Tuesday, 6 October 2015

The EU is really about the elimination of democracy

I've spent much of the day looking into yet more dimensions to the labyrinth of global entities that permeate government at every level. Conventions, committees, accords, agreements, forums - all of which have at least some legal standing in the fabric of global governance. It's difficult to know where one begins and the other ends - often with policy areas overlapping so we have WHO conclusions enacted by UNECE/FOA/UNEP/CODEX along with interjections from various UN climate forums and treaties. Everything from low emissions zones, tobacco, plastic bags, sugar levels in food, banking regulation - just to name some of the more visible aspects that intrude on our daily lives.

And that's just the visible government. So much of what government does is completely invisible not least because it works and extends liberties rather than encroaches on them. But it's that thing sat in the middle that I can't make sense of. The EU - the machine that seems to exist primarily to remove democracy from the process.

That said, the eurosceptic cry of "making our own laws" seems ever more unrealistic. When there are global problems replicated in every major city around the globe, there is every advantage in establishing global functions and sometimes giving way in the common good works to our advantage, not least in terms of the political capital it stores up for when we really want to protect our own interests.

I recently concluded that there can never truly be proper parliamentary scrutiny in this process in that parliaments can only ever deliberate over the finished product. But in that respect it, in the interests of advancing convergence, it requires that there is better consultation in the process so that such agreements do not fail.

Secondly, agreements must be piecemeal in order to increase their chances of success. This is not happening because the EU has an agenda and something to prove in honouring the promises it has made. Political expediency and vanity always come before getting the best results.

Consequently it is better if we take the EU out of the equation. What that gives us is agility in choosing which sectors we prioritise and with whom, also affording us the ability to block that which does not improve our domestic conditions. After all, who wants worse air quality regulations or less safe cars?

But again, it comes down to better consultation and greater transparency. If we examine some of these global groups, we find they consult those parties that are too large to ignore - global NGO's and corporates. They form alliances between themselves, often including smaller nations. One such example is the Cairns Group which is an amalgam of different institutions separate to the UN mechanisms. They wield great influence over technical regulations and removal of technical barriers to trade.

What's lost in this is the voice of the little guy - the people who can't afford to comply. In that, what we could do is make it a legal requirement to join a trade guild, as indeed Germany does, so that such institutions acting in a similar function to unions at the International Labour Organisation, so that they collectively produce better regulation that doesn't require a veto on the basis of protecting national interests.

In that regard, we can reduce the necessity for governmental intervention in that all parties are fairly represented. Much of this can happen by way of standards adoption without the need for the EU to rubber stamp them on our behalf.

The aim should be to create that global single market and in the process, shorten the chain of accountability. In this the EU is both and obstacle and an inhibitor in that it acts as a barrier between interest groups and those international organisations at the very top of the chain. It controls who speaks to whom and under what conditions. Kind of like a prison guard at visitor time ensuring there is no physical contact.

The delay, procrastination and gold plating that occurs inside the EU is not necessary and adds no value to the process. The conclusion of Trans-Pacific Partnership, if ratified, demonstrates that independent nations are perfectly capable of of creating alliances without the artificial edifice of the EU. Alliances are always better than bloc treaties in that they allow nations to change allegiances according to the industry they are regulating so that the best deals can be made without unfavourable compromises.

The europhile refrain is that the rest of the world are rushing to create and join trade blocs in the image of the EU, but these are free trade agreement areas rather than the surpranational entity that the EU is, with statehood ambitions. This is their fundamental dishonesty in pretending the EU is something that it isn't.

Consequently the rest of the world is free of the dogmatic idealism and hubris that has brought the European economy to its knees. While the EU is locked into a mentality of creating the grand project it can never give way to pragmatism. Meanwhile, the world is overtaking it, we're left behind and end up implementing what the rest of the world decides with neither adequate consultation or outright veto.

The reason it survives is because it bribes special interest groups with our own money, farming out rights and entitlements as though there were no unintended consequences, and the result is slower growth, fewer opportunities and less secure contracts as Europe struggles to compete. But you won't find an academic in a cosy sinecure who's opposed to receiving EU funds, nor activists in EU funded NGOs and influential think tanks. That is how they control the message and that is how they dominate media opinion.

The bottom line is the EU is the fabrication of a fictional demos to impose on a people who wouldn't want it if they were told the truth about what it is and why it exists. Had it never existed, as things stand today, nobody would bother to invent it, unless of course they wanted what the EU wants - the elimination of democracy and the end of the nation state. 

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