← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Hilaire Belloc
Thread ID: 10315 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2003-10-07
2003-10-07 16:48 | User Profile
[url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3168796.stm[/url]
French jitters over EU future
By Caroline Wyatt BBC, Paris
European leaders and their foreign ministers have begun the lengthy process of debate on the new European constitution.
Former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing led the drafting, which took 15 countries 18 months to draft and runs to more than 250 pages.
Yet it has divided opinion in many countries, including France. Most ordinary French people feel they simply do not know enough about what is in the draft constitution, and fear there has been too little public debate.
While many here are instinctively in favour of the European Union, and greater integration within Europe, some are becoming more sceptical about conceding further powers to Brussels.
The recent rows with the EU over French subsidies to ailing companies such as Alstom and the demand that France bring down its budget deficit have exacerbated such worries.
Doubts
Yet France itself was one of the main architects of this draft constitution, and the country's centre-right government does not want the whole thing unravelling in Rome.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin has indicated that some improvements could be made, for example clarifying the roles of the proposed EU president and foreign affairs minister. But while the government is broadly happy with the constitution, that has not stopped many other politicians in France expressing their doubts about the direction Europe is taking.
Growing fears over enlargement eastwards and the handing over of policy areas currently under national control can be found on both the left and the right of the political spectrum.
The French Socialist Party is facing real divides, while the right is hardly more united.
Recent newspaper editorials reflect all those fears. The left-wing newspaper, Liberation, last week devoted a full page to the worries of French intellectuals in an editorial written by Dominique Rousseau, professor at the University of Montpellier.
He says the constitutional discussions are much more than just the "tidying up" exercise described by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Professor Rousseau believes that the constitution will make fundamental decisions about the way Europeans are governed - yet without any reference to the people themselves in whose name this is being done.
Complication
None of Europe's citizens, he points out, has been asked what he or she thinks of the powers being allocated to the new president of Europe, or even what kind of a "social" Europe people want.
"Silence from the electorate, silence from the citizens - silence for democracy," he warns. He also attacks the idea that the new constitution will make the architecture of Europe - its distribution of powers - simpler or more transparent. "It won't," he writes, "it will undoubtedly complicate them."
Other newspapers seem equally doubtful about many aspects of the draft.
Referendum
Le Monde, which has devoted acres of newsprint over the past few weeks to the constitutional debate - including a shortened pull-out guide to the hefty document itself - has highlighted the way that President Chirac has become the leader of those countries which do not want explicit references to Christianity in the document.
The separation of Church and State in France - an idea first suggested in the French revolution in 1789 - is one of the fundamentals of this nation's political beliefs, and Mr Chirac, despite his own Catholicism, would like the same principle applied to the new Europe.
The discussions will last several months, but when they end in December many in France feel there should be a referendum on whether or not to ratify the constitution.
But whether the people of France at least get a say in the matter will be up to Mr Chirac to decide.
2003-10-07 17:25 | User Profile
The "United States" of Europe is an abomination that should be trampled underfoot and discarded into the garbage pail. It smashes sovereignty and 1,200 years of European history. Germany and France have the most to lose under a Socialistic EU and its citizens should be out in the streets with pitchforks and torches. Kind of like what Americans should be doing with its wayward, corrupt government. We, the people, are only mere serfs and cannon fodder to these vile, globalist Communist dictators disguised as Presidents and Prime Ministers.
2003-10-07 17:31 | User Profile
The French better be skeptical because they, and Germany, have the most to lose if (when) this abomination called the EU Constitution becomes law.
2003-10-07 17:35 | User Profile
It is the burden of the larger, stronger countries to carry the small poor countries. They have the most to lose indeed, jesuisfier.
2003-10-07 18:31 | User Profile
Herr Ritter, yes indeed, [I]je suis d'accord[/I]. It sort of smells like a pot of Marxist-Wealth Redistribution stew brewing in Europe. Would Switzerland be able to maintain her neutrality and sovereignty amongst the coming chaos that will inevitably arrive with this filthy Marxist EU "utopia"??
2003-10-07 18:55 | User Profile
[QUOTE=jesuisfier]Herr Ritter, yes indeed, [I]je suis d'accord[/I]. It sort of smells like a pot of Marxist-Wealth Redistribution stew brewing in Europe. Would Switzerland be able to maintain her neutrality and sovereignty amongst the coming chaos that will inevitably arrive with this filthy Marxist EU "utopia"??[/QUOTE]
These liberals in the EU and UN are neo-marxists. Slowly but surely they will plunge the world into their dream for a marxist "utopia". We can look the the USSR to see our future, if this happens. Instead of the centre of the communist world being Moskow or Bejing, it will be the Hague. I am glad Switzerland is not in the EU, for now. Most of the younger people here (on campus) are more isolationist than their parents, which is heartening. When I return to live in germany, to make a life for myself, I hope it wont be in the EU and that I will be paid in Mark not Euro.
2003-10-16 16:00 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Ritter]These liberals in the EU and UN are neo-marxists. Slowly but surely they will plunge the world into their dream for a marxist "utopia". We can look the the USSR to see our future, if this happens. Instead of the centre of the communist world being Moskow or Bejing, it will be the Hague. I am glad Switzerland is not in the EU, for now. Most of the younger people here (on campus) are more isolationist than their parents, which is heartening. When I return to live in germany, to make a life for myself, I hope it wont be in the EU and that I will be paid in Mark not Euro.[/QUOTE] Here in the United States, young people like me are much further to the right politically and racially aware than our parents in the 60's, hippie "baby boomer" generation. Tomorrow belongs to us.