Home page Why no one knows what is in the EU Treaty This week's Economist (Oct 25th 2007) has an article entitled, "The European Treaty - Give Europe a say." in which it refers to an illustration of a pipe under which René Magritte, the Belgian surrealist artist1 had written “Ceci n'est pas une pipe”, "This is not a pipe". The point being made by the Economist was that European "leaders" by "...(changing) the odd phrase, muddled the odd concept and presented the Lisbon “reform treaty” to the world, (and) boldly declaring “Ceci n'est pas une constitution”, "This is not a constitution", they have attempted to negate any need for difficult referenda. Thus the subtitle of the article, "Sneaking a constitution through on the sly is a bad idea for all Europeans." The Economist, like Real News, always thought the best place for the old Constituional draft was the waste bin. But it would seem that the Economist has not fully explored the implications of the current state of affairs. It so happens that the illustration referred to, the pipe, shown on the right, is often cited by General Semanticists2 whose concern is the conveying of reality (the state of affairs) to people. So the more common phrase, "The map is not the territory" sets out more clearly the true significance of a "representation" of something as never being able to convey to the public what it will signify in practice. But it gets worse. Each politician will extoll aspects of the Treaty to signify different things in practice whereas in reality they have absolutely no idea what these will be. Because words convey a specific notion then the treaty might indeed apply that notion in some tangible act but no one knows what the outcome will be in practice. Indeed, what each part of the treaty means in practice might well be opposed by those who today are enthusiastic about its content because they assume what is written means something else in practice. Although this is beginning to sound like a riddle, this is a true description of how all advances in the legal framework of the European Union have taken place. No one knows what is in the EU Treaty By avoiding referenda political parties have not been required to explain, in greater detail, implications. This means they have avoided public complaints when invariably the practical implementations do not match what was promised. As a result, the largest Union of so-called democratic nations, advances legislation and the rule of law on the basis of a little-disguised fraud whose continued operation requires that the people of Europe are never provided with the opportunity to express their opinion. This sets no example to the rest of the world on how the political parties in so-called democratic nations should behave. If an arbitrary form of decision-making can provide the basis for dictating the "advance" of the Union how can Europe ever pass judgement on such political systems as Russia or China who operate in a similar top down manner. It is remarkable how the European Commission and the member state political parties have so sapped the energy of the European public by frustrating any attempts at successful participatory European democracy and therefore turning what should have been a process built on public enthusiasm into one characterised by apathy and a lack of public interest. There is a suffocating momentum which moves forwards on the basis of a mass imposition by leaders, so-called, who deem such moves to have been "successfully accepted" while not troubling themselves with the detail that this advance depends upon a deplorable level of mass resignation on the part of the people of Europe. What we are witnessing, now more obviously than before, is the old form of European collectivism under which a clique make the decisions irrespective of the democratic rights of the people. Herein lies an evil which is slowly stoking the embers, smoldering away building up an increasing level of resentment on the part of an increasingly marginalised population; this represents a great danger. Locational-state theory3 shows that all individuals and politicians possess a unique but limited personal experience. Examples of limitations in experience include the fact that there are no former specific examples of the application of relevant treaty content. In addition, all European Union member state political parties lack the intellectual critical mass to be in a position to clarify the practical significance of all aspects of the Treaty. Indeed, no one, including the "leaders", so-called, knows the practical implications of what is in the Treaty. This has a particular significance for the people of Britain because the difficulty of determining the true significance of the so-called opt-ins and opt-outs assumed by the British government. Accordingly Europe fumbles and stumbles on. This unfair process will continue up until a point at which the people of Europe will react to too many unexpected things happening in practice which their politicians never explained or expected or in reality did not understood and yet were collectively arrogant enough to draft and accept decisions without reference to the people of Europe. Recent practical examples from past treaties which were considered to be of no significance include the increasing mass migration within the EU causing upset in local British communities, overloading public services such as education and health and stretching housing capacity. A recent unravelling of a hidden reality is the fact that people in Britain are beginning to realise that EU migrant workers can participate in local elections and begin to shape things in their interests rather than those of the local British communities. What is beginning to take on the form of a mild chaos resulting directly from the Rule of European Law could end up in considerably more social and political chaos leading to a rejection and therefore reversal of several aspects of European Union integration (see "EU immigration - Transition or a failing state?"). Crumbling legal edifice When it comes to the rule of law Europe has a system of decision-making very different from the British approach to freedom and law. There are no concepts of decisions being taken without a reasonable doubt. There is no role for the community conscience in the form of a jury, even in human rights cases. Judges take decisions through majority vote in small panels and no dissenting opinions are recorded. The problem with this random system of small panels is that since the last two enlargements, some 37% of the judges in the European Courts are from countries where the independence of the judiciary are wide open to question with their traditions of one-party states with the police, judges, politicians and the intelligence services working to fix whatever and whoever they chose. It is this system whose partcipants survive with their old connections and contacts who formerly were carting innocents off to the Soviet Gulag and then ensuring that those who returned kept their mouths shut. Such people today, citizens of Europe, continue to live in fear of the state. The panel system is wide open to abuse depending upon the proportion of judges selected who come from former one-party totalitarian states on the one hand or "Old Europe" on the other. This compromised and politicised system of judicial interpretation and decisions on European Law is a direct outcome of the last two rushed and shambolic EU enlargements where no effective efforts was made to ensure that governments and the judiciary were observing European Law before accession (the Madrid Conditions 4). Having attained "full membership" of the EU it is now no longer feasible to do anything to reverse this decadence in the judicial system. Accordingly the assurances by British government ministers as to the security of their red lines, opt-ins and opt-outs has no basis in fact because the facts in practice these will depend on the interpretation of a judicial system whose standards of independence and impartiality have been compromised by political party influence. The extraordinary state of affairs is that such decisions will not be able to be appealed even by the British government who in various forms have willingly colluded with other European governments to submit national Law to the "supremacy" of an arbitrary European Law and increasingly decadent European Courts. The self-centred British political parties have placed their parochial interests in gaining and reamining in power ahead of the interests of the people of Britain. They have not distinguished themselves from the political parties of the European Member States who treat the people of their countries, the people of Europe, as an ignorant rabble. This decadent, arrogant and abusive behaviour will surely result in the European political party system paying a heavy price. 1 René François Ghislain Magritte, Belgian, November 21, 1898 – August 15, 1967. 2 The theory of General Semantics was developed by Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski (1879-1950) was born in Warwsaw, Poland and died in Lakeville, Connecticut, USA. In terms of applying our minds actively to agreement which requires thought, he advised that there are two ways to get through life without thinking are to believe everything or to doubt everything. This seems to parallel the general approach on the part of most to Europe with no one in fact delving into the reality. But by dedicating ourselves to thinking he observed that in the (then) twentieth century, that the quarrels between two lovers, two mathematicians, two nations, two economic systems, usually assumed insoluble in a finite period should exhibit one mechanism, the semantic mechanism of identification - the discovery of which makes universal agreement possible, in mathematics and in life. 3 Locational-State Theory was developed by Hector Wetherell McNeill (1944- ). It is a method of dimensions which measures the cumulative experience of each individual based upon their movement through time and location and the events associated with each location which shape experience and outlook. The theory establishes that each person is unique whilst at the same time lacking some aspects of experience which others have whereas no one can ascertain exactly what aspects of experience have influenced each person or to what extent. On the other had there is a general reality (General Semantic) resulting from the interaction of people which no one thoroughly understands. This is why politicians cannot be relied upon to "explain" the implications of a complex set of laws yet to be applied and for which there is no previous general or personal experience in application. 4 The Madrid Conditions for EU Accession require/d that any applicant country needed to transcribe core European legislation onto their statute books and, in addition, the governments and the judiciary had to be seen to be observing and exercising European Law before EU accession conditions could be deemed to have been met. Most of the goverments concerned failed to satisfy such requirements as a result of misleading European Commission Department of Englargement "Progress Reports". This was particularly true under European Law concerning human rights of minorities including such matters as discrimination, segregation and denial of education and professional training and the judicial systems failed to act to bring such abuse to an end. This non-observation of European Law, which continues to this day, was a direct result of the European Commission failing to act on its mandate as the Guardian of the European Treaties as well as not ensuring that all accession conditions were met. Posted: 26th October, 2007