From the start of December you will be a citizen of the European Union superstate. All of us in Britain will be ruled by a centralised Euro-federalist government in Brussels.
Already four out of five laws emanate from Brussels, rubber- stamped by the elected government in Westminster. EU legislation is decided behind closed doors by unaccountable and unelected commissioners - all done in conjunction with the various Councils of Ministers from the 27 member states. They are now the Euro-federalist government who are responsible for and to the EU and no longer primarily to their national governments.
The Treaty of Lisbon, or more properly the EU constitution, has ditched the inter-governmental arrangements which have been in force since the Common Market was set up in 1957 and has turned the EU into a superstate. This qualitative change has been brought about by stealth over half a century - and without changing the name European Union.
Any democratic procedure, agreement or consultation over the Treaty of Lisbon by 500 million people across the 27 nation-states was totally absent, except for Ireland.
The electorates of France and the Netherlands threw out the EU Constitution and then Ireland rejected the deliberately scrambled Treaty of Lisbon. Money without limit was poured in to the Yes camp to set up unrelated arguments, crafted to frighten and mislead the electorate.
With the misinformed and one-sided media campaign, the public understandably voted for the Lisbon Treaty and sacrificed what national independence and democracy they still held and had literally fought for over the centuries.
No other member state was given the opportunity to fully discuss and voice opposition to the Lisbon Treaty. All three major political parties in Britain fell into line and reneged on promises to hold a referendum on Lisbon.
The EU constitution has been imposed from the top downwards and does not have any support from the will of the people across the EU. It is a serious blow to democracy and the right to self-determination of nation-states. In historical terms it undoes both the American and French revolutions.
All the EU's institutions have been strengthened by the treaty to consolidate the centralised government and neoliberal free market initiated by the Thatcher government. Sixty new vetoes normally dealt with by national governments have been passed to Brussels. Not one area has been passed back down from Brussels to national capitals. An unelected EU president and de facto EU foreign secretary, misnamed High Representative, are part of this union's government.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg is the supreme court of the EU, which overrides the courts and Parliament in Britain - including the recently formed Supreme Court that sits in the Middlesex Guildhall in Parliament Square. The ECJ has made rulings on four important cases which affect the labour and trade union movements and all those who work for their living within the EU.
The Viking, Laval, Ruffert and Luxembourg cases have sought to turn the clock back to the 19th century by undermining trade union rights. These include collective bargaining, using the free movement of labour around the EU to the detriment of wages, conditions and welfare protection. They impinge on the right to strike and other fundamental trade union and workers' rights in what has been aptly coined the "race to the bottom."
A major purpose of the ECJ is to see the objectives of the "free movement of capital, services, goods and labour" of the Single European Market are strictly adhered to. In other words - to give big capital free rein and damn the social consequences.
The EU constitution has specified that capitalism shall be the economic system of the Union. This is contrary to every other constitution across the world and specifically blocks the right to legislate for socialist measures - let alone a socialist economic system.
Big capital is no longer prepared to tolerate national democracy or be inhibited by the powers of the nation-state. The only institution in existence able to curb the ever growing transnational corporations and banks, and movement of big capital are the governments of nation-states.
Just because we have elected governments who do not exercise that power but instead hang on to the coat tails and kow-tow to big capital does not negate such powers. However, what does remove the powers of nation-states is the formation of the EU superstate where the government cannot be kicked out and policies and legislation are sealed in place.
We are all now both subjects in the monarchy of the United Kingdom and citizens of the EU super-state. We have responsibilities and duties to obey the laws of all the EU institutions in addition to those in Britain.
If we wish to resist this new arrangement then we first have to understand the qualitative change that has taken place without notice. Above all we have to understand this remains part of the class struggle between labour and big capital and that well-tested and hard-won rights have to be defended and used. The longer we dally the worse it will be to untangle this huge reactionary backward step, which undermines all forms of democracy.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/83887
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