How independent is The Independent?

Max Kaye

Goebbels would have been proud of the FCO website - and especially of the pages dedicated to the 'reform' Treaty.

I noticed that it features comments and links from the likes of The Guardian, Denis MacShane, The Financial Times, Business for New Europe, Centre for European Reform
European Movement in the UK, etc. - all supportive of the governments view.

No contrary views or organisations (like Open Europe) are represented.

Neil, I believe there is much merit in insisting that pro-EU organisations and NGOs disclose any and all EU grants and funds they receive. Trawling through their annual reports dosn't yeild much clarity. Perhaps someone has the facts to hand.

Neil O'Brien

Good idea - There are also an incredible number of EU-funded academics in the UK, many of whom by coincidence seem to churn out loads of stuff on why the EU needs more powers... if a big corporation was funding hundreds of academics there would rightly be a huge outcry but the EU doing the same thing is supposedly fine...

Lee Jakeman

Religion has always played an important role in European civilisation. With the decline of religion, a vacuum was created and intellectuals across the continent started clamouring for SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN. Enter socialist ideology, which has filled this vacuum and the result is that we now have socialist bigots dominating our lives instead of religious ones. And like most uncritical believers everywhere, they are quite happy to go along with the "doctrine of the month", whether it be the EU Reform Treaty, Global Warming or "Celebrate Diversity". One day, there will be a modern equivalent of Martin Luther, who will nail his list of grievances to the door of the socialist church. This is already happening now and the Guardian, the Independent, the Labour Party and the BBC are all terrified of it.

Charlie Beckett, POLIS, LSE

Dear Neil, I personally disagree almost entirely with you about Europe but congratulate you on a magnificent piece of media criticism.

Mark

I'm very pro-European Union, but standards of journalism have slipped horribly in the last year or so at the Indie ... I used to read it daily, I can't remember the last time i picked one up.

michael dearden

Apart from trade and the fact that politicians of all hue like to get their faces deep in the Eu trough; what is the point of being in the EU for the normal population? I wish someone could give me a rational answer.

David Lindsay

To make up for this, the Independent should do one of its often quite good front pages on neglected corners of the world, specifically on the number of MEPs and members of the Council of Ministers (including the fact that that Council meets in secret and publishes no Official Report) who are Stalinists, Trotskyists, neo-Fascists, neo-Nazis, members of Eastern Europe's kleptomaniac nomenklatura, or supporters of the theory that the the Provisional Army Council of the IRA is the sovereign body throughout Ireland. The rise of neoconservatism in those fora (headed by the erstwhile Maoist - yes, Maoist!- who went on to be the ardently "free"-marketeering and pro-Bush Prime Minister of Portugal before being wafted into the the Presidency of the European Commission), and of its redoutable Islamist ally (now there's a whole series in itself) in the Turkish Caliphate, could also do with an airing, taking in the strong Eurofederalism, under overall American control, of the British neocons organised in and as the Henry Jackson Society. It has always baffled me that support for the cession of power to these people, and for the sorts of electoral system that throw them up, are presented as centrist causes. They could not be further from such. So, over to the Independent?

albert hammond bootleg

m dearden: I completely agree with you, what is the point. Norway gets the benifits without the subscription (tax payer funded of course). Snouts in the trough classes, bureaucratic self interest. etc.. etc, oooh it boils me piss!!

Pete Simpson

The Independent does boast Robert Fisk, one of the finest foreign reporters working in the British media, and a critical commentator on the way mainstream media so often slavishly channel government propaganda. Fisk says of his employer: "I don't work for Colin Powell, I work for a British newspaper called The Independent; if you read it, you'll find that we are." ('Live From Iraq, an Un-Embedded Journalist', Democracy Now!, March 25, 2003). Its time for Fisk to move on, but where?

Max Kaye

Fisk should join al Jazeera - it's his natural home.

Scary Biscuits

Pete, I would have thought that having a term of abuse coined after one of your journalists is hardly something to be proud of. Perhaps Fisk would be better with al Jaz: at least it would be obvious then whose side he is on, rather than pretending to be independent.

Frank Keoghan

What the Renamed EU Constitutional Treaty would do: 1. Giving the EU a Federal State Constitution: The treaty would establish a legally new European Union, quite different from what we call the EU at present, with the constitutional form of a supranational Federal State that would be separate from and superior to its Member States, just as the USA is separate from and superior to California, Texas etc. It would do this in three key legal steps: (a) establishing a new European Union with its own legal personality and distinct corporate existence for the first time; (b) abolishing the distinction between the supranational and intergovernmental "pillars" of the two existing European Treaties, so that all powers of government can be exercised by the new Union, either actually or potentially, through a uniform constitutional structure; and (c) making us all real citizens of this new Union for the first time, rather than just notional or honorary EU "citizens" as at present, for one can only be a citizen of a State. 2. Abolishing the national veto in 68 new areas or matters: the new Treaty would introduce qualified majority voting(QMV) on the EU Council of Ministers for 68 areas or matters for the first time - 48 of these referring to new areas of EU law-making and 20 to a shift from unanimity to majority-voting for existing EU legal bases. That would remove the national veto for these 68 areas or matters. This figure of 68 compares with 46 areas or matters moved to QMV by the 2002 Treaty of Nice, 24 by the 1998 Treaty of Amsterdam, 30 by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty on European Union, 12 by the 1987 Single European Act and 38 by the original 1957 Treaty of Rome and its associated Treaties. Each of these shifts of power from the national to the supranational level entails a shift from the Legislative arm of government to the Executive arm and from elected national Parliaments and citizens to Government Ministers and senior civil servants. They hollow out our democracy further. 3. Giving more voting power to the Big States: The new Treaty would introduce a new voting system on the Council of Ministers, making population size a key criterion, which would particularly advantage big States like Germany and reduce the influence of smaller ones like Ireland. 4. Removing the right to a permanent EU Commissioner: It would remove the right of each Member State to have an EU Commissioner for two out of every three Commission terms, i.e. for five years out of every 15. Big States would lose their right to a permanent Commissioner also, but they have other means of exerting their influence on this body which proposes all EU laws. Having a permanent Commissioner has always been recognised as much more important for smaller States like Ireland. 5. Giving the EU the final power to decide our rights: The new Treaty would give the EU the final power to decide our human and civil rights in all areas of EU law, including Member States when implementing EU law, which now constitutes the greater part of our laws each year. This would make the EU Court of Justice rather than the Irish Supreme Court, or the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the final decider of our rights in many areas. The EU Court of Justice would be more remote, slower to work and more expensive for citizens to get to as they seek to establish their rights. 6. A self-amending Treaty: The new Treaty would contain a mechanism enabling qualified majority voting to be sustituted for unanimity in eight policy areas by decision of EU governments, without need for new treaties or referendums.