MaxedOutMama
Saturday, April 02, 2005
EU Matters
First, No Oil For Pacifists has an extremely interesting post up questioning the evolutionary direction of the EU. You may question his contentions, but you might want to read this first, and this, which channels Forrest Gump discussing Parliament's rapid-action response force to criticism in a mildly hilarious manner
A) People really, really waste money and time getting prescriptions for sleeping pills. This is guaranteed to do the trick with no ill effects. Remove all sharp, spillable and/or breakable objects from the vicinity before you begin reading. At times the effect can be almost instantaneous and it is always uncontrollable.
B) It appears to be some attempt to form a federalist union. One suspects that strong taxing powers and economic embargoing powers are lurking in there somewhere, but it is so mush-mouthed that it is impossible to figure out what it will mean in practice. I only have about 120 pages more to go. (Clonk. Head hits keyboard.)
C) Direct referendums or not, almost no one who votes for this thing is going to know what they are actually voting for. Undoubtedly the sleeping pill companies are campaigning vigorously among the member states to prohibit direct voting, thereby defending their profit margins.
D) Articles keep starting out with "thou shalt not" limitations, but then they get modified in successive paragraphs in a very muddled manner. It all strikes me as similar to the Canadian charter on free speech, which is so modifies that in effect you have the right to free speech unless someone in government objects to what you are talking about.
And while I'm on the topic of referendums, the Swiss (not EU members, but signed on to lots of EU stuff) have just used their referendum rights to force votes on several treaties. There was opposition to extending labor rights to the ten new EU members, and there was opposition to signing onto the asylum and security measures. This was attributed to the "rightwing", but in most of Europe the far right is equivalent to extremely moderate US Democrats, so don't panic yet.
There is an ongoing squabble about the cost of the EU government itself:
At least I think this "rapid strike force" should not decide that on its own, because a member of the force, a Jo something, said that "wrong reporting and statements" are committed only by people he called the 'No-to-the-EU-Constitution-Sayers'. And that can't be right.I have not read the whole proposed EU Constitution (reader friendly version) myself - I only made it through about a third before collapsing. I did reach a few conclusions.
I mean statements are also "wrong", when they are simply not true, even if the 'Not-No-to-the-EU-Constitution-Sayers' make them. Even I know that. It is kind of a more objective way of seeing things. And if one speaks about truth or lies, or right or wrong, a word like "objective" sounds like a nice word.
I mean, just take for instance Mr. Jo, one of the holy men. He wrote an article this week where (besides many other good things) he says that this European Constitution they are all talking about will not only give that Union more powers, but that it will also give more powers to those who have given powers to the Union, like for instance national parliaments. I don't really understand all that, but it seems strange to me that if you give something away, such as power or so, you gain more of it back.
A) People really, really waste money and time getting prescriptions for sleeping pills. This is guaranteed to do the trick with no ill effects. Remove all sharp, spillable and/or breakable objects from the vicinity before you begin reading. At times the effect can be almost instantaneous and it is always uncontrollable.
B) It appears to be some attempt to form a federalist union. One suspects that strong taxing powers and economic embargoing powers are lurking in there somewhere, but it is so mush-mouthed that it is impossible to figure out what it will mean in practice. I only have about 120 pages more to go. (Clonk. Head hits keyboard.)
C) Direct referendums or not, almost no one who votes for this thing is going to know what they are actually voting for. Undoubtedly the sleeping pill companies are campaigning vigorously among the member states to prohibit direct voting, thereby defending their profit margins.
D) Articles keep starting out with "thou shalt not" limitations, but then they get modified in successive paragraphs in a very muddled manner. It all strikes me as similar to the Canadian charter on free speech, which is so modifies that in effect you have the right to free speech unless someone in government objects to what you are talking about.
And while I'm on the topic of referendums, the Swiss (not EU members, but signed on to lots of EU stuff) have just used their referendum rights to force votes on several treaties. There was opposition to extending labor rights to the ten new EU members, and there was opposition to signing onto the asylum and security measures. This was attributed to the "rightwing", but in most of Europe the far right is equivalent to extremely moderate US Democrats, so don't panic yet.
There is an ongoing squabble about the cost of the EU government itself:
The report criticises the "constant increase of all types of agencies", set up by the EU.Meanwhile, trade unions are organizing to fight the trend of importing cheaper labor from the new ten members, a.k.a. eastern Europe. Under the EU rules all they can do is fight for stricter labor operational rules, not oppose importing of laborers. I strongly recommend this article:
The decentralised bodies currently employ 2,735 staff financed from the common coffers on top of the Commission's establishment.
Finally, the rapporteur argues that while the "Lisbon objectives" should remain a priority, the budgetary means to achieve them in areas such as research, social policy or education "should be appropriate but realistic, increased but not overestimated."
Fearing a lowering of wages in Europe, trade union representatives from six countries met in Hamburg earlier this month to discuss measures to combat both wage drops and a subsequent fall in standards.and:
"We cannot stop the jobs moving around but we can ask to have the work done under proper conditions in the various countries", Tina Kristensen of the Danish branch, NNF, told the EUobserver.
Since EU enlargement last year, a number of companies in the new eastern European countries have developed a lucrative business of organising workers from the East to carry out jobs at a low rate in the West.I think the services directive is going down.
Comments:
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NRO's Andrew Stuttaford's wonderful two paragraph summary of the draft Constitution:
The preamble to the EU constitution refers to a Europe "reunited after bitter experiences," a phrase so bogus that it would embarrass Dan Brown. Unless I missed something in my history classes "Europe" has never been one whole. There is nothing to reunite. A Swede, even Göran Persson, is a Swede long before he is a "European." Naturally, the framers of the constitution have done their best to furnish a few gimcrack symbols of their new Europe (there's (Article I-8) a flag, a motto ("United in Diversity), an anthem, and, shrewdly in a continent that likes its vacations, a public holiday ("Europe Day") and perhaps in time these will come to mean something, but for now they are poor substitutes for that emotional, almost tribal, idea of belonging that is core to an authentic sense of national identity. . .
[W]hat a sorry, shabby work it is, an unreadable mish-mash of political correctness, micromanagement, bureaucratic jargon, artful ambiguity, deliberate obscurity, and stunning banality that somehow limps its way through some 500 pages with highlights that include "guaranteeing" (Article II-74) a right to "vocational and continuing training," "respect" (Article II-85) for the "rights of the elderly... to participate in social and cultural life," and the information (Article III-121) that "animals are sentient beings." On the status of spiders, beetles, and lice there is, unusually, only silence.
The preamble to the EU constitution refers to a Europe "reunited after bitter experiences," a phrase so bogus that it would embarrass Dan Brown. Unless I missed something in my history classes "Europe" has never been one whole. There is nothing to reunite. A Swede, even Göran Persson, is a Swede long before he is a "European." Naturally, the framers of the constitution have done their best to furnish a few gimcrack symbols of their new Europe (there's (Article I-8) a flag, a motto ("United in Diversity), an anthem, and, shrewdly in a continent that likes its vacations, a public holiday ("Europe Day") and perhaps in time these will come to mean something, but for now they are poor substitutes for that emotional, almost tribal, idea of belonging that is core to an authentic sense of national identity. . .
[W]hat a sorry, shabby work it is, an unreadable mish-mash of political correctness, micromanagement, bureaucratic jargon, artful ambiguity, deliberate obscurity, and stunning banality that somehow limps its way through some 500 pages with highlights that include "guaranteeing" (Article II-74) a right to "vocational and continuing training," "respect" (Article II-85) for the "rights of the elderly... to participate in social and cultural life," and the information (Article III-121) that "animals are sentient beings." On the status of spiders, beetles, and lice there is, unusually, only silence.
Thanks, that is funny. I can't say from what I have read that I disagree. People, though, have the astonishing ability to make the most ridiculous systems work if they really want to. My theory is that the people will be too uninvolved to make this work, but maybe I'm wrong.
I liked the phrase "deliberate obscurity". As to the "reunited" concept, maybe they are harkening back to the concept of Christendom or the Holy Roman Empire?
I keep thinking about Lincoln's statement in that debate against Douglas, where he says that only in the fidelity to the principles set forth in the Constitution can the US find a lasting national identity. Stuttaford's right - this document doesn't offer such a groundwork.
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I liked the phrase "deliberate obscurity". As to the "reunited" concept, maybe they are harkening back to the concept of Christendom or the Holy Roman Empire?
I keep thinking about Lincoln's statement in that debate against Douglas, where he says that only in the fidelity to the principles set forth in the Constitution can the US find a lasting national identity. Stuttaford's right - this document doesn't offer such a groundwork.
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