The
Sun is urging its readers to 'say no to a United
States of Europe'. But
whatever the tabloids think, EU integration is good for Britain.
November 2007
At the end of last week, EU leaders agreed a set of reforms to help the cumbersome
enlarged union of 27 member states function more efficiently. Pending a signing
ceremony in December and ratification by national parliaments, the new “reform treaty”, as it has been dubbed, ostensibly brings to a
close the almost six-year long reform process, which sought to give the EU a constitution of sorts.
Under the new arrangement, the Union will receive two new posts. The first is a more
high-profile president without executive power who will serve a 2.5 year term,
instead of the current rotating six-month presidency, which has been criticised
for not giving the member state holding it enough time to achieve anything
significant.
Tony Blair is among the candidates for the post. Although
I have misgivings about Blair, particularly given his war record and his
subservience to Washington,
he has the distinct advantage of coming from one of the most euro-sceptical
member states.
The second position will involve elevating Javier Solana’s role as the EU’s
foreign policy chief to a kind of EU foreign minister who would speak on behalf
of the Union in areas where they have agreed a
common foreign policy stance.
Before the ink had even dried on the deal, the
Sun accused “bottler” Brown of “surrendering huge
swathes of British power to Brussels
for good”. In a stunning display of unadulterated hyperbole, the tabloid
screamed headlines like “Brown dines at the last supper”. The Sun even mobilised such policy
heavyweights as Girls Aloud star Nicola Roberts – who is “more concerned about Britain’s
future than her nails or make-up” – to the cause.
The newspaper claims that 100,000 Sun readers want a
referendum on the rejigged EU constitution. While a
referendum may look, at first sight, like a good way of deciding what has become a controversial issue, it is plagued with
pitfalls.
How can you reduce a complex document filled
with numerous articles on disparate areas to a simple “yes/no” question? What
if the voter agrees with some parts and not others? How many voters will
actually take an informed decision about the proposed treaty and how many will
be swayed by the emotive rallying cries of the tabloids?
For instance, in the Netherlands and France,
the “no” vote was more a vote of no confidence in their own governments,
particularly in the case of Jacques Chirac, than a vote on the merits or
otherwise of the proposed treaty. In fact, most Dutch or French citizens
interviewed at the time knew very little about the actual document and how it
would function.
I am all for following the will of the people. But
in the case of this treaty, a referendum is a very poor democratic tool. In
this instance, I believe we need to trust our elected leaders to work for our
best interests.
What I find the most baffling in the whole
debate are the conspiracy theories and the inflated power attributed to the
bogeymen in Brussels.
To hear some tabloids speak, you'd think that the entire continent was run from
a secret dungeon in the Belgian capital by those dark and sinister
continentals.
What this overlooks is that the EU is little more than a club of
sovereign states who have agreed, over the past 50 or so years, to build a
common market and pool some of their sovereignty in order to prevent the
conflicts that have wracked the continent for centuries and address common
challenges in a globalised economy. The institutions
in Brussels are
largely toothless and collective authority is still very much in the hands of
national leaders.
With its inimitable penchant for shrillness,
The Sun has urged the British public to “say no to a United States of Europe”. Given all the obstacles in its path, such a
union would take generations to bring about, if we’re lucky. But if I am alive
to see it, I would unequivocally say yes to a democratic EU superstate,
built on a federalised model of autonomy.
Of course, I can understand that globalisation
and the slow corrosion of power of the nation state have instilled fear in many
Britons and other Europeans, but the way to face up to these challenges is
through further integration. As we approach the post-nation state era, we can
proactively prepare for that day or we can hold on to sentimental delusions of
our place in the world.
This is particularly important in the coming
decades as every European state will see its place in the world diminish
further, as corporations continue to dictate the course of the global economy,
and China and India take
their mantle as emergent superpowers.
In addition, the European model of multilateral
co-decision-making offers a more stable and fairer model for engaging with the
world than the dictatorial posturings of the
superpower model which has bred so much global animosity over the last century
or so.
Brits have a reputation for being euro-sceptics
par excellence. But some of the leading advocates of European integration have
also come from this stereotypically isolationist island.
For instance, more than 300 years ago, in 1693, William Penn, who later became one of the founding fathers
of the United States,
advocated the idea of a “European dyet, a parliament of estates”. On reading his proposal, I
was struck that, aside from the dated language, his vision resembles very much
the union that has emerged over the past half-century, down to the rotating
presidency. He even regards as “fit and just” that the “Turks and Muscovites”
also join this union.
Addressing the euro-sceptics sovereignty fears,
he notes that European nations “remain as Soveraign
at Home as ever they were ... So that the Soveraignties
are as they were, for none of them have now any Soveraignty
over one another: And if this be called a lessening of their Power, it must be
only because the great Fish can no longer eat up the little ones.”
The benefits of union that Penn extolled have
come to pass:
Peace preserves our Possessions; We are in no Danger of Invasions: Our Trade is free and
safe, and we rise and lye down without Anxiety ... It excites Industry, which
brings Wealth.
Our future prosperity and stability in Europe depends on us keeping the European project alive
and thriving.
August 2004 – The idea of an EU superstate
gets KhaledDiab’s vote. He
thinks Europeans should stop thinking in terms of ‘national sovereignty’ – keep
the culture, drop the rest. Read on
Arab
world and African nations both struggle for EU-style unity
March 2004 – As the European Union prepares to
expand eastwards, it success in achieving security and prosperity through
economic integration has become an example for the rest of the world, yet Arabs
and Africans are finding it tough to forge their own regional blocs. Read on
ã2007 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.
