro-zealots who were angry that continuing corruption is jeopardising the federalist project.   Yet in every case, the establishment reacted to the criticism by ad hominem attacks. When Mr Tillach addressed a press conference, he was heckled by a Danish MEP who told him: "Don't give any more ammunition to the anti-Europeans or you will lose all credibility". Note the use of the word "anti-Europeans". In Brussels, any criticism of the system, even on grounds of financial probity, is taken as proof that you secretly hate foreigners.   This is, of course, a very reassuring thing for Euro-philes to think. Someone is attacking the Common Agricultural Policy? It shows that he must be racist! A newspaper says that the Commission needs reform? It obviously has a xenophobic agenda! By dismissing all their critics in this way, Eurocrats are able to avoid self-scrutiny.   And, of course, they can always buy themselves more favourable coverage from other sources. Several Brussels correspondents are prepared to boost their salaries by accepting positions as editors of EU-funded newsletters, consultants on media issues and so on. On top of which, the Commission often funds the media directly.   If you've stayed in a hotel in Europe recently, you will probably have come across a channel called "Euronews". It is a perfectly respectable news station, available in six languages. In general, its reports are measured and disinterested. But, when it reports on the EU, all pretence at impartiality goes out of the window, and we are treated to Soviet-type items about grateful workers getting higher standards thanks to the Commission.   I found such items hard to reconcile with the channel's claim to be "totally independent", so I put down a question asking the Commission whether they gave it any money and, if so, how Euronews could call itself independent. The reply I got from Romano Prodi was beyond parody. He did give it subsidies, he admitted, but such grants "in no way restrict the editorial freedom of the beneficiary, who must, however, respect the image of the European institutions and the raison d'être and general objectives of the Union".   Accustomed to such coverage, Eurocrats simply do not know how to handle criticism. They are so used to getting their way that, on the rare occasions that they are checked, they react like spoilt children.   These, remember, are the people to whom we are being invited to entrust with a large measure of our governance under the new constitution. It's worth bearing in mind. 28 April 2004 back to top WHY I AM GOING TO THE EUROPEAN COURT   Let me choose my words with care. Whenever I raise this subject, I get deluged with angry letters saying that I am comparing the EU to a Stalinist autocracy, and thereby insulting the millions who died in the gulags.   So I want to be clear. Whatever grievances we have against Brussels, it is plainly not a tyranny. It does not refuse to let us travel abroad, or throw us into prison camps without trial. Its constituent member states are all liberal democracies.   None the less, something is happening in the European Parliament which can only be called dictatorial. Some months ago, the EU decided that, in order to bolster our sense of European identity, we needed trans-national political parties. These parties would be funded by the taxpayer, and would have to meet various criteria in order to qualify. They would need, for example, to win a minimum level of support in at least seven countries. They would need to contest elections across Europe as a whole, on a common and binding manifesto. And, critically, they would have to sign up to European values as set out in the EU treaties.   This may sound innocuous enough, but I believe it is one of the most sinister proposals to have crossed my desk since I was elected five years ago. In fact, I am going to court to try to block it. I and 25 other MEPs are funding our own legal action against the proposal, arguing that it is incompatible with the EU’s stated commitment to democracy and pluralism. For the effect of this law would be to bar Euro-sceptic political parties.   It would do so in two ways. First, non-federalist parties are more likely to see themselves in national terms. They are therefore unlikely to want to merge themselves into pan-European movements. More immediately, though, they would be debarred by the requirement that they accept the values of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms – not because they object to human rights, but because they believe that delicate questions of this kind should be settled by elected national parliamentarians rather than unelected European judges.   Supporters of the legislation rush to reassure me that mainstream Euro-sceptics, such as the British Tories, have nothing to fear. It is aimed only at far-Right groups, they say, such as Le Pen’s National Front. But once we decide that some views may be placed off limits, where do we draw the line?   The idea that some parties are more equal than others is at odds with the principle of democracy. A free electoral system implies that people should be allowed to vote for anyone they like; and that their representatives, once elected, should be able to come together in any combinations they please. How they behave ought to be between them and their voters. If an MP expresses noxious views, it should be for his constituents to pass judgment on him. Taking this duty from them does not only traduce the democratic principle; it also infantilises the electorate.   One of my friends in the European parliament is a Polish MP. He has been here for the better part of a year, as one of the observers from the accession countries who are allowed to participate, but not vote, in the run-up to their countries’ formal admission. When he saw the proposed statute on European political parties, he went white with anger.   “This is exactly what the Communists did Poland,” he told me. “They didn’t ban elections: we had elections all the time. They didn’t even ban opposition parties, at least not by the 1970s. All they did was to ban the opposition parties from contesting the elections. And do you know what their official excuse was? Exactly the same as this. They said it was to stop fascist parties. Only pretty soon that came to apply to everyone except the Communists and their Agrarian allies”.   Unsurprisingly, several Poles are among those who are supporting the legal action against the proposal. They know exactly where you can end up once you start banning certain points of view. Consider my friend’s experience. He is my age, having entered politics, like me, in his late twenties. He has a baby daughter, the same age as mine. He is a conservative and a free-marketeer. But he might have grown up in a different world.   His father had defected to Canada when he was a young boy. They contrived to meet once, in the 1980s in Cuba, the only country to which they were both able to travel. My friend’s father tried to persuade his son to come and live in the West. My friend replied that he wanted to serve Poland: he thought that change was in the air, and he dreamed of sitting as a conservative and a patriot in a free Sejm. A few years later, he fulfilled his dream, but his father never got to see it. The old man had died shortly before travel restrictions were lifted, and the two had never had the chance to meet again.   Mercifully, Prodi’s EU is not Jaruszelski’s Poland. But it is saddens me that so few people seem perturbed by the principle of what is being proposed. Too many MEPs and Commissioners are gripped by a “Europe right or wrong” attitude which leads them to see freedom, democracy and the rule of law itself as subservient to the greater goal of European integration. That we are discarding the concept of political pluralism is seen as a small price to pay for dishing the sceptics.   Five years in politics is enough to have taught me that court cases are expensive and uncertain. I am not embarking on this one lightly. But, on certain issues, we simply have to make a stand, whatever the cost. If not, what are we doing here? 15 March 2004 back to top YOUR CHANCE TO CHOOSE YOUR MEP   Over the next three weeks, members of the Conservative Party will decide who they want to represent them in the European Parliament.  There will be a series of hustings meetings to rank the candidates.   This is your chance to decide what kind of Conservative MEPs you want.   There will be six selection meetings in the South East: 24 November                 Gillingham, Kent 26 November                 Banstead, Surrey 28 November                 Newbury, Berks 29 November                 Brighton, E Sussex 30 November                 High Wycombe, Bucks 1 December                 Portsmouth, Hants   You are entitled to attend any one of these meetings.  Please contact your local Association for details.   As I am one of the candidates myself, I am now forbidden to communicate with any Conservatives until after the selection process.  During this period of "purdah", candidates are not allowed to attend Conservative functions, nor to send out newsletters.  Accordingly, there will be a break in these electronic bulletins until December.   The five sitting Conservatives in the South East are James Elles, Nirj Deva, Roy Perry, James Provan and me, Daniel Hannan. 28 February 2004 back to top BLAIR BUYS HIS PRESTIGE WITH BRITAIN'S WELL-BEING   I hope that Tony Blair enjoyed himself at the Berlin summit. Heaven knows he had paid a high enough price to be there. Over the past seven years, he has backed virtually every new EU initiative in the hope of buying his place at the top table. One of his first acts in Government was to join the Social Chapter, thereby removing Britain's competitive advantage over the other members.   The following year, at St Malo, he reversed half a century of British strategic thinking by agreeing to an EU defence structure outside Nato. And so it went on: common policies on immigration, justice, employment, human rights, regionalism. Britain was determined no longer to be the odd man out. At the Amsterdam and Nice summits, and over the proposed constitution, we watched with a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-our-mouth expression as other countries made trouble.   Last week was Mr Blair's pay-off. Now it was he who was on the inside, while other leaders pressed their noses up against the window. True, Jacques Chirac slightly spoiled things by saying that nothing would ever be as special as the Franco-German relationship, but no one much minded. The Prime Minister wallowed in the bonhomie that characterises such summits: the bearhugs, the lieber Tonys, the cher Gerds. He no doubt enjoyed reading the newspapers on the plane home, too. Even Eurosceptic commentators agreed that his presence among the big three was a diplomatic triumph.   The trouble is that diplomatic triumphs are not bankable. Like previous British leaders, Mr Blair has made concrete sacrifices in return for inchoate gains. His acceptance of the EU constitution, for example, is a tangible concession. Quite apart from the damage to Britain's democracy, it puts him at odds with his electorate. What he has won in return is influence - necessarily a rather vaporous concept.   We politicians can be terribly vain. We easily confuse our own interest with the national interest, and thus assume that our presence at a set of talks is of unquestionable benefit to our country. But it is worth standing back and asking what solid gains Mr Blair has brought back from Berlin. His main victory was to get the other two leaders to back his proposal for a new Commission Vice-President who would (in gloriously New Labour language) "drive the economic reform agenda".   Now there is no question that many of the EU countries could do with a dose of Thatcherism. But is economic liberalisation in France and Germany such an important goal that Britain should be prepared to make concessions in order to secure it?   Mr Blair thinks so. The reason he joined the Social Chapter was so that he could have more influence in pushing for deregulation on the Continent. In practice, of course, his decision had the opposite effect. Once Britain joined, the other members no longer had to worry about being undercut. Instead of reducing their costs, they were able export those costs to us.   The result has been a mass of new regulation. During the five years that I have been there, the European Parliament has decreed how long we may work, whom we may hire, and on what terms. It has laid down which vitamins we may buy, how long we may sit on tractors, and how we should hold ladders against walls. There are proposals that threaten whole industries, such as the Temporary Workers Directive and the Chemicals Directive. All this while Tony Blair has been swanking about how he has used his influence to secure economic reform in Europe.   Part of the Prime Minister's problem is that his support for the European project is as much a matter of self-image as of calculation. He is less interested in specific costs and benefits than in being a modern internationalist. "Under my leadership," he told the Labour conference in 1994, "Britain will never be isolated or left behind in Europe." He does not see a seat at the table as a means to an end, but as the supreme diplomatic objective in itself.   Such thinking is the quintessence of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It is sophisticated, elaborate and wrong. Diplomatic trade-offs are made on the basis of present interest, not past gratitude. Mr Blair is not the first leader to believe that Britain could succeed by arguing from within.   Every prime minister since Harold Macmillan has thought so. Regardless of which party was in power, the approach was essentially the same: make some key concessions in order to establish your European credentials, and then try to steer the project away from political integration. Each time, the concessions have been pocketed and the other states have carried on anyway. And why shouldn't they? As they see it, we signed up to what the French call the finalite politique when we joined. If we now want to opt out, fine; but we can hardly expect them to do the same.   I doubt that the stated goal of successive prime ministers - "a Europe of nations" - has ever been on offer. But whether or not it was, it plainly isn't any more. Yet, until now, every major politician has gone along with the deceit that, by using our influence, we could somehow deliver a completely different dispensation.   I say "until now" because, 10 days ago, also in Berlin, Michael Howard became the first leader of a major party to acknowledge that the founder members of the EU would push ahead with deeper union whether we liked it or not, and that the real question for Britain was how to remain on good terms with them when this happened.   At last, the electorate is being presented with an honest choice. The core, Carolingian countries are adopting a constitution which will turn the EU, de facto and de jure, into a state. Under Mr Blair, we would be part of it, and thus keep our precious influence.   Under Mr Howard, we would look on as a friend and sponsor while keeping our independence. Mr Howard's tone was extremely reasonable, but he is challenging the whole basis of Britain's traditional European policy, namely the belief that, in the final analysis, we must never be left out. This policy might once have been justified; but it must by now be clear to everyone where most EU states are going. To follow on principle is the wisdom of the Gadarene swine.   26 February 2004 back to top BRUSSELS OWNS UP TO LAWBREAKING   Regular recipients of these bulletins may remember reading about some of the more colourful ways in which the EU tries to buy itself popularity. There was, for example, the infamous booklet aimed at young children, entitled "Let's draw Europe together", whose opening exercise involved writing "Europe - my country" in the various official languages. There was the fund dedicated to flying local and national journalists out to Brussels and showing them a good time. There were the bungs given to federalist pressure groups, such as the European Movement. And - my personal favourite, this - there was the hilarious Tintin-style comic book, Troubled Waters, featuring the adventures of a feisty MEP called Irina. This, you may recall, was the book that contained such sizzling lines as "You can laugh! Wait till you've seen my amendments to the Commission proposal!" Over the past four years, I and other Conservative MEPs have tried - without much success, I'm afraid - to reduce the amount of your money being spent on all this. Yet it now turns out that much of the EU's propaganda is not only irksome, but illegal. Don't take my word for it: listen to the EU itself. The following excerpt is from a legislative proposal "to promote active European citizenship" which is currently clunking its way through the Brussels machinery: "For several years, support has been provided for promoting active European citizenship, especially under headings in Part A of the budget: · Heading A-3020 co-finances the costs of the "Our Europe" Association · Heading A-3021 co-finances the operating costs of European think-tanks and organisations advancing the idea of Europe · Heading A-3024 co-finances the activities of associations and federations of European interest · Heading A-3030 co-finances the operating costs of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles · Heading 3036 co-finances the operating costs of the Jean Monnet House and the Robert Schuman House · Article A-321 supports town-twinning schemes in the European Union Most of these operations have hitherto been carried out without any legal basis." [emphasis added] What is most striking about this is the blatancy. There is nothing new, alas, in the EU acting first and legislating later. On the contrary, this is the normal way for it to proceed. The extension of Brussels jurisdiction into environmental policy happened during the early 1980s, and was retrospectively legalised in the Single European Act. The Common Foreign and Security Policy was forged during the late 1980s, but only formally recognised in Maastricht. The integration of justice and home affairs had begun well before it was given a legal basis in Amsterdam. As often as not, new European treaties are there to give de jure approval to a de facto extension of EU competence. But I can't remember seeing such a brazen admission before. Here is the EU saying, in effect: "Oh dear: we've been spending all this money to make people love us without any basis in the treaties. But rather than now complying with the law, we will change the law so as to make it comply with what we are doing". Is it surprising that an organisation which takes such a casual view of its own rules is rather hopeless at cracking down on fraud, corruption and other abuses? Is it wise for Britain, which has a strong tradition of the rule of law, to hand more and more powers over to such a body? Is it sensible to be part of a project which proceeds on the basis of making up the rules as it goes along? 14 February 2004 back to top 132 DAYS TO GO   "I don't think I'll bother with the European elections. I'm against the whole thing anyway".   I've lost count of how often I have heard this. Many Tories, in particular, see little point in voting for a faraway parliament which seems chiefly interested in eroding Britain's independence.   Yet these are no ordinary elections. They take place as Britain faces an existential decision: are we to remain a separate nation, governed under our own laws, or are we to adopt the EU constitution, and assume the status of a province?   This is the most important political issue of our generation. What is proposed is nothing less than the voluntary surrender of our Parliament to a superior legal order. At a stroke, the EU will cease to be an association of states bound together by treaty, and become a single state with its own constitution.   Incredibly, Tony Blair is sticking to his claim that the changes proposed by the constitution - the supremacy of EU law, legal personality for the Union, the establishment of a European criminal  justice system, the creation of an EU foreign minister - do not merit a referendum. Seven other EU states have so far agreed to put the constitution to their peoples, but the Prime Minister continues to insist that he alone should settle the question.   While Mr Blair may deny us a plebiscite, he cannot prevent us from expressing our opinion at the ballot box. The European elections are due on 10 June. In the absence of a referendum, this is our chance to register our view about the European constitution.   Asked why his government was denying us a referendum, Peter Hain, Labour's spokesman on the EU constitution, told the Today Programme that people would have the opportunity to record their feelings at the European elections instead. Although he later tried fatuously to backtrack, he was right. What are European elections for if not to decide European policy?   Voters will face a very clear choice on 10 June. Labour supports the constitution; the Tories oppose it. People are of course entitled to assume whatever stance they wish. But, wherever you stand, I hope you will accept that it is a question big enough to merit a trudge to the polling station. Whatever else you say about these elections, please don't say that they count for nothing.   Obviously, I hope that people will back the Tories and, in so doing, show the Prime Minister what they think of his constitution. Indeed, I hope that people who do not normally back our party will lend us their vote on this occasion, so that their vote will continue to mean something in future.   But whatever your view, please vote. And please encourage others to do likewise. To make it easier, download copies of the voter registration and postal ballot application forms. Do pass them on to your friends.  Electoral registration form: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/files/dms/Registertovoteform_7534-6682__E__S__W__.pdf Postal vote form: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/files/dms/Votebypostform_7533-6681__E__S__W__.pdf 29 January 2004 back to top DON'T DROP YOUR GUARD   Having been slow to wake up to the danger of the Euro-constitution, we have been quick to dismiss it. Since the collapse of the Brussels summit in December, Britain has indulged in a long, collective sigh of relief. The Poles, say commentators, have saved us. Like their gallant forebears hurtling horse-borne at the Panzers, they have shown a courage that shames our own leaders. Tony Blair was ready to sign away our birthright, but his Polish counterpart, Leszek Miller, had a stiffer spine (literally as well as figuratively: he attended the summit in a body-brace following a helicopter accident). Thanks to the stubbornness of this tough old apparatchik, the constitution has failed, and our independence is secure.   We have seen similar headlines before. When the Danes voted "no" to Maastricht, when the ERM broke apart, when Ireland rejected Nice and on a dozen other occasions, we have been told that the EU has suffered a terrible setback, and that its leaders will have to go back to the drawing board. In fact, they always respond in the same way: by carrying on until they bludgeon their way through. There is no Plan B in Brussels. Whenever Plan A is rejected, it is simply resubmitted over and over again until it is accepted.   Something similar will happen with the constitution. It was never likely that the document would go through nem con at the first attempt. In fact, the IGC was originally intended to conclude during 2004. It was only to humour Silvio Berlusconi that the whole thing was brought forward (the Italian leader was determined, for reasons of prestige, to wrap up the IGC under the Italian Presidency, so that the Treaty of Rome would be replaced by a Constitution of Rome). Already, the Irish, who currently hold the EU Presidency, are doing their bit. Their foreign minister, Brian Cowen, says he detects "a mood of cautious optimism". His French counterpart, Dominique de Villepin, told the Left-leaning Libération: "We want to have a constitution for all European states before the end of 2004".   And why not? Every state, after all, supports the constitution's main provisions: the supremacy of Brussels law, the establishment of a European criminal justice system, the creation of an EU foreign minister - and, for that matter, the very fact of having an EU constitution. As Tony Blair told Parliament on his return, the heads of government had agreed on most of what he termed - in his characteristically precise way - "the stuff". The summit broke down only because Poland, and to a lesser extent Spain, wanted to cling on to their inflated voting rights.   What mighty contests rise from trivial things. Spain has come, over the years, to expect a very handsome deal from the EU. Indeed, the best answer to those who argue that "Britain would have done better out of the EEC if we had joined earlier" is to compare the deal we struck in 1972 to that which Spain reached in 1985. On any measure - agriculture, fisheries, Gibraltar, the budget - Spain has done better. Part of this advantage takes the form of over-representation in EU institutions. Spain has managed to be treated on a par with the four largest countries: Britain, France, Italy and Germany. It qualifies, for example, for a second Commissioner, an extra judge at the European Court of Justice, and an exceptionally generous number of votes in Council. Until now, Germany - the chief loser from the allocation of voting weights - has been prepared to tolerate Spain as an anomaly. But, with other similarly sized states joining, such as Poland and possibly Romania, the Germans are reluctant to allow Spain to become a precedent. Understandably, they want voting rights to be more reflective of population strengths. Equally understandably, the Poles do not wish to give in to the Germans - on any issue, ever.   I am, necessarily, abbreviating the nature of the row. But the point is that it is a very small thing. The summit failed over a technicality, not a major issue of principle. If this one question can be resolved, everything else will be rushed through on the basis that there is no need to reopen what was agreed under the Italian Presidency.   Already, there are attempts to wear down the Polish and Spanish governments. Immediately after the summit, the main contributors to the EU budget (including Britain) demanded a cap on Brussels spending - something far more alarming in Warsaw and Madrid than an abstruse row about voting weights. By linking these two issues, whether overtly or implicitly, European diplomats hope to find a way of winning over the recalcitrants. In any case, the Spanish leader, José María Aznar, is retiring in March, while Leszek Miller, despite the brief lift in his popularity that followed his obstreperousness at the summit, remains deeply unpopular. European diplomats believe that, with these two men removed from the picture, a deal is almost inevitable.   The worst of it, from a Euro-sceptic point of view, is that the concentration on this one issue has meant that the truly nasty clauses of the constitution have gone through with little discussion, either among the governments or their attendant media. The voting weights row has allowed Mr Blair to get away almost unchallenged with his claim that he secured Britain's "red lines": taxation, social security and foreign affairs. He is not the first Prime Minister to indulge in such legerdemain. It is a well-worn British tactic: pick one or two fights that you are confident of winning, focus exclusively on them, and hope that no one notices what you are conceding in other areas. Yet, even in his own terms, Mr Blair has failed.   His defence of fiscal sovereignty is thirty years too late: the EU already has a say over VAT, corporate taxation and how to define tax evasion. Article 14 of the draft - to which Mr Blair is not objecting - mandates the harmonisation of economic and employment policies, while later clauses spell out exactly how this would happen, giving Brussels control over everything from permissible budget deficits to maximum working hours.   As for foreign affairs, it is worth quoting exactly what Mr Blair has agreed to: "The Union's competence in matters of common foreign and security policy shall cover all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union's security. Member States shall actively and unreservedly support the Union's common foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity". If this is a red line, I hate to think of what would constitute a concession.   The constitution will be back, make no mistake - probably by the end of the year, and conceivably as early as March. So don't let up. Keep sending out the leaflets; keep lobbying MPs in marginal seats; keep gathering signatures on the petitions (you can download petition sheets from the Conservative Party website: www.conservatives.com). When the constitution was first proposed, we displayed one of our great national weaknesses: the tendency to ignore what happening on the Continent until almost too late. It would be inexcusable to make the same mistake a second time. 14 January 2004 back to top LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE  Still the Prime Minister refuses to listen. Seven other countries have announced that they intend to consult their peoples about the proposed Euro-constitution. They rightly recognise that it would represent a revolution in how Europe was governed.  The day the Constitution entered into force, all past EU accords would be automatically dissolved. The EU would cease to be an association of states bound by an international treaty, and will instead become a state in its own right, deriving its authority from its constitution.  For Britain, ratification would mean the greatest constitutional change, certainly since the 1921 Government of Ireland Act, and arguably since the Seventeenth Century. Yet Tony Blair keeps insisting that the matter is not big enough to consult the electorate directly.  At every meeting I attend, people ask if there is something they can do to help. Well, here are three specific things.  First, you can join a rally in London on 24 April. Marchers will assemble at 10.30 at the Victoria Embankment, present a petition at Downing Street and proceed to Hyde Park, to hear be speeches by Frederick Forsyth, Edward Fox and others. If you would like to join the march – or, better still, to help organise it – please contact Diana Coad on 01628 666456 or email her at [email protected]  Second, if walking through London is not your thing, why not join a virtual march by email? Referendum04 is a non-party campaign pushing for a plebiscite on the constitution. This Saturday (6 December), they are “marching” on Downing Street by presenting thousands of emails to Number Ten. To register your support, visit their website at www.referendum04.co.uk  Third, the Conservative Party is running a national petition. If you are a party member, contact your local Association to find out what they are doing in your constituency. If they have nothing planned, why not organise something yourself? You can find details of the campaign, and download the petition sheets, from the party’s official site: www.conservatives.com  Let me leave you with the words of an earlier statesman, Lord Chatham, on why the House of Commons has no right to make this change without our permission. Speaking in Parliament in 1770, he asked:  “What if the Commons should pass a vote abolishing their own House, and surrendering the rights and liberties of the people? Would it only be a matter between God and their own consciences? Would nobody else have anything to do with it? No! You would have to do with it. I should have to do with it. Every man in the kingdom would have to do with it. And every man in the kingdom would have the right to insist upon the repeal of such a treasonable law”. back to top IS THE EU GOOD AT WHAT IT DOES? Amid all the arguments about the Euro-constitution, we are forgetting to ask a very basic question: Is the EU good at what it does? Before handing over a new tranche of powers, it is surely sensible to look at what Brussels is doing with the powers it already has.  On Monday, the Court of Auditors published a report into precisely this. For the ninth year in a row, the auditors found so many flaws in the EU budget that they refused to approve it. This ought to have been massive news: here, after all, is evidence that the institutions which Tony Blair wants to put in charge of our legal system, our energy reserves and our economy, cannot be trusted to administer themselves. Yet it barely made the inside pages of the broadsheets.  Why are we not more concerned? Partly, I suspect, because we take Euro-sleaze so much for granted, and partly because the report was long and difficult. None the less, it ought to matter to us a great deal: how else can we judge the EU if not by its record? So, on your behalf, I jammed some matchsticks under my eyelids and spent the week doing some concentrated reading.  The most striking thing about the document is that it reveals a systemic problem. We are not dealing with isolated cases of human frailty, but with what Lord Macpherson would call institutional corruption.  Despite what many British sceptics believe, there is no evidence that graft is more common in southern Europe. Surveys of farms to corroborate the subsidies being claimed, for example, showed as many irregularities in Sweden and Luxembourg as in Italy or Greece. Across Europe, whenever people know that a pot of money is waiting to be claimed, they organise their affairs around qualifying for it. And because the money comes from Brussels, national authorities have little interest in stopping them.  Britain is no different. In my own constituency, I have seen European policies turn good men into liars. I have known farmers and fishermen who, against their will, have had to falsify documents in order to survive under the Brussels rules. For them, the system has been literally corrupting.  The Common Agricultural Policy is famously rotten, of course. But the EU's structural payments, research programmes and foreign aid budgets were also found to be riddled with what the auditors drily call "errors". In fact, when I totted up all the funds which could not be properly accounted for, I found that they came to nearly 92 per cent of the total budget. Imagine if we ran public companies, or even private societies, on this basis. Picture the treasurer of, say, your local golf club announcing to his AGM that, although he could not say what proportion of the budget had been stolen, it might be anything up to 92 per cent. Would you vote to pass his accounts? Would want to keep him on as treasurer? You would if you were an MEP. Although there are some honourable exceptions, the European Parliament as a whole always baulks at withholding money from the Commission. It does so on two grounds. The first has to do with glass houses and stones. Euro-MPs are extremely touchy about their own expenses. Indeed, several of them are still on non-speakers with me after my last article, in which I ran through some of the figures. One of my colleagues (I won't reveal his nationality) took particular exception to my remark about MEPs employing their wives and sleeping with their staff. He, it emerged during our altercation, did both, and was convinced that I had written the piece solely as an attack on him.   Even MEPs whose personal finances are above suspicion are often reluctant to kick up a fuss about fraud, for fear that it will put their constituents off the EU. For many of them, European integration is an end in itself: they would rather see a policy mismanaged by Brussels than competently administered by national governments. It is, of course, precisely this attitude which encourages much of the wrongdoing in the first place. Thus the cycle goes on. back to top I SHOULDN'T SAY THIS,  BUT THE EXPENSES HERE ARE FABULOUS There is incredulity in Brussels that Iain Duncan Smith is being investigated over the employment of his wife. It is quite normal for Euro-MPs to keep friends and family on their payroll, and no one is ever so indiscreet as to ask whether they actually work. I wish I could tell you that the practice is confined to Continentals but, as far as I can establish, a clear majority of British MEPs also employ immediate family members. In fact, we're rather famous for it. A French MEP once remarked: "What is it about you English? You employ your wives, and you sleep with your staff".  Let me add immediately that many Euro-wives are conscientious assistants who deserve every penny they get. But the point is that they don't need to be. No one ever checks. The Court of Auditors did once try to establish whom the MEPs were  employing (colleagues still shudder at the memory); but no one has ever asked whether these employees earn their salaries.  The sums involved make Westminster look positively Lilliputian. Our staff allowance is €12,305 (£8,620) a month - enough to employ a genuine secretary, and a research assistant, and still have fifty or sixty grand left over for the missus.  The idea of auditing any of these expenses strikes many Euro-MPs as sacrilegious - "an assault on the dignity of our office" as an Italian friend grandly put it.  So everything is done on the basis of no receipts, no invoices.  The most outrageous case is the travel allowance, whereby MEPs get the equivalent of a full fare plus twenty per cent, regardless of how they actually make the journey. If you're prepared to fly Ryanair from Stansted, you can easily trouser £600 a week - tax free, of course, since it counts as expenses, not income.  The same applies to our "general expenses allowance" (£2,540 a month) which is meant to cover petrol, postage and the like, but which several members find convenient to have paid directly into their current accounts.  Ditto the £180 daily attendance rate. In theory, this is meant to pay for accommodation and meals. But most of us have flats in Brussels, and you can always sub-let a room to your assistant for surprisingly high rate which you happen to make up to him through your staff allowance. This would allow you to keep another £900 a week in more or less clear profit. (Forget paying for meals: whenever you're hungry, you just stretch out your arm and hail a passing lobbyist.)  Why am I telling you all this? It certainly won't make me many friends. When I touched on the expenses system once before, I was sent to Coventry - or "sent to Limoges" as amused French MEPs called it. But I feel that it is important to look at the practise of Europe, not just the theory.  As Euro-enthusiasts muster in defence of the new constitution, we are once again being treated to some rather uplifting rhetoric about peace and democracy and so forth. To quote the document itself: "The Union is founded on the indivisible, universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity".  Yet, behind these phrases is the reality of the Brussels system: the sacking of whistleblowers, the Eurostat scandal, the Committee of the Regions affair, the self-righteous bureaucracy, the complacent Commissioners. And where are the MEPs, supposedly the people's tribunes? Why, awarding themselves an additional perk of £35 a week to pay for any taxis that they may be forced to use when the limousine service stops running at 10.00pm.  Again, let me stress that many MEPs are scrupulous about their accounts, and some of them - notably the Tory budgets wonk, Chris Heaton-Harris - have been relentless in exposing sleaze. But the regime itself, despite ritual promises of reform, remains as rotten as ever. So when you are next told that the Euro-constitution "will strengthen democracy in Europe", bear in mind exactly whom you are being invited to strengthen. back to top WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP?  It's no fun being in Opposition. You have to grind your teeth and watch as those in power traduce your values and cast away the things you cherish.  Often, when I speak at constituency meetings, people say things along the lines of: "Alright, Hannan, you've made a perfectly good case about what's wrong in Brussels, but what are you doing to stop it?"  The honest answer is that, as long as there is a Labour Government in London which is committed to the integrationist agenda, there is not a great deal we can do.  Sometimes we can block things. Sometimes we are able to put together a coalition in the European Parliament to throw out some objectionable proposal.  And, of course, I can always report back to you about what is going on.  But, nine times out of ten, the federalists are able to get their way through sheer weight of numbers.  On the Euro-constitution, however, there is something that we can all do, and that is to campaign for a referendum. At the moment, it looks as though between five and eleven countries will consult their peoples about whether they wish to become part of the new Euro-state. Yet Tony Blair is sticking, preposterously, to his claim that it is all a tidying-up exercise.  With every day that passes, his position becomes more exposed and less credible. Yet it is up to us to build a critical mass in favour of a referendum.  So, in reply to the many recipients of these bulletins who have emailed me to ask how they can help, here are some practical things you can do.  First, if you haven't done so, read the wretched thing for yourself.  There is no substitute for first-hand knowledge.  You can access the final draft at https://european-convention.eu.int (Note: there is no www in this address).  Second, if you are in a position to make a financial donation, you may like to contact Vote 2004, a new organisation set up exclusively to lobby for a referendum on the constitution. They are a highly professional outfit, co-chaired by Lady Meyer and the former Labour minister Frank Field.  Their website is www.vote-2004.com, and you can donate online through a secure payment area.  Third, if you would like to offer practical assistance - leafleting, letter-writing and so on - try the Democracy Movement, a grassroots campaign with more than 100,000 supporters. Their home page is www.democracy-movement.org.uk  Fourth, Conservatives in the European Parliament have organised a petition for a referendum. This takes the form of postcards to the Prime Minister, urging him to let the people decide.  The great benefit of such campaigns is that, once people have signed, they feel committed to the cause: the more such postcards we can distribute, the better.  They are available for £16 per thousand.  Please email Elsa Morris at [email protected]  Fifth, if you are aged 47 or less, you may like to support another new campaign called Trust the People.  Chaired by Annunziata Rees-Mogg, Trust the People is specifically aimed at those who were too young to vote in the 1975 referendum, and have therefore never had the chance to express their views. They can be reached at www.trustthepeople.org  Finally, thanks to all those of you who offered to help the Swedish "no" campaign.  As it turned out, Sweden did not need our assistance.  But Britain does.  Please lend your voice to our campaign for a referendum here, so that it is not left to others to decide our future.   back to top ESTONIA They're on to me. Labour, I mean.  Her Majesty's Principle Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has condemned me in the House of Commons. And, what's more, he's got me bang to rights. He says that I am against expanding the EU on the proposed terms. And I have to tell you, my friends, it's true.  Here is the exchange, which can be found in Hansard column 1205, (Wednesday 9 July).  Mr Straw: I hope that when the right hon Gentleman speaks on behalf of the Conservative party, he will condemn the two leading Conservative Members of the European Parliament, Mr Daniel Hannan and Mr Roger Helmer -  Mr Bercow: Excellent men!  Mr Straw: The hon Gentlemen says they are excellent men. I know Mr Hannan and I respect his views. He is not an eccentric outside the mainstream of the Conservative party. Those two MEPs travelled to Estonia to campaign for a no vote in the referendum, against the clear policy of this House -  Mr Heathcoat-Amory: Will the Foreign Secretary give way?  Mr Straw: No. Allow me to make further progress. Mr Hannan can answer for himself.  Let me try to do so here.  The Foreign Secretary is wrong about one thing: I haven't been to Estonia. Nor do I see it as my job to tell other sovereign peoples how to vote.  But he's right that I am worried about enlargement which, on the proposed terms, will lead to higher taxes in the existing members, slower growth in the new ones and less democracy all round.  I realise that many good Conservatives favour the idea, believing that it will make the EU less centralised.  I used to think so, too.  As far as I was concerned, a wider EU was the alternative to a deeper one. I felt we owed a debt to those nations which, at Yalta, we had condemned to fifty years of Communist tyranny.  I also imagined that an expanded European market would be in the interest of British exporters.  My views began to change when I was elected to the European Parliament and served on the committee dealing with Estonia's membership application.  Until then, I had thought of the enlargement process as one whereby command economies were liberalised, deregulated and privatised in preparation for the single market.  So I was surprised to find that Estonia had a much freer economy than the 15 existing EU members.  It has no tariffs, nor other forms of trade barriers; it has no state subsidies; it has a free market even in agriculture, uniquely in the Northern Hemisphere; it has zero-rate corporation tax, and a flat-rate income tax of 27 per cent.  Yet this impressive record, I am sorry to say, filled most of my committee with something close to horror.  As Euro-MPs saw it, Estonia was going back to the Dickensian system that their own countries had spent the past forty years trying to eliminate.  We thus saw the bizarre spectacle of a post-Soviet state being ordered by Brussels to re-erect its tariffs, re-introduce its subsidies, re-collectivise its agriculture, join the 48-hour week, the euro and the Social Chapter so as to be socialist enough to qualify for EU membership!  Estonia is, perhaps, an extreme case, but it is not unique.  Across Central and Eastern Europe, countries which had fondly imagined that they were applying to join a free market found instead that they were having to increase their regulatory burden.  The Hungarian trade minister complained that the EU was lecturing him about free trade while restricting its own markets.  Vaclav Klaus, while Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, made the following mordant observation: "Every time I try to remove some piece of Soviet-era regulation, I am told that whatever it is I am trying to scrap is a requirement of the European Commission".  The EU has been ungenerous and unimaginative in what it has offered.  Countries which would otherwise have priced themselves into the market are instead being obliged to adopt a sclerotic social model, which will turn them into pensioners dependent on Western European taxes.  Nor, by the way, will enlargement be in the interests of British business - at least, not according to a newly published study by the Institute of Directors (EU Enlargement: Not All It's Cracked Up To Be, IoD, June 2003), which concludes that any gains in trade are likely to be offset by higher taxes and lower revenues from Brussels. Hang on, you may be saying.  If the terms are as bad as Hannan claims, why did all these countries sign up to them? To answer that, you need to look at who was doing the negotiating on their behalf.  Some people in the accession countries will do very well indeed.  As MEPs, their politicians will make several times what their national equivalents can make.  Diplomats and civil servants, too, stand to gain enormously.  An Estonian newspaper recently calculated that a bureaucrat who moved from Tallinn to Brussels at the same grade would increase his salary 22 times.  It would be a very unusual human being who, during the negotiations, was not at least subliminally influenced by this consideration. That, of course, is how the EU has always worked.  It buys the loyalty of a powerful and articulate caste in each of its member states - Britain included - who then have a personal interest in keeping the system going.  Some in Britain imagine that the accession states, following their recent experience, will not want to be ruled from a foreign capital again.  But, for many of their politicians, that capital is already becoming home. If you want to contribute to the "Fairness in Estonian Referendum Fund", please send your cheque to Suite 216 Linen Hall, 162-168 Regent Street, London W1B 5TB.  You can also make a direct bank transfer.  For full details, go to www.free-europe.info/fundso.htm back to top THE EU's PROPOSED CONSTITUTION For the first time in our history, we are to have a written constitution - unless, that is, we can find a way to block Tony Blair's plan.  So far, six countries have indicated that they want to hold referendums on the constitution: Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal. Austria, Poland and the Netherlands may also follow. But Mr Blair is refusing to countenance a popular vote here, claiming that constitutions are not a constitutional question. A Prime Minister who has ordered 47 referendums since 1997 now tells us with a straight face that the transformation of the EU into a single state is not a big enough issue to trouble us with.  The easiest way to decide whether he is right is to read the thing for yourself at www.bonde.com. To make it easier to follow, it comes with marginal notes down the left-hand side of the page, summarising the main proposals. These come courtesy of Jens-Peter Bonde, a Danish MEP. Jens-Peter and I have been campaigning together for nearly two years for a pan-European referendum on the proposed text. We want 15 simultaneous votes, one in each of the member states, allowing people to choose between the federal model set out in the constitution and our alternative vision of a Europe of nations.  Many people, including several recipients of these bulletins, have complained about the lack of information from Brussels. Well, here is your chance to read the constitution at first-hand. See for yourself the number of areas where EU jurisdiction is specified: employment policy, agriculture, fisheries, social policy, trade, competition, defence, foreign affairs, transport, energy, justice and home affairs, space exploration. Ask yourself, conversely, how many fields of policy will still be reserved for the member states (the answer, on my count, is two: health and education). Look at the clauses that spell out the relationship between Brussels and the member states: "The Constitution shall have primacy over the law of the Member States" (Article I-10); "The Member States shall exercise their competence to the extent that the Union has not exercised, or has decided to cease exercising, its competence" (Article I-11), "The Union shall provide itself with the means necessary to attain its objectives" (Article I-53).  Please take the time to glance at the attached paper. (In case of difficulty in downloading the attachment to this email, you can try doing so from https://www.bonde.com.) It is not as long as past EU treaties, and quite easy to follow. If, having read it through, you agree with Mr Blair that it is no more than a "tidying-up exercise", fine. But if you conclude, as I have done, that the Government is proposing a fundamental change in the way we are governed, then we ought to demand the same right to be consulted that so many other nations are being granted. G K Chesterton's words spring to mind: We hear men speaking for us of new laws, strong and sweet, Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street? Smile at us, pay us, pass us, but do not quite forget, For we are the people of England, and we have not spoken yet. back to top
	WHY WON'T THEY VOTE?   Many recipients of these bulletins will be standing for election on Thursday. If you are one such, and if we haven't already met on the campaign trail, let me wish you luck. While I don't like to predict results, I will stick my neck out and make one forecast: the elections will be won comfortably by the stay-at-home party. Registered voters who refuse to cast their ballots will defeat the supporters of all the parties combined: indeed, they may outnumber them by a factor of two or even three to one. On 2 May, there will be the traditional spate of articles bemoaning voter "apathy" and attacking the political parties for failing to "engage". But let me venture an alternative explanation. What if voters are neither apathetic not disengaged? What if they have simply reached the conclusion that it doesn't much matter how they vote, because elected officials no longer have any meaningful power? Canvassing recently, I came across a man who wanted some speed bumps in his road. He had approached his MP, who had referred him to his district councillor; the councillor referred him to the county council; the county council told him it was all up to the Highways Agency. Now here was his MEP, too, confessing that he had absolutely no power over where sleeping policemen were installed. Look at it from his point of view. Here he is, represented by four tiers of politicians, none of whom seems able to tackle the simplest of requests. Is it any wonder he has stopped voting? He simply no longer sees how placing his cross next to this or that candidate will have the slightest impact on his life. Ask yourselves honestly, my friends: might he not be on to something? Have we politicians - locally, nationally and in Brussels - not been a little too ready to hand away our powers to others? I don't want to pick on the Highways Agency, which is one of hundreds of unelected bodies that have been allowed to gain executive authority: I could equally cite, say, the European Commission, the Child Support Agency, the Commission for Racial Equality, the Financial Services Authority, HM Customs and Excise, or the police. Some of these are good and worthy organisations (although some are not); but even if they were all staffed by the wisest and most disinterested people in the world, it would still be wrong for them to make political decisions. Let me give you one example of what I mean. It seems extraordinary that an individual police chief can decide whether or not possessing cannabis should be a criminal offence. There are, no doubt, good arguments on both sides of this question. But surely the decision ought to be taken by accountable people whom we can elect and whom we can throw out. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been struck by a - let us call it an anomaly - in the campaign literature of all three parties. All over the country, candidates are promising to put more police on the streets. Yet they must know that they do not have the power to do this: the decision on where to deploy police personnel is taken by chief constables. The only input that elected politicians have is as a minority on the Police Authority. Voters, hearing the same thing again and again from all parties, and never actually seeing any coppers, can hardly be blamed for concluding that it doesn't much matter how they vote. Here, then, is a radical suggestion. What if we were to place the police directly under the control of elected officials? What if the powers currently exercised by Police Authorities and the Crown Prosecution Service were to be rolled together and administered by the largest party locally? Then local candidates would be able to say to their electorate, and mean it, "Vote for us and we won't waste any money on prosecuting in Tony Martin-type situations; instead, we'll spend it on a police unit in such-and-such a village". The parties would be able to fight on the basis of different local manifestos, and voters would have every reason to read those manifestos and vote accordingly. The principle goes well beyond policing. In a whole series of areas, from planning to social security, local authorities have little power beyond some discretion in how to implement Whitehall initiatives. As a party, we should offer them genuine power. More than this, we should create a proper link between taxation, representation and expenditure at local level, making each council directly and visibly responsible for raising what it spends. When I look around the European Parliament, I am forever being struck by the fact that ours is the only Right-of-Centre party in the EU which is not thought of as devolutionist. In every other country, without exception, conservative parties benefit electorally because they are seen as the defenders of local communities against the bureaucracy of the state. This used to be true in Britain; we must make it true again. I realise that, for once, I have not written about what is happening in Brussels, and I am grateful for your indulgence. Yet there is a connection. Four years ago, when I became an MEP, I saw it as my job to stem the haemorrhage of powers from Parliament to Brussels. I still do. But I have come to realise that the problem goes much deeper than the EU. As a party, we oppose closer European integration on grounds that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect. It is high time we applied that principle to our own country. back to top
	A DISASTER FOR THE EU?   A dangerous idea is gaining ground in Britain, especially among Euro-sceptics. It goes something like this. The war in Iraq has been a disaster for the EU in general, and for European defence integration in particular. It has caused an irreparable rift between Old and New Europe, convincing the Poles and Czechs and what-have-you that they should never serve under an EU command. It has cut Britain off from the Continent, strengthened the Anglo-Saxon alliance, reminded Europeans of how much they depend on US military might, and thus made the very notion of a European army look asinine. For the most part, the people who argue this are the kind of people who opposed a European foreign and security policy in principle. Most of us, after all, tend to turn new developments into an argument for whatever we believed in the first place. It is human nature. The trouble is that Euro-fanatics are doing exactly the same thing. For them, the war is convincing proof of the need for deeper union. Never again, they say, should Europeans have to sit by as Prometheus is unbound. Never again should squabbles between the European capitals undermine the EU in the counsels of the world. Above all, never again should the British be allowed to rat on their European partners by siding with their fellow Anglo-Saxons. My point is not that either of these positions is right or wrong. Rather, it is that the Euro-zealots, unlike the sceptics, are in a position to act on their concerns. Almost everyone I have spoken to in Brussels says the same thing: new structures must be put in place to ensure that there is "solidarity" (their favourite word) in foreign affairs in the future. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the President of the constitutional convention, says he wants "more convergence" of foreign policy. The current draft constitution proposes the creation of an EU foreign minister. A poll of the staff working for EU institutions in the current issue of European Voice shows that, by a margin of two-to-one, they want the British and French seats on the UN Security Council to be replaced by a single EU seat. These, remember, are the people who are in a position to do something about it. Next week, MEPs will vote on a report by the retired French general, Philippe Morillon. It takes as its starting point the fact that recent conflicts "have revealed substantial military capability and technology gaps between Europe and the United States". These gaps, it argues, are caused by the failure of EU states to pool their military resources. (Actually, there is no evidence of this: on the contrary, several studies suggest that joint procurement projects are significantly less efficient than national ones, because of the bureaucracy involved and the need to find something for everyone to do.) For MEPs, there is only one solution: they want to create a European Armaments and Research Agency. "This Agency would be responsible for a harmonised purchasing policy". For good measure, Euro-MPs want a joint military college, a collective defence clause in the EU treaties, and the take-over of the European Space Agency (which, at present, has nothing to do with the EU, and includes non-members such as Norway and Switzerland). The message is clear: Europe must in large measure take over defence policy from both Nato and its members. As the report puts it, in an unconscious echo of Harold Macmillan: "If this will were lacking, if the governments of the Member States were to continue leaving it to the Americans to conduct any potential wars, contenting themselves with shouldering the affairs of peace, the Union would have to resign itself to playing the part of the Athenians in Ancient Rome: acceptance of being subject, in the last resort, to the will of a new empire". While we sceptics laugh at the whole concept, those in positions of power as busily pushing ahead with their plans for a European army. Last month saw the first deployment of an EU military force, which has just taken over from Nato in Macedonia. Tony Blair is enthusiastically embracing the notion of joint action: he has already established an Anglo-French air corps, and is now planning to commission Anglo-French aircraft carriers. "But it can't work", say the critics. Maybe not. That's what we said about the Soviet Union and, in the long-term, we were right. But it wouldn't have been much fun to have been born in Russia round about, say, 1910, and lived through the process of it not working. It may well be that a European army won't work. It may be, equally, that the euro won't work, or pan-European taxation, or a European police force. But that doesn't stop them happening. Just watch. back to top
	UNITED STATES OF EUROPE?   We are forever being told by British Euro-enthusiasts that “No one is talking about a United States of Europe”. It is their favourite refrain, usually delivered with Olympian authority and just a dash of contempt. “Can you seriously imagine the French agreeing to be any less French, or the Germans any less German?” scoff the old Brussels hands. “The whole thing is a fantasy: a false creation proceeding from heat-oppressed Euro-sceptic brains”. Yet here, in black and white, is a proposal for a superstate. It comes from the highest possible authority: that of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who has been chairing the EU’s constitutional convention since last summer. Just in case anyone should miss the point, he goes so far as to suggest a possible title for the new entity: the United States of Europe. This “No one” that the Euro-fanatics keep banging on about is plainly a pretty influential fellow. Remember the way “No one” was talking about the euro, the Social Chapter, the European Army, the European Public Prosecutor? It seems that what “No one” wants today becomes law tomorrow. Even now, some Euro-philes are trying to persuade us that M Giscard’s draft does not really mean what it says. The old canard about the word “federal” having two opposite meanings is trotted out. In fact, federalism has a very clear definition: it means a political system wherein power is divided between a central authority and subsidiary authorities, and where this distinction is enshrined in a written constitution interpreted by a supreme court. In other words, it exactly describes the model being proposed by M Giscard – and will do so no less if the word “federal” is taken out in a sop to British sensibilities. It is worth putting the question: if this is not a blueprint for a superstate, what is? What conceivable power could Brussels want which is not hereby being bestowed on it? Read the draft yourself (it can be accessed at www.european-convention.eu.int) Look at the number of areas in which EU jurisdiction is specified: competition, trade, asylum and immigration, foreign affairs, industrial policy, energy, transport, regional government, consumer health, social and employment policy, justice and much else. Ask yourself how many Whitehall ministries would be left fully in control of their own affairs. (The answer, by the way, is one: the Department of Health.) I am aware that there are plenty of decent people – including some who receive this bulletin – who believe, perfectly honourably, that Britain would be better off as part of a larger European polity. What has always struck me as dishonourable is the tendency of some politicians, Tony Blair chief among them, to advance that agenda while all the time denying it. Now that the claim that “no one wants a superstate” is shown to be risible, perhaps we shall at last have an honest debate. Do we see ouselves as Europeans, or as British? Do we value the ability to elect and throw out our lawmakers? Do we believe that the EU’s record in the policies where it already has power – agriculture, fisheries and so on – qualifies it to be given control over new areas of our national life? And if, as seems likely, British voters resile from M Giscard’s model, what is the alternative? For most Continental federalists, the answer is clear: Britain would have to give up its place at the Brussels table and content itself with some form of associate membership. Having watched him closely during over the past six months, I am beginning to suspect that this is what M Giscard actually wants. He is, as it were, reverting to General de Gaulle’s view that both Britain and the other member states would be better off without each other. I can’t prove it, of course, but I suspect he sees associate membership as the best was of achieving an amicable solution all round. There are undeniable attractions here. In the four years that I have been doing this job, I have lost count of how many people have told me that they want economic and diplomatic co-operation with our neighbours, but not political union. “I voted to join a Common Market” they say (assuming they were old enough to vote in 1975), “not a country called Europe”. At long last, and to Mr Blair’s undoubted horror, such a dispensation may be on offer. Nor is there any reason to think that Britain would be the only taker. The idea of being inside a single market but outside political union may well appeal to other states, some already within the EU (Denmark, for example), some currently applying (Poland, Estonia and Malta spring immediately to mind) and some outside (Norway, Iceland, Switzerland). The adoption of a European constitution could end up splitting the EU’s federal, Carolingian core from the more free-trading peripheral states. And chief among these would be the United Kingdom. After years of being the EU’s sulkiest, unhappiest and least popular member, Britain might at last find a role. It is a tempting prospect. back to top
	HEY, PRODI, LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE!   Like any large organisation, the EU will from time to time make an ass of itself. But there are occasions when it surpasses even the cruellest of Euro-sceptic parodies. This, my friends, is such an occasion. As I write, I am looking at a comic strip, rather like Asterix or Tintin in format. But this is not the story of indomitable Gauls, nor even of slightly drippy Belgians. It concerns, rather, the adventures of those tireless defenders of democracy, MEPs. You have probably already spotted the difficulty. How can you squeeze drama and suspense out of a plot based on the EU’s conciliation procedure? The booklet’s authors have tried to face the problem squarely. “You can laugh!” says the feisty MEP heroine in one speech bubble, “Wait until you’ve seen my amendments to the Commission proposal!” Other great lines include: “We’ll be getting the Council’s common position soon. Then things will start to hot up!” And: “I seem to spend my whole life on the train between Brussels and Strasbourg, but I’d hate to have to choose between mussels and chips and Strasbourg onion tart!” The story, such as it is, revolves around a plot to pollute Europe’s water. The villains, needless to say, are wicked capitalists, and the heroes are environmentally aware Eurocrats. In a crowded field, this publication must rank as the unintentionally funniest publication produced by Brussels. (One particularly fine touch is that the Strasbourg hemicycle is always shown full of MEPs. In reality, it is rare for more than 30 of the 626 members to be in the chamber at any one time – except for the periods when they must be present in order to qualify for their allowances: then the place is positively heaving.) Hundreds of thousands of copies of the strip are to be distributed, in 22 different languages. According to the publishers, they are intended as education aids. Euro-federalists have always seen the classroom as a key target. Three years ago, an internal report noted that: “Children can perform a messenger function in conveying the message to the home environment. Young people will often in practice act as go-betweens with the older generations, helping them familiarise themselves with and embrace the euro”. [Report of the Working Group on Euro-Education, January 1998] Accordingly, Brussels has aimed a great deal of material at children, sometimes as classroom aids, sometimes in more demotic form. Thus we have had Let’s Draw Europe Together, a booklet aimed at younger children, whose tendentiousness can be inferred from the title of its opening chapter: “Europe – my country”. Then there was The Raspberry Ice Cream War, a cartoon strip about some intrepid kids who go back in time to a world still blighted by sovereign nations and border controls, and teach the inhabitants about the wonders of political integration. My particular favourite is Captain Euro, a character in the mould of Spiderman or Superman, who battles for closer union against the evil “Dr D Vider”. All this would be harmless enough were it not for the fact that it is being done with your money. Hundreds of millions of pounds are being spent by Brussels in an attempt to justify itself. Sometimes, the propaganda is indirect: in the subsidies given to front organisations, for example, or the freebies offered to journalists or – most expensively – the award of grants to organisations that are then required to advertise the fact of the EU’s generosity. A massive apparat has grown up of people who owe their livelihoods to the EU, whether as Jean Monet professors in our universities, or as directors of pressure groups funded by Brussels, or simply as the recipients of generous EU contracts. Human nature being what it is, such people tend quickly to become advocates of deeper union. This should not surprise us. All organisations like to advertise themselves. But there is something more that a little distasteful about targeting children. The laughter will pass; the anger should not. back to top
	CONSERVATIVES TO LEAVE FEDERALIST BLOC   Since 1992, Conservative Euro-MPs have sat, incongruously, with the most integrationist grouping in the EU. The European People’s Party (EPP) takes pride in being more devoted to a federal Europe than any of its rivals. Its constitution commits it to “compete for the realisation of a United States of Europe”, and its most recent manifesto contains policies which would shock even the most Euro-phile of British politicians, including: • An EU army • An EU police force • A European income tax, to be levied by MEPs • An elected President of Europe • The elimination of remaining national vetoes • Pan-European political parties • Pan-European television broadcasting • Harmonisation of social and employment laws • Harmonisation of criminal justice • A European Public Prosecutor • A federal constitution How, you might ask, did the Tories ever end up in such a bizarre mésalliance? It is a question I have been putting ever since I was elected. Part of the answer seems to be that, following heavy losses in the 1989 European elections, the MEPs at the time felt they needed to be part of a larger grouping. And, if truth be told, some of them felt more comfortable with the EPP’s philosophy than do their successors today (which helps explain why several of them have since become Liberal Democrats). But none of this justifies our continuing link with parties that oppose much of what we stand for, especially now that we are the second-largest party in the European Parliament. You will often hear the EPP described as a “Centre-Right” party. This label, although regularly applied by British commentators, is angrily rejected by the EPP itself. It insists that it is “the Party of the Centre”, more free market than the socialists, but less so than the liberals. Accordingly, it believes in strong trade unions, a high minimum wage, a battery of “anti-discrimination” legislation and a redistributive tax system. Its members come from across the political spectrum: Christian Democrats, centrists, even some Social Democrats. The one thing that unites them is their fanatical commitment to European integration. Regular readers of these bulletins will know that I have always argued that the Tories would be better off in an explicitly conservative grouping, working with mainstream Centre-Right parties who share our belief in a Europe of nations. Such an alternative is on offer: we could work with French Gaullists, Danish and Portuguese conservatives and, above all, the Centre-Right parties from the applicant states, who know what it is like to be ruled by foreign bureaucrats, and who have no intention of repeating that experience in the EU. This is what the British Conservatives do in the assembly of the Council of Europe: instead of joining the EPP group there, they are a leading force in the explicitly anti-federalist European Democratic Group. Leaving the group would not prevent us from co-operating with the EPP. We could still vote together when our interests co-incided, as we do in the Council of Europe. We would also continue to have bilateral ties with most of the national parties that make up the EPP. We would, as Bismarck once said, “march separately but fight together”. Ever since our victory at the 1999 European election, successive Conservative leaders have sought to reach an accommodation with the EPP, whereby a formal alliance would exist between autonomous conservative and Christian Democratic groups. The EPP have been wholly inflexible, insisting that we act as a single united bloc, and refusing even to offer us control over our own staff and finances (which means that much of the money to which the Tory MEPs are entitled ends up being spent by the EPP on schemes to advertise the euro or promote federalism). Last month, Iain Duncan Smith wrote to the EPP leadership, saying that, if they could not offer us the flexibility we wanted, we would leave and form a separate conservative group. The EPP wrote back – in rather hectoring terms – telling him that such a deal was not on offer. Accordingly, Iain has given the EPP formal notice that we intend to quit following the next European election. This is an extremely positive development for all those who believe in national independence. We now have the opportunity to work with like-minded parties from Western and Eastern Europe who share our commitment to parliamentary democracy. At last, voters around the continent will see that there is a genuine alternative to ever-closer union. Respectable Centre-Right parties, which have hitherto felt that they had nowhere else to go, will have a home which is neither far-Right nor Euro-federalist. Mainstream conservatism is back. On current figures, a new conservative bloc could expect to be the third largest grouping in the European Parliament: behind the EPP and the Socialists, but ahead of the Liberals. This would give us the balance of power. British Conservatives, instead of being marginalized within a Euro-fanatical group, would be able to work with friends and allies to build a different kind of Europe. ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. JONATHAN EVANS RE-ELECTED LEADER Jonathan Evans, MEP for Wales and a former minister, has been re-elected as leader of the Conservative Euro-MPs. The post comes up every year and, on this occasion, there was an unsuccessful challenge from Jonathan’s predecessor, Edward Macmillan-Scott. Theresa Villiers stood down as deputy leader, and was replaced in an uncontested election by her London colleague, John Bowis. back to top
	HAND OVER YOUR FISH   Tomorrow, MEPs will approve a deal whereby Brussels buys up fishing rights in Senegal and Angola for the benefit, chiefly, of Spanish trawlermen. These are just the latest in a series of accords intended to allow Southern European skippers, who have exhausted their own stocks, to plunder the warm waters off Africa. They follow similar treaties with Morocco, Mauritius and Namibia. It is bad enough that our taxes should be going, in effect, to subsidise the Spanish fishing industry. But the real victims are the local African fishermen, who stand to lose their livelihoods entirely. Some, indeed, have lost their lives: there have been several incidents where small local vessels have been run down by European industrial trawlers. It is worth standing back and asking why Europe’s fishing fleets are constantly slavering for new waters. Why can they not subsist in their own seas, as their fathers did? There is a simple three-word answer to that question: Common Fisheries Policy. Since 1973, the EU’s North Sea waters – the source of most of its fish – have been declared a “common resource”. As any conservative will tell you, that which no one owns, no one will care for. No skipper is going to tie up his boat for the sake of conservation if he knows that foreign vessels are simultaneously at loose in the same waters. So, for thirty years, we have been hoovering up what ought to have been a renewable resource. Britain has been the big loser. Sixty-five per cent of the fish covered by the CFP fall within our territorial waters; yet, under the EU’s quota system, we are allocated a share of just 28 per cent by volume, or 18 per cent by value. Meanwhile, the quota system forces fishermen to cast their catches, dead, over the sides of their boats so as to stay within the rules. No wonder stocks are in crisis. Having emptied the North Sea, the EU now plans to repeat the same ecological catastrophe all over the world. The same basic flaw – lack of ownership – will undermine these African accords. Adam Smith once said that if you gave a man a freehold on a patch of desert, he would turn it into a garden, but if you gave him a seven-year lease on a garden, he would turn it into a desert. The same principle applies, mutatis mutandis, at sea. The solution is staring us in the face. We should scrap the CFP, and restore the principle that each country is responsible for its own territorial waters, out to 200 miles or the median line, as allowed under maritime law. Each state would of course be free to sell, lease or swap its fishing rights within those waters; but the principle of ownership would be clear. More than this, we should extend the same principle into the oceans, dividing up what are currently international waters among the world’s nations, taking into account their size, their historic interests in the area and so on. From ownership will come conservation, and the revival of an otherwise doomed industry. SOUTH EAST EURO-SELECTION RESULTS DECLARED A colossal thank you to all those of you who came to one of the six Euro-selection meetings around South East England. I realise what a commitment it was to sit for nearly four hours through the various hustings speeches, and I am hugely grateful to those who gave up their time to come. The results were declared late on Sunday night in Portsmouth. The full Conservative slate for the 2004 European election is as follows: 1. Daniel Hannan MEP 2. Nirj Deva MEP 3. James Elles MEP 4. Richard Ashworth 5. James Provan MEP 6. Roy Perry MEP 7. Therese Coffey 8. Richard Willis 9. Cllr Rory Love 10. David Logan 11. Ferris Cowper Because of the enlargement of the EU, Britain is giving up a number of its seats, and the South East Region will, from 2004, return ten rather than eleven MEPs. On the basis of votes cast at the 2001 general election, the Conservatives can expect to win five of them. back to top
	WHAT'LL IT COST TO MAKE YOU LIKE BRUSSELS?   Did you know that the EU directly finances courses and professorial chairs in British universities with a pro-EU spin (courses such as "European Integration and the Future of Europe")? This is nothing compared to the campaign in classrooms. School children, Brussels notes, are a "very receptive" section of the population (which is precisely why under British law there are supposed to be strict rules on political indoctrination in British classrooms). Even more sinisterly, children "can perform a messenger function in conveying the [Euro] message to the home environment, among family and friends. [They are] the active population of tomorrow's Europe". Through the Socrates scheme alone, the EU gives €248,150,000 funding to create, amongst other things, pro-EU classroom materials such as Let's Draw Europe together (Opening section: "My country: Europe") and classroom videos, one of which proclaimed that "to simplify things, they should make a Single Currency [so that] everyone is happy. See - it's better this way". While children's education is being subverted, adults are being targetted with patronising and presumptious publications like When Will the 'Euro' be in our Pockets?  in which it is claimed that governments that "resist" the Euro are denying themselves the right to shape Europe's future. In another amazing example, a Did You Know That series of leaflets claimed that the Common Agricultural Policy was "too successful" and led to waste and - you read it here first - we left the ERM "because of too many fluctuations in the financial markets". Heavy irony or balderdash? Where in Britain does the EU publish this information you ask? Well, it already has 30 Euro Libraries and a host of financed front organisations such as the European Women's Lobby, Journalists in Europe, the Our Europe Association, to spread the word, as well as a series of think tanks and grant schemes. There are EU-funded orchestras, sports teams, health organisations, newspapers, and internet sites. A lot of money is also spent on entertaining dignitaries and on jollies for journalists to secure their support. Europe 2010 is a dining club which received £25,000 to persuade young opinon formers to think along EU lines. All this should be pretty damaging for the EU. You don't have to be a sceptic to believe that the EU ought to be spending our money in a responsible and accountable way, yet here is the evidence that the institution is pushing blatantly self-serving political views, hiding them in Trojan Horse outfits and corrupting our public life. It's high time for our politicians and journalists to stop being naïve about the cynical and dishonest propaganda coming out of Brussels and to draw attention to the way our taxes are being squandered. back to top
	THE NEW IRISH QUESTION Ireland's "no" to the Nice Treaty last year was one of those events that seemed to come from nowhere.  Its dramatic impact was muffled in this country, because it coincided with our general election.  But, elsewhere in Europe, politicians were taken completely by surprise.  Brussels was like a disturbed ant-heap, as Eurocrats scurried around seeking to explain what had happened. At the risk of swanking, I think I am alone in having predicted the result in print. This time, as the Republic gears up for a re-run, probably in October, the position is reversed.  Now everyone except me seems to be ready for a "no" vote.  Even "yes" campaigners are preparing to throw in the towel.  According to Mary Banotti, a likeable and long-serving Euro-MP, "the referendum is doomed".  Her judgment is based on the advance of the anti-Nice parties, Sinn Fein and the Greens, in May's general election, and on the meltdown of Fine Gael, traditionally the most Euro-fanatical party in the Republic.  The polls have moved, too, with opposition to the Treaty far higher than it was before the first referendum. Why, then, am I so gloomy?  A number of factors are at work.  First, the question will be subtly different.  The Prime Minister, Bertie Ahern, understands that many "no" campaigners were motivated by a dislike of the nascent Euro-army, fearing that it would pose a threat to Ireland's neutrality.  Accordingly, at the Seville summit two weeks ago [ie 22 June], he drew up a statement to the effect that Ireland would not have to join EU military operations against its will.  He presented this to his fellow heads of government as a clarification of the existing text but, needless to say, is selling it to his voters as a substantive concession.  And, in a brilliant maneouvre, he will ask voters simultaneously to endorse a ban on Irish participation in European defence operations. Then there is what psephologists call "differential abstention".  Last time, a number of pro-European polititicians did as little campaigning as they could decently get away with.  This was partly because they were harbouring their resources for the subsequent general election, and partly because they did not want to give the government a thumping win.  One Europhile MEP told me that he been privately hoping for a wafer-thin "yes".  Many like him are now campaigning with the frantic energy that comes from a guilty conscience. Third, and most important, the rules have changed.  Ireland has hitherto had admirably fair legislation on the conduct of referendums, providing for equal air-time and putting both sides of the argument in a government-funded pamphlet.  Now, that requirement has been dropped. The effects of an Irish "yes" would be felt across the whole EU - and not just in the obvious sense that the ghastly Nice Treaty would come into force.  A "yes" vote could trigger a domino effect in the referendums due in Sweden, Denmark and a number of the applicant states.  British Euro-philes are plainly hoping that a succession of pro-integration votes elsewhere will create a kind of Gadarene swine syndrome, in which no one wants to be left out. I may be wrong, of course, and there are a few factors pulling in the opposite direction.  The "yes" campaign's argument that the Irish have a duty to vote for the admission of new states - quite apart from being irrelevant, since enlargement can happen with or without Nice - may prove double-edged.  The admission of Eastern Europe would turn Ireland into a net contributor to the Brussels budget; and it has just emerged that Ireland, unlike most EU members, will open its borders to citizens from new members the moment they join.  Meanwhile, with glorious timing, the European Parliament has just voted to make abortion easier across the EU.  Probably the strongest card in the anti-Nice hand is simple irritation that the politicians are refusing to accept the people's verdict: "what part of 'no' don't they understand?" But if, as I suspect, Irish voters are bludgeoned into backing down, it will set a grave precedent.  From then on, EU leaders would no longer have to worry about public opinion.  If electorates can simply be bullied into dropping their opposition, nothing stands in the way of the project. back to top
	THE BIGGEST EURO-MYTH OF ALL We are all familiar with them: square strawberries, bent bananas, fishermen in hairnets - the staples of British tabloid headlines. Euro-integrationists are furious about such reports.  The London office of the European Commission publishes a regular round-up of what it calls "Euro-myths".  Britain in Europe, the pro-euro pressure group, devotes a large chunk of its website to them. Now it is fair to point out that newspapers sometimes exaggerate.  But the most amazing thing about these "Euro-myths" is how often they turn out to be true. This was illustrated just a couple of weeks ago when British officials went to court over their right to prosecute for the sale of wrongly shaped bananas.  Yes, there really is a Euro-rule about them.  I've read it.  It is Directive 2557/94, and it specifies the permitted length and diameter of Class One bananas, laying down that they must be "without excessive bending".  Fortunately for the standing of our legal system, the High Court ruled against the men from the ministry. It is a similar story when it comes to cucumbers.  I had read so often that the whole issue of crooked cucumbers had been invented by the tabloids that I decided to look up the rules for myself.  And, sure enough, I came across Directive 1677/88, which specifies a "maximum permitted curvature" of 10 mm for every 10 cm. In fact, the biggest myth of all is that these and similar stories are myths.  Almost every critical report now provokes a blanket denial from the European Commission.  Some years ago, I wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph which mentioned the fact that, under the new metrication rules, it would no longer be legal to sell a pint of shandy.  The UK office of the Commission replied, without apparent irony, that it would be perfectly legal provided you didn't call it a pint. Admittedly, straight bananas hardly spell the end of British sovereignty.  Next to, say, the destruction of our fishing industry, or the erosion of our common law traditions or the Common Agricultural Policy, these are fairly trivial matters.  But it is interesting to see how readily the Euro-apparatchiks will dissemble to hide what they are doing.  If they are this shifty about bananas, can we really trust them on the euro? back to top
	COMING NEXT: AN EU CONSTITUTION If you want a neat illustration of how the EU has become disconnected from its peoples, look at the Convention on the Future of Europe.  This is the body charged with drawing up a new constitution for the EU.  It is chaired by the former French President, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, and will continue to meet until next Summer. The Convention is meant to be all about "the people".  Its supporters like to compare it to the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, which drafted the US Constitution.  The trouble is that, while it is theoretically democratic, the Convention is not representative.  As well as Commissioners and MEPs, it comprises three representatives from each EU member and applicant state.  Two are appointed by the national parliaments, the third by the governments (the Italians, deliciously, are called Signor Dini, Signor Fini and Signor Spini). Few of these delegates share any of their voters' concerns about the direction of the EU.  The 16 MEPs on the Convention, as you would expect, reflect the overwhelming federalism of the European Parliament.  But, even in the national parliaments, deputies tend to be rather more pro-integration than their constituents.  On top of this, a kind of informal self-selection seems to have been at work, so that the MPs sent to the Convention are those with a particular interest in European integration, often the chairmen of their respective European committees. Thus, despite the fact that Ireland voted against the Nice Treaty last year, not one of its Convention delegates opposes it.  The only time that France was allowed a direct vote on closer integration was the Maastricht referendum of 1992, when half the country voted "no"; but not one French MP on the convention is anti-federalist.  Opinion polls across the EU as a whole have consistently shown that between 35 and 40 per cent of people would like to scrap the euro; yet only some 10 per cent of delegates to the Convention could be classed as Euro-sceptics. Even among the applicant states, whose politicians have not yet cast off the guy ropes that anchor them to public opinion, there is a reluctance to challenge the consensus.  It is almost as though the Eastern Europeans feel that asserting themselves too strongly in the Convention will somehow result in less favourable membership terms. Anticipating the complaint that the future of Europe should not be left wholly to politicians, Euro-enthusiasts have come up with a clever tactic.  As well as the main Convention, there will be a parallel meeting for "representatives of civil society".  A glance at the applicant organisations tells you everything you need to know about this forum: the European Movement, the Union of European Federalists, the European Women's Lobby, the European Council of Artists, the European Humanist Federation, the European Social Action Network.  These are not simply NGOs that happen to be pro-EU.  They are, in many cases, creatures of the European Commission, dependent on Brussels for their funding.  Whatever else they do, it seems pretty clear that they will not be demanding the devolution of power to the nation-states. In any case, the real power lies, as always on these occasions, with a few big players: Giscard himself; his Vice-Chairman, Jean-Luc Dehaene, the bull-necked former Prime Minister of Belgium; John Kerr, the brilliant British diplomat acting as the Convention's secretary; a handful of MEPs who, being familiar with the location and working methods of the Convention, enjoy a natural advantage over the national parliamentarians. These key figures, in police parlance, have previous.  Their past pronouncements give a pretty good indication of what we should expect.  First, there will be what we old Brussels hands call the "communitarisation" of foreign policy.  In other words, foreign affairs will cease to be intergovernmental, and brought into the sphere of the European Commission.  The positions of Chris Patten and Javier Solana will be merged into a single "EU foreign minister" role.  The same will happen to the field of justice and home affairs.  The EU will also evolve a properly federal structure, whereby the European Parliament dictates the composition of the Commission.  The idea is that each pan-European political party would have its own candidate for the Presidency, so that European elections would offer a choice between, say, Tony Blair for the European Socialists and José-Marie Aznar for the European People's Party. By enshrining this dispensation in a written constitution, the EU will equip itself with the final and defining attribute of statehood.  I know that we sceptics have sometimes been too quick to describe each new Brussels initiative as the final step to federalism.  But this is it, the real thing. What, then, should we do, those of us who still believe in the nation-state?  Oddly enough, I think there is an answer in the Philadelphia precedent.  The US Constitution did not come into force until each of the 13 member states had ratified it through a specially convened assembly.  The closest modern equivalent would be 15 national referendums.  So, while the federalists are beavering away in Brussels, I and anti-federalist politicians from around the EU will be spending the next twelve months drawing up a text of our own, based on the concept of a Europe of nations.  In 2004, we will call for the two alternatives to be put directly to the peoples of the 15 member states.  If the federalists are as popular as they keep claiming to be, they will presumably leap at our suggestion. back to top
	WELCOME HOME Did you go to the Continent for your summer hols?  Did you get to use the new currency there?  Well, how did it feel?  Has it changed your view?  Are you so impressed by the convenience of avoiding bureaux de change that you now want to scrap the pound? That, more or less, is what Tony Blair is relying on.  Labour strategists have made little secret of the importance of July and August 2002 in winning the hearts of their countrymen.  This was meant to be the moment at which the practical benefits of the single currency would be manifested.  The Prime Minister will surely be watching the polls intently, hoping for enough of a change to allow them to hold a referendum next year. If so, he is likely to be disappointed.  For one thing, people understand that the euro is about more than currency transactions.  Most of them want to keep the pound, not out of obstinacy, but because they care about British democracy.  Some, of course, want to join the euro, again usually for political reasons.  But, either way, they are likely to see the constitutional implications of scrapping the pound as being more important that the consequences for holidaymakers. In any case, these consequences are far more limited than the euro-partisans had been hoping.  Allow me to share two slightly counter-intuitive facts, the credit for which is due to my Conservative colleague, Theresa Villiers. The introduction of the euro has led to higher prices.  Perhaps the chief claim of the pro-euro lobby is that joining the euro would somehow lead to the end of what they call “rip-off Britain”, by causing shop prices here to fall.  Yet, early evidence indicates that the introduction of euro notes and coins on the Continent has in fact raised costs, as retailers have taken the opportunity to round up their prices.  Inflation in the euro-zone has jumped from 2.1 to 2.5 per cent, with especially sharp hikes in shops restaurants and cinemas.  Some German consumers are so angry about the increases that shops there are responding to customer demand by switching illegally back to marks. The introduction of the euro has not reduced bank charges.  Like most MEPs, I have a euro-denominated account in Belgium.  But when I used a cash-point in France or wrote a cheque in Spain, I found I was paying exactly the same commission as I would have done before the change-over.  On average, these fees are 17 per cent, although in some cases they are as high as 24 per cent.  Indeed, it is sometimes cheaper to move money between Britain and the euro-zone than between two euro-zone members, thanks to the United Kingdom’s relatively efficient banking system.  Admittedly, the EU is now seeking to these transaction costs through a new directive.  But this, paradoxically, destroys one of the main arguments for membership: if bank charges can simply be scrapped by degree, then we plainly don’t have to be part of a single currency to benefit. All in all, then, returning holidaymakers are unlikely to be impressed by what they have found.  Some of them may, of course, wish to join the euro for other reasons.  But to reduce the whole issue to one of not having to carry around foreign coins in your pocket is truly to trivialise perhaps the chief constitutional question of our era.  Labour will have to come up with something better. THAT’S ENOUGH GRAVY: BRING ON THE CHAMPAGNE Once again, MEPs are locked in negotiations over their pay and perks.  The national governments are seeking to end the scandalous system whereby Euro-MPs get travel reimbursement at a rate which they could not possibly have spent on their tickets.  The sums involved can be huge: a Member who travels by the cheapest route he can find will easily make £1,000 a week in clear profit – tax-free, of course, since it counts as an expense, not as income. For 20 years, MEPs have voted down every attempt to reimburse travel on the basis of actual costs incurred.  In each of the last three budgets, I and others have sought to bring in such a change: each time, we have been heavily defeated. Now, with the 15 member states demanding reform, some MEPs are getting edgy.  Many are even prepared to give up their travel perks.  But, in return, they want a number of compensatory benefits.  First, a hike – at least for most of them – in their basic salary.  Second, a substantial increase in their other expenses, such as the daily attendance allowance.  Third, to be taxed at EU rather than national rates, as Commissioners and other EU employees are.  (Odd how the EU, generally so keen on raising tax, makes an exception for its own staff.) As I understand things, the national governments have agreed in principle to the first two demands, but are baulking at the third.  The talks, accordingly, remain deadlocked.  I’ll keep you posted. back to top
	WILL IT NEVER END? Paul van Buitenen has finally had enough.  On Tuesday, the whistle-blower who brought down the European Commission announced that he was going home to the Netherlands. Mr van Buitenen came to public notice in 1999 when he exposed a number of fraudulent activities in the European Commission.  We are not talking here about poor accounting, but about straightforward corruption: kickbacks in return for contracts, money disappearing into private accounts, friends and families being kept on the payroll at public expense.  You may remember, for example, the case of Commissioner Cresson, who was employing her dentist as a consultant with a colossal salary.  (Mrs Cresson's dentist was said, for what it's worth, to be doing rather more than filling her teeth.) Faced with the evidence, the European Commisison's response was not to clean up its act, but to try to silence the whistle-blower.  The resulting furore led eventually to the resignation of the entire Commission. We were then promised immediate reform.  Neil Kinnock, despite having been one of the members of the tainted Commission, was put in charge of a clean-up operation. So, three years on, where are we? As far as Mr van Buitenen is concerned, nothing has changed.  The final straw for him was the action taken against a second whistle-blower, the Commission's chief accountant, Marta Andreasen.  When she disclosed that the £62 billion EU budget was out of control, she was removed from her post and, she claims, physically harassed. How much longer must this go on before we realise that there is a structural problem in Brussels?  The first serious attempt to tackle fraud came eight years ago with the establishment of an EU Court of Auditors.  Every single year since then, the Court has refused to sign off the EU budget, identifying billions of euros being lost or stolen.  Its findings are always greeted with an awful lot of huffing and puffing about reform; yet everyone knows that nothing will change, and that the next year's report will be no better. The whole structure is rotten.  Did you know, for example, that an MEP is given more than £8,000 per month as a secretarial allowance, and that there is nothing to prevent him paying that money to his immediate family?  Did you know that he also gets nearly £2,000 in tax-free "general expenses", which are never audited, and which he can opt to have paid directly into his current account?  Did you know that his trips between Brussels and his constituency are reimbursed at a fixed rate, set considerably higher than the cost of a first-class ticket?  In other words, if he actually chooses to travel first class, he will make a tidy profit; but if he has an imaginative travel agent, and is prepared to make use of apex deals, he can easily trouser £1,000 per trip - tax-free, of course, since it counts as expenses, not income. In each budget since I have been there, I have tried to change the rules so that Euro-MPs are reimbursed at cost, on the production of their ticket. Each time, the amendment has been voted down by a huge majority. Why is the system so corrupt?  Is it because Euro-crats are simply bad people?  I don't think so.  The problem, rather, lies in the undemocratic nature of the European project.  Within Britain, the government is answerable to MPs, who are in turn answerable to their constituents.  If it behaves in a profligate or sleazy manner, we can vote it out.  But in Brussels, there is no link between taxation, representation and expenditure. The European Commission sprays around public money, but is not responsible for raising it.  The one elected element is meant to be the European Parliament.  But -  be honest now - how many MEPs can you name?  I was elected on a turnout of 24 per cent, considerably less than the number of people who voted over the summer in Channel 4's Big Brother.  And most MEPs, I am sorry to say, see it as their job to give more power to Brussels, not to ensure that their constituents are getting good value. The solution, surely, is to place the purse-strings back in the hands of genuinely accountable bodies.  We do not have to invent these.  They are called national parliaments, and they have been up and running for hundreds of years. For thirty years now, we have been pouring our cash into the leakiest of buckets.  When will we learn? back to top
	SOME THINGS NEED NO COMMENT In this briefing, I can do no better than to quote, in full, the text of a notice put out by Brighton and Hove Council (I am grateful to Cllr Stephen Wade for drawing it to my attention).  It is a more eloquent comment on the EU - and, for that matter, on the priorities of some of our Labour local authorities - than anything I could write myself. Call for Tenders :Gender Impact of Municipal Waste Policy Title:Call for Tenders - Study into Gender-Differentiated Impacts of Municipal Waste Management Planning in the European Union Reference :ENV.A.2/ETU/2002/0059 Official Journal S135 13 July 2002 Contracting Authority: European Commission, DG Environment Description :This is a call for tenders for undertaking a pilot study which will focus on a specific area of European waste policy relevant to gender mainstreaming issues, namely the subject of waste management planning. The objectives of the study are: A. to analyse whether, and to what extent, waste management planning within the EU, in particular at local authority level, impacts upon the local community differently according to gender and to what extent gender-differentiated impact is taken into account during the stages of designing and implementing waste plans; and B. to assess whether, in the light of analysis carried out for objective (A) above, current frameworks for waste management planning design and implementation within the EUare sufficiently suited to take into account their effects on the respective situation of women and men. The pilot study should be considered as an integral step towards the mainstreaming of gender issues in waste policy in the EU, with a view to enhancing effectiveness of policy making and implementation. In this context, it is important that the contractor obtains data and examples of the relevance of gender in waste management planning. Project Duration: 12 months Available Funding: The maximum budget for the project is EUR45,000 Deadline :For requesting tender documents - 3 September 2002. For submission of tenders - 17 September 2002. Further Information: Documents (Technical Annex ref. No ENV.A.2/ETU/2002/0059) can be obtained from the European Commission, B-1049 Bruxelles/Brussel- for the attention of The Markets Team, ENV.F.2 (Budget and Finance), by letter or fax: (32-2) 299 44 49. For administrative and financial matters, tel.: (32-2) 296 00 08. For technical matters: tel.: (32-2) 299 22 96. Weblinks: Official Journal S135 (13 July 2002) https://ted.eur-op.eu.int/static/home/en/homepage.ini https://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/equ_opp/index_en.htm https://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/waste/facts_en.htm   back to top
	SLEAZIER AND SLEAZIER I saw Neil Kinnock the other day.  Mr Kinnock has now become a very grand person indeed: a Vice-Chairman of the European Commission, in charge of cleaning up all the sleaze that was exposed three years ago when Paul van Buitenen brought down the entire Commission.  So, Commissioner Kinnock, I asked.  How many people have you sacked since then?  He waffled and warbled for a bit, but, after a while, he gave me the answer: "To the best of my knowledge, none". There you have it.  Three years after the worst corruption scandal in the history of the EU, not one official had been dismissed in connection with it.  Two people have, however, been removed from their posts - not for engaging in corruption, but for exposing it. One is Mr van Buitenen himself, who, after three years of kicking his heels in a backwater job, has resigned in disgust.  The second is Marta Andreasen, who is still fighting her case.  Miss Andreasen was brought in to clean up the Commission's accounts.  She was horrified by what she found.  Uniquely in the modern world, the EU had no proper method of double book keeping.  Accounts were kept on Excel spreadsheets, so there was nothing to stop them being retrospectively doctored.  Yet instead of acting on Miss Andreasen's concerns, the EU brushed her aside and sought to silence her. In September, I organised a special meeting for Miss Andreasen to raise her concerns publicly in front of a group of MEPs: the only such meeting she has addressed.  What was extraordinary was the way in which a handful of Socialist MEPs tried, throughout the hearing, to dismiss her findings and imply that she, rather than the Commission, had behaved improperly.  It was almost as though they regarded the EU as beyond reproach.  To undermine it, even on grounds of financial rectitude, was, in their eyes, a sin against the European project.  Their attitude seemed to be: Europe right or wrong. I have frequently been on the receiving end of this myself.  One of the first things I did when I was elected was to write in the Daily Telegraph about how MEPs' allowances and expenses worked.  I was instantly sent to Coventry: many Euro-MPs plainly felt that such things ought never to be discussed in public.  When a translation of my article appeared in a German newspaper, my German colleagues went ballistic.  One, with whom I had previously got on rather well, sent me an e-mail which read: "Dear Daniel Hannan, I can only assume that you were drunk before writing in such a way about a European institution".  She has barely spoken to me since.  Her attitude, and that of people like her, is deeply worrying.  She regards the goal of a united Europe as an end that justifies almost any means.  I draw the opposite conclusion.  If the EU is unable to administer its own institutions cleanly, then it is hardly qualified to be given control over swathes of our own national life.  If it cannot be trusted to run itself, we should certainly not invite it to run our currency. back to top
	LISTEN TO THE COUNTRY It was the biggest demonstration in British history.  More than 400,000 people took to the streets to protest against Labour’s mishandling of the countryside. It seems incredible, at a time when farm incomes have collapsed and the rural economy is in recession, that the Government’s priority is to ban field sports. And it is inexplicable that, with police resources already overstretched, ministers want to criminalise an activity peacefully engaged in by thousands of people. But blocking the hunting ban is only the beginning. If we want to preserve a  viable countryside in the South East, we must take back control over our own agricultural policy. The CAP has brought our farmers to the brink of ruin, penalising them while favouring their Continental competitors. We must oppose John Prescott’s plans to concrete over the southern counties. Inch by inch, month by month, our hedgerows and coppices are disappearing under tarmac. Labour’s housing targets would do away with many of our remaining green spaces. If implemented, they would turn parts of the home counties into a more or less continuous metropolis, in which the existing villages retain their identity only in the sense that Hammersmith and Fulham retain theirs. Labour likes to remind us that farmers and their dependants are a minority. Perhaps so. But they do look after more than 80 per cent of Britain’s land surface area. They deserve a fair hearing. back to top
	DON’T CLOSE OUR HEALTH STORES Daniel has been campaigning with herbalists and consumer groups against the EU’s proposed restrictions on vitamin and mineral supplements and natural remedies. Under new Brussels rules, hundreds of health products could no longer be sold legally – despite the fact that there is no evidence that they are deleterious to our health. “This is bureaucracy at its worst”, Daniel told health stores’ representatives. “Thousands of people will find that they are no longer able to buy the herbal remedies of their choice. And all because a few large pharmaceutical companies are keen to squeeze out their smaller competitors, and have managed to get Brussels to do their bidding”. back to top
	IRISH AYES If you are in any doubt about the anti-democratic nature of the European project, look at the means by which it advances itself. In order to push ahead with Nice, the Irish Government disregarded last year's clear referendum result, changed the rules and changed the question. Saturday's vote was predictable - and, indeed, predicted, by me among others. It became more or less inevitable once Bertie Ahern had amended the law on the conduct of plebiscites. Until now, Ireland has had admirably fair rules on referendum campaigns, providing for equal air time on the state media and for the distribution to each household of a pamphlet setting out the case for each side. This did not mean, of course, that there was total equality: pro-EU campaigners were always able to outspend their rivals overall. But it did at least ensure that every voter got to hear both sides of the argument. Just before the Dail rose for its Christmas recess, however, the Government scrapped this rule. The way was thus clear for the "Yes" side to exploit its massive financial advantage. Of course, a side-effect of the change is that Ireland will no longer have fair referendum campaigns on any subject. In order to ratify an essentially undemocratic treaty, Ireland has had to debase its own democratic procedures. Not content with rigging the rules, Mr Ahern also rigged the question. Voters were asked to ratify Nice and, in the same vote, to oppose Irish participation in the EU army. Thus, many supporters of neutrality - a natural anti-Nice constituency - felt obliged to vote "Yes". To see how outrageous this is, imagine that, in a British referendum, Tony Blair phrased the question: "Do you want to join the single European currency and preserve the supremacy of the UK Parliament?" Last year, David felled Goliath. This time, though, the old Philistine had sent back to Gath for reinforcements. All the main parties swung behind a "yes " vote, with only the Greens and Sinn Fein against. Business groups, trade unions and farming organisations joined them. Every big gun from Lech Walesa to St John Hume was wheeled out. Ireland, they all argued, has done well out of Brussels; now let's give Eastern Europe the same opportunity. It is something of a surprise, then, to read the Nice Treaty and find that enlargement is barely mentioned: it comes in a codicil tacked on at the end, and could easily have been agreed without a referendum. Nice is about deepening rather than widening the EU. It provides, among other things, for the scrapping of 39 national vetoes, the harmonisation of justice and home affairs and the establishment of pan-European political parties. The Euro-elites were never going to allow mere public opinion to stop all this. Once again, they have got their way. back to top
	IT'S OFFICIAL: A UNITED STATES OF EUROPE "No one's talking about a United States of Europe. It's all just a sceptic fantasy". I've lost count of how many times I've heard that. Tony Blair, Chris Patten, Neil Kinnock, Robin Cook, Leon Brittan, Charles Kennedy: almost every British Euro-phile has assured us that a United States of Europe is completely unthinkable. It's all a fantasy, they tell us: a false creation proceeding from the heat-oppressed brains of Tory Euro-phobes. So you may be interested to know that, as I write this, I am looking at a draft constitution for - you guessed it - a United States of Europe. The document is the first draft of the Constitutional Convention chaired by the former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (you can read it on-line at www.european-convention.eu.int). Regular readers of these bulletins will know that Giscard and his colleagues are designing a constitution for the EU to be adopted in 2004. To be fair, the name "United States of Europe" is not yet final: the entity may end up being called the United Europe or, as now, the European Union. But whatever the name, there is no mistaking the federalist substance of the document.   back to top Back to
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