The EU has moved on from 1983

William Blakes Ghost

I thought we were interetd in the Post Bureaucratic Age. Why are we even bothering with the most superfluous and pointless of bureacracies? Just scrap it.......

djw2009

Well, Daniel Korski, none of your ancestors were English, and you are rather quick to dismiss our nation's sovereignty. We managed well enough for thousands of years without European Union - I think we can still do so, whatever your pretensions to global government. Why does the Spectator employ you?

Chris

>In fact, few modern diplomatic souses act like a Hyacinth Bucket caricature.

Shurely shpoushesh? Ed.

ajs

Sorry, Mr Korski, your presentation just does not persuade; that of Mr Walden (who, I think you would admit, has a great deal more direct experience than you in these areas) rings to me as more likely accurate.

Publius

Korski writes:
"where EU member-states trash [sic] out a common view"

Yes, quite.

Liz Brown

What, if anything, has this got to do with Cameron being 17 at the time. A huge number of the population was 17 at the time. Has this now become a crime?

Verity

What a load of mind-boggling rubbish.

There is absolutely not only no need, but no justification, for the massive superstructure feeding of the working masses of European and British taxpayers. The whole thing is a USSR construct and just as malign in its intent as was the USSR and is to elevate and benefit the few.

How is it that Norway and Switzerland are prospering and yet have firmly held their skirts away from this vile, unnecessary, unwanted burrow of chancers?

The only way to get totally shot of it is to raze it to the ground, otherwise you will have residual rats skittering round the empty corridors forevermore, trying to rebuild it.

In2minds

"A good example is in Skopje where the EU's man works with all the present European ambassadors - coordinating positions, responding to their input, representing their views - but is seen by them as the primus inter pares. When tough messages have to be sent to the Skopje government, the EU's man joins forces with the US ambassador. He needs the local European ambassadors and they find that he helps them advance their goals better than they can without him".

My eyes are filled with tears of joy! Mind you any ambassador that can't present their own views, tough message or no, is a waste of space and fit only to work in some capacity related to the EU.

Jean Monnet

Mr Korski, your beloved European Union cannot have a coherent foreign policy and so it should not have embassies or flunkeys in third countries. If you think the EU can have a foreign policy, tell us - for example - how you can reconcile the French attitude to Turkey's EU accession with HMG's attitude. You can't square the circle. And you can't fool us.

"Where EU member states trash out a common view" is one of your better spelling mistakes: it makes sense.

Vulture

If, as it appears, the EU are paying your wages today, Herr Korski, (since this is the second piece on the subject you have filed), I suggest they fork out for a spelling lesson too: its Eurosceptic, not Euroskeptic.

And what is 'the Skopje government'? If you are talking about Macedonia, why don't you just say so?

A final question: what makes you think that anyone on Coffee House is remotely interested in the rubbish you churn out at such indigestible length - beyond being a subject for harmless hilarity? And something tells me you don't have a sense of humour. As Mark Twain remarked, the German sense of humour is no laughing matter.

djw2009

Funny how comments on this article are being deleted - the Speccie wants our EU propaganda to get through somehow I suppose. Next thing you know, we'll all be voting Conservative!

David Alexander

Fascinating.

.........commissions, delegations, ambassadors, rotating Presidents. On and on the list goes, all jobs for over-educated statists paid for by those doing real work.

Hysteria

"where EU member-states trash out a common view"

an interesting typo.......

radgie gadgie

'The EU has moved on from 1983'

Indeed, and without me having any democratic say in it. All the EAS does is confirm that, as well as being disenfrachised politically on domestic issues, I'm now disenfranchised internationally - thanks to the likes of political pygmies like tony, dave, john and margaret.

Daniel Korski

Vulture

Your comments are getting crazier and crazier. German? EU funding? Do you know something about my geneology and my paymasters I dont?

Daniel

TomTom

The EU foreign service will be functional when Italian and Spanish soldiers are ready to die to protect British interests in The Falklands.... So far only the Waffen-SS has succeeded in building a fighting European Army....

Sir Graphus

More importantly, the EU has moved a long way since 1974 (or was it 1975, no matter). This was the last time anyone in the UK was given any a direct say in the EU. This means that no-one under the age of 54 has had any say on this organisation which has assumed control of so much of our government. This is shocking.

In hindsight, Maastricht would have been a good opportunity. At the very least, as it has been shown, it's a pretty good bargaining chip for the populace to reject a treaty 1st time of asking.

Another good time to offer the people a referendum is when you've made it a specific manifesto promise.

Vulture

@M.Korski>

Your reaction proves my point abt your sense of humour ( lack thereof!)

In English, we call it 'a wind-up'.

Alles klar? Wunderbar!

Yow Min Lye

"Never a United States of Europe, heaven forbid" says Mr Korski; who then goes on talk about EU 'ambassadors' and 'an EU diplomatic service' "taking instructions from Brussels". Priceless!

As for a zero-sum games, isn't that what EU 'competences' are all about? If the EU bureaucracy assumes a 'competence' (as it has with trade or agriculture, for instance) then the member states no longer get to exercise it. Sounds pretty zero-sum to my simple understanding.

Olaf Rye

What exactly are the interests of the EU that require separate representation ? I never understood why we need to share political, judicial and regulatory structures to engage in free trade and why there are such complex subsidy agreements. The sole European ideology that is on offer to export is taxation, regulation, bureaucracy and a spineless morality that keeps it from spending properly on its forces and deploying its troops abroad. Look at how inept the EU was in Yugoslavia and how inept it is in dealing with Iran, Darfur, etc.

Andy Leeds

Sir Graphus is quite right. The EU has moved along since 1974. It is time we, the people had a say. I would vote to leave the EU which everyday get to be more and more like a Fascist State.

denis cooper

You confuse me, Daniel.

On Thursday, "Federalism is dead"; earlier today "I am not a fan of the ECR", and clearly you would have preferred it if the Tory MEPs had stayed in the federalist EPP; now it turns out that as long ago as 1983 the EU was "a loose federation of states" (the EU didn't even exist in 1983, but let that pass); and since then it has "moved on" from that loose federation "towards a new kind of polity"; but "never a United States of Europe, heaven forbid".

Why do you say "heaven forbid" a United States of Europe?

Surely that's exactly what you want, and all the rest is just intended as a smokescreen?

Iconoclast

Sir Graphus
March 16th, 2010 5:55pm

"More importantly, the EU has moved a long way since 1974 (or was it 1975, no matter). This was the last time anyone in the UK was given any a direct say in the EU."

It was 1973 when a conservative govt took us in. And you've also forgotten the mid seventies Referendum which was conclusively in favor of staying in. In the 37 years that have elapsed since then the Conservatives have been in power for 20 of them without any notable deceleration of integration, rather the opposite in fact. The reason is simple. You can't be a half member of a club and have any influence on its rule making process. Logic dictates you're either in or out. And it's this essential unrealism by folks like your that makes EU membership so totally debilitating for any conservative admin because there is absolutely no way any conservative leadership is EVER going to take Britain out because EU membership is the central fact of Britain's diplomatic, economic and social existence!! But by all means carry on nursing your fantasies if it make you happy.

Boudicca

The EU might have moved on, but it hasn't done it with the approval of the people of Europe has it.

It has 'moved on' by ignoring the wishes of the electorates; by denying them a say in the future of their nations and by deliberately avoiding popular votes which it knew it would lose.

The EU is an anti-Democratic monster. I want no part of it. I wish at least one credible Party in the UK would stand up for this country and say enough is enough - we want our sovereignty back.

Marcher Baron

"And you've also forgotten the mid seventies Referendum which was conclusively in favor of staying in." It was in favour of staying in the COMMON MARKET, iconoclast. The nomenclature EU was not in use. I should know - I voted. Nowhere was there any mention of the superstate the EU has become.

Verity

iconoclast - or may I call you, a newcomer to these parts, Troll?

Norway and Switzerland, both of whom had the political nous to stay the hell out, are prospering. Unlike Britain and the rest of the EU.

Kennybhoy

Further to Verity's 12:13 am post above and to my own post over at the "ECR’s record so far".

Is "Iconoclast" Daniel Korski in disguise?

Is oor Daniel trolling his own posts? LOL!

Dorothy Wilson

Do you follow the continental press Daniel? Let me give you some leads:

"Built on a lie: The Fundamental Flaw of Europe's Common Currency" Der Spiegel.

"Did the authors of the Lisbon Treaty fool themselves? A hundred days after the birth of the 'newly formulated ' union, Europe is struggling to make its voice heard, and the confusion .... has increased at the top." Le Figaro.

"Nightmare Lisbon Treaty" headline in FT Deutschland.

denis cooper

Correct, Marcher Baron, the nomenclature "EU" could not come into use before the Maastricht Treaty on European Union::

"By this Treaty, the HIGH CONTRACTING PARTIES establish among themselves a EUROPEAN UNION, hereinafter called ‘the Union’.

This Treaty marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizen."

That came into force in November 1993.

In the 1975 retrospective referendum we voted on this question:

"Do you think the UK should stay in the European Community (Common Market)?"

after Heath had broken his 1970 general election manifesto pledge and bounced us into it in 1972, with effect from January 1st 1973.

The government pamphlet urging a "yes" vote, which was delivered to very household, is here:

http://www.harvard-digital.co.uk/euro/pamphlet.htm

and it's easy to discover that there were 49 references to "the Common Market", "the Market", etc, 16 references to the "European Community", "the Community", etc, and of course none to "the EU".

Iconoclast

Marcher Baron
March 16th, 2010 11:50pm

"It was in favour of staying in the COMMON MARKET, iconoclast. The nomenclature EU was not in use."

.....I notice you don't address the substance of my comment preferring to focus on distinctions without a difference.....No conservative govt has(they had 20 years!) or ever will leave the EU for the very good reason it would be economic and diplomatic suicide.....And those who think Britain's economic, geopolitical and demographic situation is remotely similar to those of Norway or Switzerland obviously have only a tenuous contact with reality.....and then of course there's also the fact that Norwegian/Swiss statesmen (Socialist or Conservative) don't consider themselve world "players."......Thus the personal and the public conspire to ensure that no conservative leader will leave the EU and the issue will continue to be a spectre at any conservative feast...boom... boom!

Sir Graphus

Your arguments for staying in or out are not quite relevant, iconoclast. The point we're making is about the scandal that the people have never been asked. Despite a pretty specific promise, I should add.