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2007 – Year of the Constitution

JURIST lays out the planned outline of the latest attempt to revive the European Constitution. In tandem with the actions of Chirac to publicise EU actions that demonstrate a defence against socialisation, the leaders of France and Germany wish to revise the first two chapters and submit these revised parts of the Constitution to referenda in France and the Netherlands.The third chapter would be ratified by the respective Parliaments of the two countries.

Christian Democratic politicians from Berlin, Paris and the European Parliament were holding confidential talks to restart talks on the failed attempt to ratify a constitution for the European Union, according to reports in Der Spiegel magazine.

The group includes German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Jacques Chirac, and other conservative EU leaders, the magazine reported.

This plan will be taken up by the German Presidency of the European Union in 2007. Just imagine the pressure on a British Prime Minister when twenty four have ratified and we have not. No doubt the Liberal Democrats and Europhiles will construct some face-saving routine that allows the politicians to avoid holding a referendum here.

Separate referenda for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: vote for the Constitution to save the Union?

33 comments to 2007 – Year of the Constitution

  • Billll

    ” the leaders of France and Germany wish to revise the first two chapters and submit these revised parts of the Constitution to referenda in France and the Netherlands.The third chapter would be ratified by the respective Parliaments of the two countries.”

    ..and the other six leather-bound volumes would remain sibstantially the same. Trust us.

  • Uain

    As a Yank, I just have one question;
    Is there a Bill of Rights in the Euro constitution so that you all will at least be able to check off the Rights that the EU-niks might eventually seek to relieve you of?

  • mbe

    Did anyone notice this story today?

  • Verity

    Yanks are so ethnocentric.

    Why not keep up?

  • Chris Harper

    Uwain,

    There is a multipage document called “The Charter of Fundamental Rights” which is incorporated into the Constitution. However, like the European Convention on Human Rights, it is a wishy washy document and its provisions are surrounded by so many ifs, buts and caveats that, like the Convention, it is nigh on useless as a restraint on government.

  • Verity

    “We don’t want to look as though we want to create one through the back door.” – Department for Constitutional Affairs spokesman.

    OK, I would like the death penalty for the unnamed little dickshit who uttered this sentence. I would be prepared to perform it myself. In fact, it would be my pleasure.

    Little unnamed dickshit thinks the “government” (Tessa Jowell still has a job – the latest disgraced minister Tony Blair stands behind, all the better to push them off the bridge) is going to create an entire British constitution out of playdough, but doesn’t want anyone to think it’s been done in haste?

    Name the time and the place and I’ll be there. With a weapon.

  • Verity

    “Writing a quick, simple guide to this tangled mess will be quite the task.

    “It’s obvious that the very need for a guide to our constitution demonstrates the requirement for a clear and transparent constitution, one that British citizens will be able to access quickly and easily.”

    Hello? “British citizens” – oh, how nouveau! – “should be able to access quickly and easily”?

    This is our ancient constitution, hammered into place by our ancestors over hundreds of years and the Labour Internationalist party wants to make it “accessible”? In other words not complicated and surrounded by steel fences? Accessible to Duwayne and Prince-S Traci between retrieving their emails?

    Like, a couple of cool statements about rights. Le mot des nos jours.

    God, I’m glad I’m out of that dump. It wasn’t easy to go – it was distressing and when the plane lifted off, with my two cats in the hold – a big commitment – all I could think of was, “I will never go back.” And it broke my heart.

  • Nick M

    Verity,
    The NewLab types (and many others – I’m not even gonna mention the LibDims – because I have to spit on the floor each time I do that, and it’s not good for the carpet) are obsessed by the idea that they can legislate people’s happiness (and if the people aren’t happy with it, it’s their own fault).

    They don’t understand that the ancient, evolutionary process by which the British Constitution has been hammered out is one of the major reasons for the relative stability and freedom Brits have enjoyed over a long period of time. I suspect Blair et al. have no sense of history apart from a ravenous desire to go down in it themselves. A desire that blinds them to the possibility of making huge mistakes. Because our constitution goes way back, people care about it. American’s care about theirs too, because it marked the foundation of their nation. Nobody will ever care about a constitution (however loftily worded – and it won’t be – it’ll read like a Nissan brochure) which was created to please self-serving bureaucrats in Brussels and the ego of His Toniness. Nobody will have fought and died for the “freedoms” enshrined therein (apart from some copy-typists who expired from sheer boredom).

    You can take Tony out of student politics, but you can’t take student politics outta Tony. He still things he’s running the Islington Popular Front.

    So, you’re an expat Brit? Where you living now?

  • permanent expat

    Verity: “Snap”
    I’m far too tired to explode on this one.

  • permanent expat

    Admin: 404s continue unabated, I fear.

  • Robert Schwartz

    Uwain:

    EUnics will have the right to cable TV and the right to have their apartment painted every three years. The only right they will not have is the Second Amendment.

    If you want to amuse yourself sometime, find a copy of the old Soviet Constitution on the net. It is a hoot. BTW, it does not have a Second Amendment either.

    Coincidence? I think not.

  • Verity AND Nick M: snap…I almost did.

    The odious person (with clipped fingernails) made a very “Islamofascit scholar” statement – not looking like they are doing it by the back door (aim of phrase – bluff people they are not), but in truth doing so while not exactly lying about it.

    We need a B-S/”Disingenuity Blaise” Podcast to put on record all such sprechen zie/ge- NueArbeit (Macht Frei) nonsense, alongside all the Islamofascitic “nuclear research for peace = blowing up infidels” claptrap.

  • [i]EU actions that demonstrate a defence against socialisation[/i]

    I guess you mean Globalisation.
    But it does still kind of work since this will be mainly to attempt defend the welfare state. And the welfare state certainly does discourage from the adoption of the behavior patterns of the surrounding culture. At least the beneficial ones.

  • rosignol

    I actually downloaded the “Charter of Rights and Freedoms” and had a look at it.

    Article 7: “Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications.”

    What does that mean? Are they trying to put Fleet Street out of business?

    Article 8, first item: “Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.”

    Does that mean people storing that data need to keep it on a RAID, or make regular backups?

    Article 8, third item: “Compliance with these rules shall me subject to control by an independent authority.”

    Independent of what? Oversight?

    Article 23: Equality between men and women must be ensured in all areas, encluding employment, work and pay.

    The principle of equality shall not prevent the maintenance or adoption of measures providing for specific advantages in favour of the under-represented sex.

    ROFL!

    So the EU is going to provide for specific advantages in favor of male strippers, then?

    Article 41: Right to good administration

    No comment.

    ….and of course, my favorite:

    Article 52: Scope of guaranteed rights

    1. Any limitation on the exercise of the rights and freedoms recognised by this Charter must be provided for by law and respect the essence of those rights and freedoms. Subject to the principle of proportionality, limitations may be made only if they are necessary and genuinely meet objectives of general interest recognised by the Union or the need to protect the rights and freedoms of others. […etc…]

    —–

    In summary: that ‘inviolable’ right of human dignity described in Article 1, the prohibition of the death penalty in Article 2, the ‘right to the integrity of the person’ in Article 3, the “prohibition of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” described in Article 4, and possibly even the “prohibition of slavery and forced labour” (and all the rest) might concievably be ‘modified’ so long as those modifications ‘are necessary and genuinely meet objectives of general interest recognised by the Union’….

    At least they’re being upfront about it.

    One question- what “objectives of general interest” does the EU recognize?

  • Nick M

    rosignol,
    Good points. that’s why I like the traditional British system whereby precedent has been buiilt up over centuries. The old fashioned system thus includes specific rulings rather than vague, infinitely interpretable and possible contradictory statements.

    I’m in favour of compulsory RAID. I’d make a fortune fitting all those drives. I’d have to wait for the quango to report on whether the EU would be requiring SATA or IDE though.

  • Alfred E. Neuman

    Nick M, doesn’t RAID only go with SCSI or SATA?

    Though you limeys may like the concept of an unwritten, precedent-based constitution, in practice it seems like a written, enumerated constitution holds up over time better against the attacks of statists.

  • rosignol

    Nick M, doesn’t RAID only go with SCSI or SATA?

    Depends on how old your hardware is.

    Though you limeys may like the concept of an unwritten, precedent-based constitution, in practice it seems like a written, enumerated constitution holds up over time better against the attacks of statists.

    I concur. For something that important, it seems only prudent to get it in writing. Tho I must admit I’m not really comfortable with this all-powerful parliament thing, either. Depending on the decency and self-restraint of politicians just strikes me as being a bad bet in the long run.

  • Verity

    Why are we still in the 404 Error Twilight Zone?

  • David

    A written constitution may be the answer (or may not – I don’t profess to know the correct answer here). Now however, is most certainly not the time to institute one. With the political class we have today both in the UK and in the EU any constitutional document they may come up with will be complete and unadulterated piffle.

    We need people of vision and intelligence to construct such a document, indeed we would need true Statesmen (not statists). People of such stature do not exist in Westminster or Brussels at this point in history.

  • Sounds like you British folks could use a written constitution with a clause that establishes that Britain will forever be independent of foreign control. Or is it too late for that provision to be accepted any more?

  • Nick M

    We could adopt the new Iraqi constitution, they don’t seem too keen on it.

  • Midwesterner

    Seems to me it would be a terrible time to lock in the status quo. I think the time to “put it in writing” is past.

    At least with the present system, if a complacent-masses disturbing system failure occurs, you still have the traditional precedent based system to fall back to.

  • Verity

    We do not need to come up with a new constitution. We just need to write down the one we have already got.

  • Verity – this will give them the opportunity to reword it in NeuArbeitgesprechen, with all those vague, devious non-statements that allow them all sorts of get-outs, while keeping lawyers and courts busy busy busy!

  • Nick M

    They could give it to John Prescott to do. Then it would be truly incomprehensible, and possibly in crayola.

  • Verity

    TimC – Yes, you’re right. And it would all be explained away hissily by Tony Blair on chat show couches. “We’re just tidying up a lot of the repetitions. Look – when you have laws going back for hundreds of year, you’re going to have to untangle a lot of things. We’re not changing anything.” (Time out for hysterical laughter from audience.)

    Who was that woman who used to play a middle aged talk show host? Mrs Merton? Wouldn’t you love to see Blair interviewed by her?

  • I would suggest that they edit the thing with a shredder.

  • Verity

    Mitch – That could work.

  • Paul

    I tried to read the proposed EU constitution the last time it came up, but simply couldn’t plow through the acres of weasel worded newspeak. This document seemed devoid of absolutes.

    For instance, the first ammendment to the United States Constitution says:

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

    That’s definate, it’s abolute. To wit, it’s an absolute prohibition imposed on the government, forbidding it to interfere with the mentioned rights. You folks need
    this sort of thing in your constitution. Even with the very clear, direct language used, our politicians spend most of their time trying to do things expressly forbidden to them by our founding document. They’ve managed to erode our protections to an alarming degree, but the situation would be much worse if the Constitution weren’t so intractably worded.

    The EU constitution I skimmed was a remarkably plastic, malleable, foggy affair. Trying to get any definate meaning from it would be like trying to nail jelly to the wall.

    I’m no constitutional scholar (which I’m sure is painfully obvious) but it seems to me that a constitution should be a framework for the government. A brief outline of the duties, a strong wall to keep government from oozing in where it shouldn’t, and you’re done.

    What do you folks think? Am I off base on this?

  • Joshua

    What do you folks think? Am I off base on this?

    Throw in the very basic operating procedures (I’m a big fan of separation of powers, for example – and for that to work some procedures have to be outlined in the Constitution), and I completely agree with you.

  • simon

    The Brussels bureaucrats don’t care if we agree to this constitution or not. Whatever happens they’ll still be there, devising plans, strategies, constitutions and laws that nobody needs except them to justify their existence. Even if they run out of ideas for a time they keep a few in reserve, like the conversion of our road signs to kilometers which the Euro-luantic Lord Kinnock was heard to mention a few weeks ago.

  • Patrick

    The post and comments are based, however, on a false premise: the ratification by the other countries. In case anyone forgets, the real problem in France was the weakness of Ch III, not its presence.

    I think you can all sleep easy(ier, you are still in the EU) for a decade or two – and who knows, by then the Poles and their friends might have transformed the EU!

  • Alorac Arucsbo

    The Brussels bureaucrats don’t care if we agree to this constitution or not. Whatever happens they’ll still be there, devising plans, strategies, constitutions and laws that nobody needs except them to justify their existence.

    Well, at least some of them care — why do you guys have to be so dogmatic about it? Commissioner Wallstrom, for example, has actually set up her own blog which is open to ALL views — and she actually reads the stuff and comments on it.

    Of course the Eurocrats are often it it just for the money but I think Wallstrom really is an exception. If you don’t believe me, have a peek at her website — you’ll find it here.