European Autocracy Established

The Result In Ireland Shows That Europe's Usurpers Have Succeeded

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard | 4 October 2009

The deed is done. Ireland has been coerced at a moment of acute distress into accepting an EU treaty that emasculates the Irish Supreme Court and that voters have already rejected once.

Eurosceptics always feared that the mechanisms of monetary union would force recalcitrant states to knuckle down in the end. This has occurred exactly as they predicted. Only a fool can believe that the Irish people have genuinely embraced the European Constitution (now 'Lisbon') as a "positive good". They acquiesced with their backs against the wall.

The Irish economy contracted by 11.6% in the 12 months to June. Nominal GDP shrank by nearer 13%, which is what matters for debt dynamics. It is not for outsiders to judge those such as radio star Eamon Dunphy for switching sides to save "jobs and livelihoods". The country is in deep depression.

The reason why this crisis is so grave is intimately tied to euro membership, even if this is not obvious to Irish voters. They appear to have believed the great lie— repeated by Ryanair's Michael O'Leary— that Europe saved their country from Iceland's fate. It did no such such thing.

Iceland's economy contracted by 6.5% to June (less than Germany) and is already turning the corner. Exports are surging. Unemployment fell in August to 7.7%. Such is the magic of a floating currency. The plunging krone acted as a shock absorber. Icelandic society remains intact.

The euro did indeed shield Ireland from the storm, but it is not the storm that does the damage— any more than 1929 crash caused the Depression. The country no longer has the means in EMU to counter debt deflation, as will become painfully clear over the next two years. It has become a laboratory for the roll-back of the modern welfare state.

There is something demented about this 'Lisbon' drive. The EU has already pushed the integration of Europe's states beyond viable limits. It obsesses over 'institutional' [[bureaucratic: normxxx]] machinery even as it ignores the social crisis of youth unemployment at 39% in Spain, 31% in Lithuania, 28% in Latvia, 26% in Ireland and Slovakia, 25% in Italy and Hungary, 24% in France.

It cannot run Europe's fisheries, farms, aid projects, and budget with a minimum of competence. Yet it presses for more and is willing to sell its political soul to get its way. "The EU seems blind to a central insight of liberal democratic thought— that the means of reaching public decisions are just as important as the ends," says Oxford professor Larry Siedentop. The means were to ignore the verdict of the French and Dutch people when they voted no to the original text in 2005, with half Europe waiting do exactly the same had Brussels not called off the kill for the sake of decency.

Common sense called for a halt then. But no, they tried to slip it through by parliamentary majorities in the House of Commons, Holland's Tweede Kamer, Denmark's Folketing, and France's Chambre, with the specific and sole of purpose of denying citizens the chance to express their will, confirming what we long suspected— that the EU's authoritarian habits are spreading to our national legislatures. Dublin alone was left to grapple with its voters, obliged to do so by its Supreme Court. And when they too said no last year, the political classes refused to accept the verdict yet again.

It is worth remembering how this Lisbon monster came to life. It was supposed to be the answer to the Danish and Swedish no votes to EMU, the Irish no to Nice, and anti-EU riots that set Gothenburg in flames. Henceforth, there would be no more 'stitch-ups'. The Laeken Declaration in 2001 acknowledged that the EU was seen by the peoples as "a threat to their identity", that "deals are all too often cut out of their sight", that there was no appetite for "a European superstate or European institutions inveigling their way into every nook and cranny of life". It spoke of returning powers to the member states. A convention— modelled on [that of] Philadelphia, US— would draw up an EU constitution to restore "democratic legitimacy".

What then happened? The EU insiders hijacked the process. Dissident utterings were silenced in the working groups. A praesidium under super-elitist Valéry Giscard d'Estaing employed Commission lawyers to draft the wording. The final text called for an EU president, foreign minister, justice department, a supreme court with jurisdiction over all areas of EU policy for the first time, and fresh powers to enter yet more nooks and crannies— in other words, the apparatus of an aspirant [[autocratic?: normxxx]] state. And this how it remains in Lisbon disguise.

"The convention failed: it was a self-selected group of the European political elite," said Gisela Stuart, Britain's member on the praesidium. The experience was enough to turn her into fervent opponent of Lisbon. The methods being used to force this treaty through after electorates have already spoken cross a line that may not be crossed. The European Project has become the enemy.

This is the treaty that Gordon Brown was too ashamed to sign in public with fellow EU leaders in Lisbon. Yet sign he did. The question for David Cameron is whether he will continue this practice, or take a stand before any more pages are ripped out of our own Magna Carta. Go on, David, sock the usurpers between the eyes.