EU Nabobs play for high stakes

Blair, Brown and Beckett have been out trying to persuade us that they are going to veto any EU deal on the revival of its ill-fated constitution which fails to meet their so-called red lines. We shall watch with interest what actually happens.

The red lines are:

No Charter of Fundamental Rights

No Surrender of control over the judiciary and policing

No EU Foreign Minister

No Diminution of the British veto on anything “that can have a big say in our own tax and benefits system”

There are a number of problems here.

Firstly the EU Nabobs are threatening to introduce the Charter of Fundamental Rights by the back door by the so-called process of ‘cross-referencing’. This involves incorporation of the Charter by linking an explicit reference in the treaty itself to some other document which does so mention it. Sneaky. The ECJ will then take great delight in ruling that we did in fact sign up to it after all and even if we did not it is still EU law, so there.

The EU Foreign minister problem is a red herring. The really important thing is the issue of ‘legal personality’ for the EU. This would give the EU the right to make treaties and be members of International organizations in its own right and then to claim that it supercedes all the nation states thereby. You do not need a Foreign Minister to do that.

In addition it may be useful to recall that the Constitution also sought to make us subject to a common foreign policy. If that stays in,, who needs a Foreign Minister?

The Legal Personality issue, plus all the existing institutions such as the Parliament, the Council of Ministers, The Commission, would create in the EU all the indicia of a sovereign state contemplated by The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, signed at Montevideo, Uruguay on 26^th. December 1933. Although only signed by nineteen Latin-American nation states, Article 1 of the Convention sets out the four criteria for statehood that have frequently been recognized as an accurate statement of customary international law:

“The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications:

(a) a permanent population;

(b) a defined territory;

(c) government; and

(d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”

We stand on the edge of losing our status as a sovereign nation state. Let us beware the weasel words of the Quislings who are planning to betray us. Demand a referendum now!