It's Time To Leave The EU... Really!
- From: lorad474@xxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:18:32 -0800 (PST)
Nothing could be clearer.. the article (for educational purposes)
speaks for itself:
"Despotism in the European Parliament
Posted by Daniel Hannan on 25 Jan 2008 at 13:45
Tags: EU, referendum, Lisbon Treaty, Hans-Gert Pöttering, EU
Parliament
I thought that, after eight years in the European Parliament, nothing
could shock me any more. I was wrong.
The Parliament is seeking to override its own rules Yesterday, the
President of the Parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, asked for, and was
granted, arbitrary powers to suspend the rules of the institution in
order to disadvantage the tiny number of MEPs who want a referendum on
the European Constitution Lisbon Treaty.
I have come to expect hypersensitivity to criticism, flouting of
rules, intolerance of dissent,
authoritarianism. But nothing had prepared me for such blatancy.
Hans-Gert openly admitted that the behaviour of his Euro-sceptic
opponents was within the rules. And he wasn't asking to change those
rules - a procedure that would take time. No, he simply wanted
permission to disregard them. Permission was duly granted, by 20
committee votes to 3.
Hans-Gert's letter is worth quoting in full:
Dear Mr Leinen, [Jo Leinen, a German Socialist, is Chairman of the
Constitutional Affairs
Committee] In the course of the current part session, Parliament was
confronted on several occasions with procedural requests which were
formally based on and fulfilled the requirements of a provision of the
Rules of Procedure, but which according to the full conviction of
myself and of other Members of the House were moved with the intention
of obstructing the procedures of the House.
I take the view that my overall responsibility for the implementation
of the Rules of Procedure
and the powers conferred on me by Rule 19 include the power not to
allow such practices.
I should therefore be grateful if, pursuant to Rule 201(1), you could
submit to the Committee on Constitutional Affairs the following
question for urgent consideration:
'Can Rule 19(1) be interpreted as meaning that the powers conferred by
this Rule include the
power to call an end to excessive use of motions such as points of
order, procedural motions,
explanations of vote and excessive, indiscriminate requests for
separate, split or roll call
votes where these appear to the President to be aimed at deliberately
disrupting the procedures of the House or the rights of other
Members.'
I would appreciate it if I could have your Committee's interpretation
before the opening of the
next part session. I haven't made this up: you can see a copy of the
original letter over at England Expects.
Re-read the letter slowly. Hans-Gert accepts that our demands for
electronic votes and for the
right to explain how we voted were perfectly legal. But he does not
ask for the rules to be
changed. He asks for the right to ignore them at his own discretion -
that is, to ignore such
requests when they come from Euro-sceptics.
His fig-leaf - more of a strawberry-leaf, really - is Rule 19 (1).
This, too, is worth quoting:
"The President shall direct all the activities of the Parliament and
its bodies under the
conditions laid down in these Rules. He shall enjoy all the powers
necessary to preside over the proceedings of Parliament and to ensure
that they are properly conducted." (Emphasis added) In other words,
the President is bound by Rule 19 to uphold the Rules of Procedure,
not allowed to set them aside as he pleases.
The whole business is outrageous. I am almost tempted to compare it to
the Nazi
Ermächtigungsgesetz - the Enabling Act of 1933 which allowed Hitler to
override parliament and the constitution. But I won't because a) it
would be disproportionate and b) it would be
terrifically rude to Hans-Gert, who lost his father in the war and
who, for all that he is
behaving appallingly on this occasion, is a decent man and a democrat.
Which is why I am so disappointed in him. He, of all people, should be
alive to the dangers of assuming discretionary powers in order to
bulldozer the law.
Let me instead quote the grand-daddy of British resistance against
Euro-totalitarianism, Edmund Burke. What most bothered him about the
French Revolution, more than its republicanism, its atheism, its
threat to the peace of Europe, was that it owned itself bound by no
law.
"They must be worse than blind who cannot see with what undeviating
regularity of system, in this case and in all cases, they pursue their
scheme for the destruction of every independent power," he wrote in
his Letters on a Regicide Peace. "Their will is the law, not only at
home, but as to the concerns of every nation. They have swept aside
the very constitutions under which Legislatures acted and the Laws
were made."
Eerily prescient, no? And what has driven the European Parliament to
these lengths? What has provoked them to tear up their own rules? A
massive filibuster that was preventing them from passing any Bills?
Hardly.
As loyal readers of this blog will know, the President of the European
Parliament already enjoys considerable discretionary powers. But MEPs
have two rights that even he cannot override: we can demand that votes
be counted electronically rather than by a show-of-hands (a slightly
slower procedure, but a more accurate one, and one that allows
everyone to see how their MEPs voted); and we can ask for the right to
explain, in not more than one minute, why we voted as we did.
A handful of pro-referendum MEPs - souverainistes from Poland and
France, Scandinavian
Left-wingers, UKIP and Conservatives from Britain, along with Jim
Allister from Northern Ireland, the most honest man in Unionist
politics - decided to make full use of both procedures in order to
protest about the cancellation of the promised referendums and the
implementation of large parts of the constitution in anticipation of
formal ratification. I have been ending every speech, in a playful
echo of Cato's "Delenda Est Carthago", with "Pacto Olisipiensis
Censenda Est" - The Lisbon Treaty must be Put to the Vote.
Two dozen MEPs making a series of one minute speeches hardly
constitutes a filibuster. At worst, we would have kept MEPs from their
lunch for half an hour and perhaps delayed the start of the afternoon
session. But even this is intolerable to the parliamentary
authorities. Blinded by their resentment of "anti-Europeans", which is
in turn a surrogate for the fear and contempt they
feel for their own electorates, they have abandoned any pretence at
legality in order to prevent
us making our point in the chamber. The very sound of someone calling
for a referendum is
offensive to their guilty ears. The sight of even so moderate and
respectable an MEP as Kathy Sinnot, an Irish disability rights
campaigner, wearing a tee-shirt with the word "REFERENDUM" has led to
her being summoned for disciplinary action.
What they really hate, my federalist colleagues, is being reminded of
the fact that they all
supported referendums until it became clear they would lose them. We
are their bad consciences, the ghosts at their feast.
To prolong the Macbeth reference a little, the shocking thing about
their behaviour is not that
they are trying to silence their critics, nor even that they are
breaking the rules - after all,
they are doing so on a much grander scale by reviving the constitution
following two "No" votes.
No, the breath-taking aspect of the whole business is that they
haven't troubled to hide the
illegality of what they're doing. They've happily put it all on paper.
As Lady Macbeth puts it:
"What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to
account?"
But there comes a point when the arrogance of power, the sense that
there is one rule for the
elites and one for everyone else, becomes intolerable. A point where
Birnam Wood starts advancing on Dunsinane. By behaving as they have,
MEPs have brought forward that moment.
It is now clear that the constitution has no legitimacy. It is
becoming clear, too that the
European Parliament has lost whatever shreds of legitimacy it might
once have had. So let me close with another prescient quotation from
Burke:
"Who that admires, and from the heart is attached, to true national
parliaments, but must turn in horror and disgust from such a profane
burlesque and parody of that sacred institution." "
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/politics/danielhannan/jan08/despotisminparliament.htm
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