EUskeptical
Diplomad
From the Vice Chief Diplomad for European Affairs:
From within Europe, the EU faces increasing numbers of opponents, including some well-organized ones. Probably more than ten percent of the European Parliament elected this past summer represent "Euroskeptics," although Diplomads wonder how many of these are turning down the very healthy salary and benefits packages the EP offers in exchange for little real work (Note: Everybody has a price.)
A good window on this Euroskeptic world is the United Kingdom Independence Party, which has a website and at the bottom right there's a link to their list of top-ten reasons the UK should pull out of the EU. They're good reasons from a Brit perspective, mainly having to do with loss of national identity, net loss of money, too much political correctness, and stifling bureaucracy. Elsewhere on the site is a great quotable quote:
"The EU has shown itself to be one of the largest confidence tricks in human history. It claims to 'give us rights' while removing basic freedoms. It 'gives us money' while costing us billions of pounds per year. EU subsidies are like crumbs from the cake we have made. The UKIP rejects the absurd Alice-in-Euroland logic of rule from Brussels. "
The UKIPers and their sister parties and movements around Europe can be expected to campaign aggressively during 2005 each time a member country puts the new draft EU constitution up for a referendum. Mainstream EU leaders can be expected not only to campaign on the constitution's behalf, but also find ways to change the rules when member- country electorates reject it. Just like the EU changed the rules on its no-more-than-three-percent-of-GDP-annual-deficit rule when Germany and France both broke the rules. The pro-EU crowd never accepts "no" for an answer; any electorate brave enough to vote "no" will undoubtedly continue to get hit with referendum after referendum, until it votes "yes."
But this inner-EU stuff makes Diplomads scratch their heads; we don't really care about it, at least not as much as we care when the EU gets in the way of good international policy, such as not permitting the death penalty or not letting member states extradite terrorists to places where the death penalty might be imposed. As a result, some of the world's most dangerous terrorist cells flourish in Europe. Just imagine, Islamic radicals based in Europe are being recruited for missions against US soldiers and innocent Iraqis in Iraq. And because of the relaxed visa rules ushered in by the Schengen Agreement, bad guys wander across inner EU borders at will. The Netherlands seems to have awaken to this with the murder of Theo Van Gogh. (Note: We take this opportunity to nominate the Dutch to honorable mention on our recent top-ten list. They're good allies. Our problem is that Dutch and Danes both on the list would have overused the letter D for European nationalities.) They are becoming on a national scale the equivalent of the conservative guy who was a liberal who got mugged. The Dutch probably won't adopt the death penalty, but they'll get tougher with other law enforcement.
The EU has refused as a bloc to sign agreements with the U.S. regarding non-surrender of nationals to the International Criminal Court (ICC). This was the EU's idea in the first place when the U.S. objected to a routine renewal of the UN's blessing for peacekeeping missions in the Balkans because the U.S., not a party to the ICC, didn't want its troops subject to flaky international justice. The EU suggested the US sign separate bilateral agreements essentially excepting US citizens from ICC jurisdiction. We said, "great idea," and have completed about 100 such agreements around the world, but none with the EU. Romania signed one, but then was warned that its EU membership application would be flushed down le toilette if it ratified, so it didn't ratify.
We could do a very long article just on the subject of how the EU's tilt toward the PLO and against Israel encouraged the worst elements on the Palestinian side of the MEPP equation and made MEP unattainable. But Arafat is dead now, so we won't.
These are more examples (non-proliferation, relations with rogue states) where EUdom gets in the way, where on political matters it's better to deal with countries that have good will, armies and resources to bring to the table and can speak with their proud national (British, Danish, Polish, Italian, etc.) voices, as opposed to a lowest-common-denominator collective Eurovoice.
Where does this leave us? Annoyed with the EU from the outside as much as the Euroskeptics are annoyed from the inside. We understand that there's some efficiency to be gained by pooling certain elements of nationality, like customs rules, but we get exercised over the pretensions of international organizations like the EU to think and act like world government. This crosses the threshold from annoying to sickening at the UN level, which makes us even more exercised, since the self-proclaimed EU builders tend to idolize the UN. |
