UK vs. EU Article Ramblings

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Re: how long will the EU stay in E?

On 1st January 1973, Conservative British Prime Minister Edward Heath took Britain into the European Common Market. Heath reassured Parliament and the British people at the time that British sovereignty would not be affected and that we were just joining a trading partnership. His 1971 government White Paper stated the following:

"There is no question of Britain losing essential national sovereignty…. The British safeguards of habeus corpus and trial by jury will remain intact. So will the principle that a man is innocent until he has been proved guilty."

Subsequent papers came to light which unequivocally showed that Edward Heath recognised at the time the full implications of what he was doing. Years later, in a BBC interview in 1998, Heath admitted that he had known all along that Britain was signing up to a federal Europe.

Through further amendments to the Treaty of Rome, the original Common Market has gradually been changed into the European Union of today. The British people have never given their consent, nor have properly understood the implications of the European Union. Most are too bored with politics to find out.

The reason successive British governments have been the only national administrations deliberately to lie and mislead their electorate over Europe is because they knew the British people would be horrified and would not tolerate the destruction and loss of control of their own country.

A German European Economic Community?

In 1942, during World War 2, a group of German economists met at a well attended conference in Berlin to discuss a new concept of European political integration controlled by the Nazis. The conference was entitled 'The European Economic Community'. Later in 1944, once Germany recognised that defeat was inevitable, amazingly the Nazi push for European political integration continued. The chief question being asked in Berlin was: "How can Germany dominate the peace when she loses the war?"

The Treaty of Rome which birthed the EU was signed in 1957. Several of the original architects were ex-Nazis. The Treaty and its subsequent amendments bear a striking resemblance to the earlier Nazi plans for the federalisation of Europe, the destruction of Britain, and the domination by Germany of the new monolithic European superstate.

WHY THE EU MUST DISMANTLE BRITAIN

Germany and France geopolitically find it hard to secure their borders. Their alternative is to seek buffer zones around their nations, or, more effectively, control the continent of Europe altogether. Britain, on the other hand, is an island and easily defended.

Britain was the first truly global, maritime power. Today, as before, the majority of her trade is GLOBAL, chiefly with her erstwhile colonial and Commonwealth partners, NOT WITH EUROPE, whose economies are PROVINCIAL and currently stagnant and contracting.

Europe has historically resented what it sees as Britain's 'destabilising influence' on continental economies because of her massive strength. It galls jealous European nations that Britain has traditionally been powerful enough to call the shots. Wars in the past, such as the Napoleonic, WW1 and WW2, have been started by European powers in order to secure their future economic and political stability. These measures ultimately failed. Today, the tactics have changed.

Europe recognises that if Britain were subdued and broken up, a greater proportion of the UK's coveted world trade, including her prodigious art market, massive financial/pensions sector, hi-tech industries, and her oil and fish resources could be controlled for the first time by the dominant continental powers.

Europe also bitterly resents Britain's allegiance with the United States, with whom Britain has always enjoyed huge trade, security and strategic interests.


DOES ANY OF THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?

The European Union is planning a new European army which will be capable of 'autonomous action'. This new European army will threaten the balance and stability NATO has given to the Continent and hand over military jurisdiction in Europe once again to the two nations who have historically abused it and gone to war for their own economic interests.

The new European federal police force, Europol, has been given powers to operate anywhere within the Eurozone, including Britain. Its officers and agents have been granted a blanket, life-time immunity from prosecution for all of their acts and deeds performed under Article 12, Chapter 5 of the Protocol on the Privileges and Immunities of the EU.

Europol officers have been granted the prevailing power of summary arrest and extradition, in spite of current British laws, which specifically prohibit such actions. Under the power of international treaty, British law is superseded by European law.

Europol's headquarters, housing 300-400 officers at present, is quartered in the fortified old Gestapo headquarters building in The Hague. Plans are well underway to expand this force to many thousands more, all to be armed and granted unfettered access to all regions of the EU. Europol has been run by a former German police officer, Jorgen Storbeck, since its inception in 1994 as a drugs unit.

France has twice had to suffer the embarrassment of Britain and her allies baling her out of trouble in two previous world wars, which cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of British, Commonwealth and American troops. After both wars, the Allies withdrew and allowed France to regain her sovereignty. Today, French and German politicians scorn Britain and America, and seem willing to jeopardise the balance and stability of Europe by sanctioning the pan-European re-arming of the Continent, with a newly unified Germany as the most dominant power….

For the third time in a century.




Supporters of today's European Union claim that an integrated Europe will prevent future war. Yet true democracies do not provoke war, whereas forced or premature conglomerations of disparate nations have a proven history of causing turmoil and bloodshed (e.g. the Roman Empire, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and much of Africa).

"The European parliament and the commission are allies against the member states. Together we have to prevent the member states from taking back power." President of the European parliament, speaking on BBC Radio 4, July 1999

"When we build the house of Europe, the future will belong to Germany." Helmut Kohl, speaking in Germany, unaware that reporters were present.

"Germany, as the biggest and most powerful economic member state will be the leader [of Europe] whether you like it or not." Theo Waigel, former German finance minister, 1997

"The top priority is to turn the EU into a single political state." Joshka Fischer, German foreign minister, quoted in The Times, November 1998

"Why does Europe need fifteen foreign ministers when one is enough? Why do member states still need national armies? One European army is enough." Hans Eichel, German finance minister, November 1999

"Never again must there be a destabilising vacuum of power in central Europe. If European integration were not to progress, Germany might be called upon, or tempted by its own security constraints, to try to effect the stabilisation on its own and in the traditional way." German CDU parliamentary committee on European affairs, September 1994

 

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RE: how long will the EU stay in E?

To supporters of Britain in the EU -
please read below and
see if you are willing to pay it

* Britain's EU membership between 1972 and 1997 has cost you, the British taxpayer, a breathtaking £235 BILLION. Our yearly gross contribution currently is £11 billion, or approximately £1.25 million EACH HOUR.

* The EU has been unable to have its own accounts certified by the Court of Auditors for EIGHT YEARS RUNNING, because of irregularities and fraud.

* The EU doesn't even use double-entry book-keeping, the accountancy standard since the 14th century. The system employed by the EU is cash-based, and extremely open to abuse.

* Most British people have a deep suspicion of the EU, but know next to nothing about how it works, how it affects them now or in the future.

* Polls show that the majority of the British people are fed up with the constant evidence of our country being manipulated and invaded at will by this European 'government of occupation'. A Mori poll, for instance, indicates that 60% of the British people would vote to leave the European Union if Britain were compelled to give up the pound in order to remain in the EU.

* It is estimated that joining the euro would cost Britain a minimum of a massive £36 BILLION (£631 for every man, woman and child in the country) and cause immediate price and tax hikes, just as EMU has done on the Continent.

* Joining the euro would entail handing over to Brussels the remainder of the UK's gold and currency reserves, all rights to her oil reserves, the power to set interest rates and, ultimately, the power to raise taxes. The British parliament today can do absolutely nothing to stop unelected Euro commissioners making decisions which will damage or threaten to destroy our economy. Joining the euro would be irreversible, short of a war of secession.

* It is by no means certain that the British will ever be given a chance to vote on joining the euro.

* Did you know that European and international legislation is proposing to:

Ban over 300 natural ingredients from free sale;
Restrict the dosage level of 'approved' nutrients to levels that will render them ineffective;
Ban herbal remedies for no other reason than that they don't have a 30 year history of use;
Ban any statements about the effectiveness of nutrients in dealing with disease;
Give governments the right to re-classify safe and effective natural remedies as medicines - at will.

* The EU has introduced state powers, under Article 191 of the Nice Treaty, which are designed to ban political parties of which it disapproves, or which oppose the EU.

* The EU has passed laws against 'racism' and 'xenophobia', which are so arbitrary, they could be applied to any individual, group or party which disapproves of the EU.

* The EU can suspend voting rights to 'punish' any member state not conforming to EU orthodoxy. Meanwhile, the beleaguered member state is still required to pay its EU dues as if it were a full voting member. This is 'taxation without representation', the very reason the American colonies seceded from Britain and went to war for their independence in 1776.

* The EU's inept Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has been responsible for destroying the British fishing industry, and giving our fishing rights to others. The effects of its abysmal Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have spelled death to British farming, while at the same time enriching European farmers, especially the French, for whose benefit the CAP was originally introduced.

* The EU is abolishing trial by jury and the presumption of innocence under the justice system being introduced in Britain. Once the new system is in place, an indicted individual will have his case heard by a professional tribunal and be required to prove his innocence against the combined machinery of the state.

* The European Court of Justice is removing the 'double jeopardy' safeguard. For centuries, British law has held that if a person is found not guilty of committing a crime, they cannot be tried again for the same offence. Henceforth, under corpus juris law, the state has granted itself the 'right' to come back at an individual time and again with the same charge, using all its considerable 'legal' apparati, until it secures the required conviction. Jack Straw, the British Home Secretary, has already given prosecutors the right to appeal against a not-guilty verdict.

* Under new legislation, actions pursued by those who disagree with the EU can be labelled seditious, treasonous and even blasphemous.


Consider whether the following nation would be able to make it on its own!

* Britain is a nation of 60 million people.

* She is the fourth largest economy in the world by Gross Domestic Product.

* She owns the largest financial trading centre in the world, centred in London. There are more US banks in London than in New York, more German banks than in Frankfurt and our capital handles more euro transactions than the whole of the European Union COMBINED.

* In spite of the UK's known reluctance to join the euro, by mid-2000 Britain was receiving record foreign investments, becoming Europe's most popular investment location by a staggering margin.

* Neither the UK's membership of the EU, nor the potential to participate in the 'single EU market' has featured in the top ten reasons for foreign investors deciding to place their money in Britain.

* Unemployment across the Eurozone is a staggering 18 million. No increase in jobs has been achieved in the past 20 years. Yet Britain has created 2.3 million jobs during that same period.

* 80% of new technologies, discoveries and major inventions over the past 250 years have been pioneered by British scientists and engineers.

* We have the only oil industry in the EU. We have a world-class financial services sector with huge pensions assets, while Europe has a combined pensions liability totalling $1.2 trillion which has no underpinning assets to cover it.

* Britain has a massive tourism market based on its unique blend of tradition, monarchy, history and craftsmanship.

* Britons have been at the forefront of developing and taking advantage of the massive boom in Internet sector technologies to boost our global trade.

* English is the language of the Internet.

* English is the most widely used language across the world and is used in business globally. English is virtually a compulsory second language for everyone on the face of the Earth.

* Britain has strong links with America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, much of Asia and South America. Almost all European nations do not.

* Britain is the EU's best customer, creating 5 million European jobs. If Britain were to pull out of the EU and negotiate a proper free trade agreement (no tariffs applied), the EU simply couldn't afford to upset or close the door on its best customer, given the Union's shaky financial state of affairs. Europe would still earnestly want to trade with us, and we with them.

* Most importantly, once Britain is free of the EU, the huge amount of cash we give to Brussels can now be put to work in improving conditions and infrastructure in our own country.
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[Blackleaf]

RE: how long will the EU stay in E?

Now that the World Trade Organization is administering the Uruguay Round of trade liberalization agreements, the EU's common external tariff has fallen from 5.7 percent to 3.6 percent. This should not constitute a prohibitive barrier even to a Britain that was not in the EU, given its more bearable social costs and provided it retained control of its own currency. The fear of being frozen out of Europe by vindictive community bureaucrats is now, I believe, a complete fraud, though one would not know it to listen to the alarmist comments of many of Britain's political leaders and much of its media.

Indeed, the facts suggest that it is rather the other way around. The annual cost of Britain's adherence to the EU is nearly [pounds]10 billion in gross budgetary contributions. While almost half of this is returned in EU spending, it is spent, as former Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont has pointed out, "on things which the U.K. government would not choose to spend money on." Higher food prices in the U.K. because of the Common Agricultural Policy cost Britain rather more than [pounds]6 billion annually, though again about half of that is rebated directly to British farmers. The overall cost of the EU to Britain then is between [pounds]8 and [pounds]12 billion, or around 1.5 percent of GDP. There are in addition the significant costs imposed by EU regulation, and the heavy political price of eroding sovereignty - which includes the tacit encouragement of provincial separatism, as Scottish and Welsh nationalists envision receiving the sort of direct grants enjoyed by Ireland.

Despite these costs, and the [pounds]3 billion annual trade deficit the U.K. runs with the EU, there are still those who deflect such unpleasantries with the noble hope that Britain will ultimately Thatcherize Europe rather than be de-Thatcherized by it. The truth is, however, that the United Kingdom could now probably assert a stronger and more positive influence on the European Union from outside than it could by going further into it. Free from its costs and interferences, Britain could export successfully into it, thus demonstrating the superior competitiveness of the so-called Anglo-Saxon model. For since the Uruguay Round, attempts by the EU to limit imports from non-members can only be sustained if they are unanimously upheld by multi-national trade panels, which is very unlikely.

As a consequence of all this, it would be logical for Britain to negotiate entry into NAFTA, which will probably be renamed and which is already negotiating with the European Economic Area and European Free Trade Association, as well as with Chile. Such an expanding NAFTA would have every commercial advantage over the EU. It is based on the Anglo-American free-market model of relatively restrained taxation and social spending, which is the principal reason why, over the last fifteen years, the United States and Canada together have created a net average of two million more new jobs per year than have the countries of the European Union. NAFTA, as its name implies, is a free-trade area only. The United States will not make any significant concessions of sovereignty and does not expect other countries to do so. A trading bloc based on NAFTA and the more advanced South American countries could also expand into eastern Europe faster than the EU. Such a bloc, after all, would not be encumbered by such impediments as the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, and its powerful urge to protect onerous French and German social costs.

There is no need to repeat here the nature of the Anglo-American special relationship, which is both broad and deep, historical and contemporary. It is enough to point out that none of the continental European countries has a particular affinity with the United States and Canada, or anything remotely comparable to Britain's dramatic modern historic intimacy with North America.

Beyond that, an even closer British association with North America could serve a broader, and very European, purpose. The British public's fear of loss of jurisdiction and socialist backsliding in a federal Europe is well founded - and Britain, by staying outside, could be the example that might prevent the EU as a whole from smothering all its fully subscribing members with centralized Euro-socialism.

When the possibility of an Atlantic option for Britain is broached, the cry goes up in British Eurofederalist circles that the United Kingdom would be dominated by the United States. The words "fifty-first state" are often uttered derisively, even though any such association would be a loose one - and as if there were not a much greater danger of Britain being intruded upon by the Europeans. In fact, Britain's sovereignty would be in much better condition than it now is. Canada, whose distinctiveness from the northern American states is fairly tenuous apart from Quebec, has lost no additional sovereignty after entering into the free-trade agreement, even though over 40 percent of Canada's GNP is derived from trade with the United States - more than four times the percentage of British GNP taken up by trade with the EU. More important, Canada suffers none of the jurisdictional intrusions that are routine in the British slouch to Eurofederalism.

The Lights Go On in Washington

One of the reasons so few Britons think in terms of an Atlantic option is that few people in the United States or Canada encourage them to do so. True, the leaders of the opposition in Canada last year urged a NAFTA invitation for Britain, but just as the British are stuck in some unhelpful intellectual patterns, so too are many Americans.

The United States has been a supporter of an "ever closer European Union", to use the parlance of the European treaties, since the Truman administration. The initial motivation for such a policy was clear: by promoting European cooperation and integration, the United States hoped to contain the Soviet threat and avoid having to intervene a third time in a European war. If European strategic unity as represented by NATO was good, then so must be its economic - and ultimately political - unity. The American conception of European integration was thus of a piece with that of its European founders and promoters, a parallel thought natural among allies joined together in the contest with Moscow. Indeed, as that contest endured, grew more intense, and spread throughout the world in the late 1950s and 1960s, U.S. enthusiasm for European cooperation and eventually the European Common Market and Community steadily increased. With it went an urge to propel Britain into Europe, essentially to strengthen West European backbones as Cold War allies.

Over the years, the practice of America pushing Britain toward Europe continued, and it has not been abandoned since the end of the Cold War. This is partly out of habit and understandable intellectual inertia. It may be, too, that the present U.S. administration has felt, rightly, that Britain would be a force for good government in Europe. With the Continentals mired in a bureaucratically induced slog of low-growth, high unemployment economics, it makes at least superficial sense to hope that post-Thatcherite Britain could teach them something about basic economic arithmetic, without the stigma of being importers of American capitalism. Tony Blair has hinted at this: a British Euro-capitalism.

In all of this, no argument offered by Americans or other foreigners on behalf of full British integration with Europe has had much to do with British national interests. And the least the U.S. government should do is stop trying to push Britain in a direction in which the British people show little inclination to go.

Happily, there is some evidence that more discerning Americans are now having second thoughts about the course Europe is pursuing. Prominent administration officials such as the Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers have cautioned against the dangers of bringing in EMU without accompanying structural labor market and long-term fiscal reforms. The American experience put political union ahead of economic union, and many Americans - including senior legislators and members of the current administration - have indicated their belief that trying to do things in reverse order is hazardous.

At the same time, some senior American foreign policy experts are becoming concerned about the likely influence of a centralized Europe - or of a failed attempt at a centralized Europe - on the Western alliance and on the conduct of U.S. strategic policy. Europe's shabby and dangerous mistreatment of Turkey, the Middle East's most important country - in which the leading European powers cravenly hide behind the Greeks - is a case in point, and a warning of the kind of behavior that might characterize the new Europe. (It is, it should be noted, in stark contrast to the much more enlightened U.S. and Canadian treatment of Mexico.)

http://www.findarticles.com/p/artic...i_54336462/pg_3

 

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RE: how long will the EU stay in E?

Unlike the rest of Europe we have a long and unique alliance and "friendship" with the USA. We also do much more trade with the USA than those countries in Europe and I believe that after Germany they are our second largest trading partner.
However we are also in Europe and part of the EU. We do not leave the EU despite its many setbacks as we can use it to influence Europe. For example, by voting for the new countries to join the EU in May 2004 we weakened the French hold over the EU. Poland for example now objects on some issues which saves the UK having to do it. Also the ascension of these new countries to the EU has made English the dominant language in the EU and is changing the French dominated culture of the EU. This was the use of the classic British policy of preventing any one power being too strong in Europe. By staying in Europe we benefit from the free trade zone within Europe but unlike the rest of Europe are at a disadvantage as we do much more trade with the USA and former colonies which is taxed. At the moment we also serve as a go between the USA and Europe because of our unique position and benefit from co-operation with both like no other nation does. My personnel feelings are that the UK is much closer culturally and politically to America and that unless Old Europe changes and dumps socialism it will suffer terminal decline. We in Britain will use our position in the EU to prevent a Federal Europe and possible French dominated super state created by paranoid fears of competition, fear of cultural decline and a desire to try to beat the Americans.

We do not join the Euro as we do not need to and we do not want to. I could write a long essay on this but I do not have the time at the minute. The main economic reason for this is that joining the euro would mean giving up control of interest rates. Interest rates are the primary and most effective tool that can be used to combat inflation and consumer spending and influence demand in the economy. Unlike the rest of Europe the UK has a far higher number of owner occupiers of property. As a result there are many people with mortgages on which interest is charged. If the economy is growing too fast like at the present time, consumer is too high and inflation is beginning to occur interest rates are increased. This means that all those people with mortgages incur higher interest rate payments and as a result have far less disposable income. So people spend less and demand in the economy falls. This serves to slow down inflation and the economy. This can be illustrated by the actions taken by the Bank of England recently. They have been consistently increasing interest rates by roughly a ¼ of a % each month and as a result the level of house prices increases has fell and demand is slowly falling and the economy is beginning to slow down without crashing into recession. This clever and precise method of macro economic policy is the most important influence on demand in the British economy. Joining the Euro would mean giving up control of interest rates to the European central bank. As a result you have to have a one size fits all policy for the whole of Europe which is ludicrous. You have the current problems where areas such as Ireland are experiencing economic growth and need to increase interest rates to combat inflation and slow the economy down contrasting with France and Germany who are both in deep recession and need interest rates to be cut. As a result of the Euro the countries cannot tackle their problems.
In the UK we are no longer worried about the scare stories about not joining the Euro. When we didn’t join at the launch of the Euro we were told how our economy would collapse and we would be forced to accept the Euro. However the opposite is true. France and Germany are in deep recession with economic growth barely reaching 1% where as in the UK our economy this year is running at 3% growth and is growing so fast we are having to slow it down. We have seen how having the Euro does not significantly cut prices. Instead when currencies where changed in Europe prices rose as shopkeepers took advantage of the confusion over the switch to the Euro and increased prices.
Also in Britain we like the Pound. It is a source of pride and we like the Queen and emblems of our country and its great people on our currency not a map of Europe with a very dubiously shaped Scandinavia ; )
Also the cost of changing to the Euro would be huge as cash registers, tills, vending machines, etc will all have to be changed.
It will also lead to job losses for those who play the money markets, those who deal in foreign currency and those who print and destroy British currency.
Many also see giving up our Pound as a move too far in the process of European integration which some Federalists and countries seem to be pushing more and more for. Joining the Euro would mean more power over Britain to the Socialist, federalist, wasteful and corrupt EU which most Brits will not let happen.
The arguments for the Euro in Britain are flawed at every level. Economically, socially the Euro is not needed nor wanted in Britain.
Long live the Pound.
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Re: how long will the EU stay in E?

JANUARY 2000

Isn't it wonderful how, whenever the French have a strike, they always try to destroy British jobs - and the EU always does sod all to stop them!

It's official. Now over 1/3 of Britons want out of the EU. Only a third? Are the others brain-dead?

Wim Duisenberg, head of the European Central Bank, has said it will be a long time before the UK's economy is close enough to the rest of Europe for the country to join the sinking euro. In the week when financial experts predicted the collapsing currency could soon sink to less than 90 cents, if we leave it long enough .....

Another factor in the secret Mitterand-Kohl deal has emerged, namely that it was to freeze out British firm BP from a major European deal. Strange how this story made all the papers - yet appeared nowhere on the BBC!.

Italy and Greece have blocked much-needed aid to South Africa - because of their own self-interest, naturally.

The British fishing fleet will be further shrunk, whilst Spain and Portugal can keep their fleets at current levels. This decision was reached by a committee of 9 MEPs - over half of whom come from a certain Iberian peninsula!

The euro sank below parity with the dollar for the second time yesterday, and shows little sign of any short-term recovery. But of course the British government still wants to join. Good reasons to do same can be sent to me via e-mail - if you can find any.

So how many people have been forced to resign by Neil Kinnock's much-vaunted anti-sleaze drive? Hundreds? Tens? Er, units? Well, not exactly. It's a round number, and it's sort of lower than one.

The Commission is to practice positive discrimination to raise the number of women, thus lowering the calibre of its members still further. I suppose this is possible?

The EU has once again declared war on Great Britain's tax veto. Haven't they anything better to do - like say resign?

Channel operators raised their prices for the second time in a few months this week, after duty-free was restricted to EC Commissioners only.

Brussels calls it enhanced co-operation. We call it rushing towards a federal Europe and forcing Great Britain to follow.

We all knew Old King Kohl was a German fraudster, as are most eurofanatics. But why did Mitterand's government give him £10 million, and where has that money now gone? There's something odd here.

Great Britain is set to overtake Germany as the refugees favourite destination, helped in part by the EU rule which allows the 14 other members to pass their refugees all onto us.

Thanks to yet another daft euro directive (94/62, as you were obviously dying to ask), British firms must now count up the amount of recyclable cardboard and fill out governmental forms to the same. Obviously they have nothing better to do - and obviously neither does the EU.

Over £18 million has been lost in a fraud involving aid to the Ivory Coast. So what about Neil Kinnock's plan to clampdown on fraud?

Britain will have to pay for all EU students studying here in future, if plans before the Commission get the green light (do dogs shit on the pavement?).

The Belgians are mounting a spiteful campaign against the current Duke of Wellington. You remember, the one whose ancestor saved Europe from Napoleonic slavery, and who isn't even mentioned on the battlefield? They want to stop him owning an estate near the battlefield - even though it's legally his and the tenants are perfectly happy with the current arrangement.

I hear Neil Kinnock proposes to remove all sleaze and corruption within the EU by 2002, with a new system of 'activity-based management'. What did they have before - inactivity-based management?

Brussels has told the British government that it must decide arms sales to Indonesia on a case-by-case basis - it is no longer allowed to issue a blanket ban.

Here, in euros, is the amount the Spanish government is contributing to the £15 million bill for the Pinochet affair. 0 euros.

So much for free choice. The British government has admitted to funding the Consumers in Europe Group, which is pushing against the tide of public opinion to try to enforce metrification.

British Commissioner Leon Brittan has said the fuss over the euro will mean the U.K. will lose influence in Europe. Does he mean the influence to suffer illegal bans on our beef, the influence to join a currency that has lost over 10% of its value in its first year, or the influence to lose jobs every time the French decide to close their roads? We're waiting on your response, Leo.

The EU is to set up its own Food Standards Agency. Doubtless its efficacy will be shown by the speed with which they get the illegal ban on French beef lifted - so today the EU gave up trying to get an interim order from the European Court declaring the ban illegal!

I hear that Britain in Europe, the Eurofanatic grouping, is so desperate for cash that it is offering people the chance to meet its senior supporters in parliament. They are saying they would charge £500 to meet Ken Clarke, for example. Might do better if they charged people not to meet him!

The euro has been further endangered by the spending attitude of many national governments just as their budget deficits looked to be coming into line.

The French are blockading British Channel ports in a protests against their bosses (I said French, so don't look for commonsense)? Meanwhile the Belgians have decided to have a immigration amnesty and have reinserted border controls, against affecting British drivers. I was going to tell you the French for the EU's plan of action to deal with this illegal action - but just how does sweet FA translate?

The government has admitted that the pound is at too high a rate to enter the single currency. It was also at too high a rate last year when it was 71p to a euro - now it's 62p and sinking fast.

British foreign minister Robin 'Wifeditcher' Cook has claimed the single market has been a great Euro-success. If doubling the percentage of jobless within the EU in six years is his idea of 'success', how exactly would he define 'failure'?

British government hopes that the enforced metrification might slip through quietly look set to fade, after several small businesses are openly daring government officials to try to enforce the rule that imperial measurements must be listed below and smaller than their metric equivalents.

Aren't we lucky in this new millennium to have the protection of Brussels? They have now decided to ban charities from collecting unsafe old toys; one woman was told the 24-piece Postman Pat giant jigsaw puzzle she wanted to hand in was 'dangerous'. On the other hand, I can think of a few places to stick those pieces concerning certain officials in Brussels where they might indeed cause considerable damage and surprise!

British officials were alarmed to find that the smart money is on the European Court of (ahem!) Justice actually deciding against Britain over the beef ban. The Court is able to make its own laws - particularly when it comes to bashing us, it seems!

Brussels incompetence has led to the appeal to the European Court of Justice over France's illegal ban on British beef being delayed for 24 hours - apparently the papers weren't ready. Strange they never show the same slowness when dreaming up daft legislation against us!

 

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RE: how long will the EU stay in E?

FEBRUARY

Changes in parking permits will have little effect on the eurocrats in Brussels. So hated are the officials that they daren't show their official passes lest their car be scratched within hours.

Whilst British boats are banned from catching cod, Belgian and Irish boats are allowed to employ devastating fishing methods and continue to fish. Clearly 'fairness' is a word which doesn't travel out of Britain.

The Belgian government is considering banning the increasingly popular Flemish nationalist party, fearful that it may secure the division of the country.

So Tony Blair says the EU doesn't want more power? Then how does he explain the European Parliament's demand for an EU public prosecutor?

On the day Tony Blair was trumpeting the single market, the EU grudgingly said it might allow British chocolate to be sold in EU countries for the first time in 15 years - providing it is called 'family milk chocolate' and has less than 5% vegetable fats. Get ready to tug those forelocks!

The EU is worried over Echelon, the Anglo-US spying network which keeps an eye on Russia. France is fearful it is being used to spy on them. I do hope so.

The latest government campaign to show how wonderful Europe is has already backfired. It turns out their claims of 3 million job losses on a UK withdrawal from the EU is based on all member countries stopping trading with us on the day of our withdrawal - something illegal under the World Trade Agreement.

Yet another case of BSE in France. Yet another case of Brussels doing sod all.

EC president Romano Prodi has said he wants his own private jet (paid for by British taxpayers, naturally!), so he doesn't have to travel around Europe on flights with the plebs.

Germany and Denmark are operating protectionist policies as regards their recycling industries, in direct abuse of the single market - and the EC is, of course, doing nothing to stop them.

Brussels has said it is looking to enforce rigid tax harmonization amongst members - which of course means higher taxes for the UK and an end to zero-rating on food and children's clothes.

Britain in Europe, the group supposedly campaigning for the single currency, has again ben caught out lying. The National Institute of Economic and Social Affairs, who recently said there would be no mass unemployment of the UK left the EU, were less than pleased to find BiE had somehow interpreted this as 'the UK leaving the EU would cost eight million jobs'. An interesting interpretation ....

The fuss over the Far Right in Austria is causing further problems for the sinking euro. A Danish vote on joining has had to be suspended after a surge in opposition, whilst in Sweden calls for a total withdrawal from the EU have increased.

So the British government has admitted it may have slightly underestimated the cost of the country joining the euro. This 'slight underestimation' is about £36 million. And to think we criticize kids in school when they're just out by a couple of hundred!

The British government's plans to keep a 'golden share' when they sell off air traffic control looks set to fall foul of the EC's beady eye against competition - your remember the EC's competition policy, the one which keeps car prices high in Britain. Yes, that one.

It now looks certain that the new droit de suite tax to be imposed on the art market will be enforced in the UK - but at least we've got four years before we lose all those jobs! A vote is expected next month.

The euro army, encouraged by a France that still hasn't forgiven the United States and Great Britain for saving it in the last war, edges closer with the establishment of a central organizing corps today.

Fearful that French lamb is unsafe, the EU has insisted that they adopt an electronic tagging system. Tags for them, illegal worldwide bans for us.

Nazi art is undergoing a revival in Germany, with one artist remarking that he wants to display it without thinking of the Holocaust. Denial mode approaching.

The British government has announced it will accept the recommendations of the Pooley Report on the crisis in the countryside - but unfortunately Brussels has banned it from implementing any of them.

War and Peace had about 1000 pages. prospective EU members will have to adopt over 80,000 pages of Brussels legislation. Ever think they don't actually want these new countries?

The European Commission has announced fast and speedy action against Germany for its illegal ban on British beef. So until 2002, the ban can stay.

The Lisbon mini-summit collapsed today after both France and Belgium walked out in protest at the presence of Austria's far-right representative. France - isn't that the country where the National Front are really close to power?

Disgraced former commissioner Edith Cresson now faces losing her immunity from prosecution. Yes, I too did not know commissioners could be as corrupt as they liked and remain immune from the law.

Having slammed Austria for daring to remind Europe of the last time forced unity was on the agenda, Romano Prodi has said he wants a forced political unity. No, I don't know if hypocrite really translates into Italian.

The French government has been found guilty of feeding its cows animal offcuts, and covering up many cases of BSE. And for once the European Commission has moved to do something - they've told the British government that if they inform shoppers of this, they'll be breaking EU law. You couldn't make it up!

The block exemption. This wonderful arrangement allows car companies to charge higher prices in the EU and be sanctioned for doing same by Brussels.

Having refused to allow clubs to limit the use of foreign players, the EU is now limiting the use of non-EU players to 2 a club. Big deal!.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Farming and Food is to be destroyed because Brussels has come so close to destroying all three industries that local bodies can now finish the job for them.

Tony Blair must wish EU head Romano Prodi could keep his mouth shut. Mr. Prodi has said that the EU is getting a government of its own, and will have its own army. Don't saw we weren't warned.

As usual, initially sensible plans to recycle cars have been hijacked and turned into a directive which will destroy British jobs. Quelle surprise!

The Far Right is back in Austria, and the EU can do nothing about it. Hmmm ....

I have no time at all for the far-Right Freedom Party, which may or may not soon be part of Austria's government. However, I can see only two reasons for the EU to stick its nose in. One, because it wants to set a precedent for trying to run a country from Brussels, something even the Belgians don't do very well. And two, because the FP reminds many of the last European Union, under a far-Right Adolf Hitler!

The sound of frantic backpedalling comes from the UK, where the CBI and several government ministers have dropped in their enthusiasm almost as fast as the single currency.

Headline: the EU is launching a Charter of Fundamental Rights. Translation: this will enable the courts at Strasbourg to interfere in even more British cases.

 

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RE: how long will the EU stay in E?

Some 55,000 Post Office jobs, around one-third of its workforce, is under threat after the EU announced its intention to force the scrapping of its monopoly.

For reasons best known to itself (although stupidity would be a fair bet), the British government has allowed the EU to look at the personal records of anyone in the UK they suspect of a crime. However, since there is no definition of what 'crime' means in this case, I'll give it six months max before the EU is found to be monitoring anti-EU groups.

The much-hated new driving licences bearing the EU flag could be forced on all motorists, when EU plans to force licences to be renewed every ten years come into effect.

In an attempt to 'sell' the euro to Great Britain (I suppose he has to sell it so somebody), Commission president Romano Prodi has said that if we didn't like it, we could pull out later on. Now why don't I believe him?

The Bundesbank has belatedly admitted what the rest of us realized over a year ago - the fall in the euro is not a passing difficulty, but a full-blown crisis.

Gordon Brown has gifted the EU a veto on any future tax cuts in the UK.

The EU is very proud of its trade deal with China. Strange to note the phrase 'human rights' is notable only by its absence.

Spanish practices indeed; so what is the EU doing about the annual £1.7 billion illegal subsidies paid by the Spanish government to their fishing industry? Nada!

Eurofanatic group Britain in Europe has been forced to withdraw an advertising campaign claiming withdrawal from the EU would cost 3 million jobs, after the Advertizing Standards Authority ruled this was a lie.

The German defence minister has claimed the British army is full of ex-convicts. I suppose that's better than being filled with ex-Nazis.

An Italian paedophile cannot be deported back to his native Sicily - because EU law gives him the right to live where he likes!

An EC directive means that British companies will be guilty of racism until they prove themselves innocent - and they must do so to the inept Commission for Racial Equality. A bit like putting Dracula in charge of the bloodbank!

EU Commissioner Chris Patten is wondering why it takes four years for some of the annual £7 billion EU aid budget to reach the rightful recipients. I'm frankly amazed any of it actually reaches them!

The British government's shenanigans over privatizing air-traffic control may all be in vain - the Nice Conference will discuss a pan-European system which will force the British government to renationalize it.

The real reason behind British Chancellor Gordon Brown's decision not to spend his £22 billion mobile-phone licence windfall. He can't under EU law.

The Germans have reiterated their call for a two-speed Europe, with themselves and France pushing ahead with all those countries gulli ... er, willing to keep up with them.

The Commission wants the British fleet to be cut by 10% - more than double the cuts proposed for Spain, Portugal or Italy!

A doubly-smart move by BMW today, when they sold Rover for £10. Not only have they ditched a loss-making business, they also got the cash in sterling rather than several million euro.

A recent opinion poll shows that, whilst one-sixth of those polled wanted a complete withdrawal from the EU, a further 45% wanted its replacement with a free-trade federation.

Bet you'll never guess what the French answer to the sinking euro is? A centralized European government. Of course I guessed it straight away.

£800 billion. That's how much the euro has cost British pensioners - so far - because of unwise investments by pension fund managers, who somehow still believe the euro will one day actually go up.

Germany has been bending EU rules to subsidize its shipyards, causing job losses in the U.K.

Why Calais? Why have our 'partners' the French built a detention camp for illegal immigrants at a port where none ever come in - unless they are encouraging them to sneak over to Great Britain. The fact that the enclosure is lightly guarded is,of course, just a coincidence.

The French, who take over the presidency of the Commission in July, have restated their determination to push for ever closer political union. We have been warned.

In addition to Sinn Fein, yet another obstacle to peace in Northern Ireland has emerged- certain members of the Irish government, who don't quite seem to have notices that their flag is green and ORANGE.

Not really news as we all knew it would happen, but the euro's sunk again, now below 90 cents. meanwhile retiring (not soon enough) MP Michael Heseltine says we should now join to help prop it up - a bit like inviting us on board the Titanic just after it's struck the iceberg.

The British government is facing some embarrassing questions over its support for the merger of the British and German stock markets. The Frankfurt-based exchange seems to be the only one which actually benefits, whilst many British firms could be forced to price their shares in the sinking euro as a result.

Neil Kinnock's credentials as the fraudbuster of Europe have taken a knock, after one of his own staff was accused of using his job to secure a new post elsewhere.
__________________

 

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RE: how long will the EU stay in E?

APRIL

Jean-Claude Trichet, who is supposed to take over as head of the European Central Bank in 2002, is under investigation for fraud - not helpful, as the euro had yet another bad day.

Gerhard Schroder has described the euro as 'sparkling' - on the day it sunk to a record low against the dollar, and has now lost almost one-fifth (20%) of its original value. But if it's so 'sparkling', why has the European Central Bank ordered the eleven member countries to raise interest rates?

Support for the euro in Germany, like the currency, is at an all-time low, dropping below the 50% mark for the first time ever.

Belgian and Dutch trawlers devastate British fishing grounds in the Irish Sea, so what does the EU do? Ban British boats from fishing there, and allow the Dutch and Belgians to carry on! Meanwhile out EU contributions are being used to compensate the Spanish who have been banned from destroying Morocco's fish stocks. You couldn't make this up, and unfortunately I'm not.

Isn't it nice to know our EU money is being so well spent? Over 300 MEPs decided that, for the good of the community, they had to spend ages at Lisbon's oceanarium during the recent summit there. That comment about slippery creatures ...

The good news; trade has boomed within the countries which abandoned border controls in joining the Schengen Accord. The bad news; the boom has been in the drugs trade.

France and Germany have called for a Fourth Reich - er, full political union within ten years. We have been warned.

France has admitted it cannot hope to end the rise in BSE cases for at least a decade. So what swift action is Brussels planning? An export ban, like the one on us? Well ... nothing. Surprise!

Germany has proposed that all member states replace their foreign embassies with a single EU one. The British government has ridiculed the idea - just like they did that single currency idea ten years back ....

The same EU which interferes in every other aspect of our lives has said it cannot do anything about the Bosman ruling, so big clubs can keep as many foreign players as they like, and the small clubs can just suffer.

All 44,000 sheep in Great britain must be tattooed for health reasons - or the EU will ban exports. Nice to know who our friends are.

European 'friends'. Would it surprise you to know that at least twelve terrorist murders have been committed because of IRA spies in the Garda (Irish police)? No? Thought not. Then would it surprise you to know that the Garda actually knew about these men for ages, yet did nothing?

Interest in growing around a report commissioned by Romano Prodi over EU fraud. He is suppressing it, but MEPs have demanded its release before they approve the budget.

Shock horror! MEPs have voted to curb the British veto. Well, I never expected that!

The E.U.'s press department has lamblasted the British press for criticizing it. Interestingly however there were no complaints that the press reports weren't actually true ...

Eddie George, Bank of England, has expressed his undying relief that the UK is not in the single currency, saying we would have been 'the elephant in the rowboat'. Interesting metaphor!

Let us all applaud the Commission for noticing that the disgraced ex-commissioners have been earning above their salary limit for months on end. Okay, so they should have noticed sooner. Yes, they'll do nothing about it anyway. But they have noticed!

EU wheat has to be tested before sale. Because of EU regulations, French wheat faces a £120 test whilst the same amount of English wheat costs £5500 to do. A fair playing-field? Don't make me laugh!

Lancashire fishermen were angry recently when they found Belgian fishermen fishing dangerously low cod stocks in the Irish Sea. Then the Belgians left - but the fishermen weren't pleased for long. It turned out the British government had been forced by the EU to buy them off by giving them a slice of our diminishing quota!

In spring - every spring - an MEP's fancy lightly turns to blocking the EU budget because of fraud, mismanagement and corruption. Plus ca change.

North-Rhine-Westphalia in Germany has raised the white flag - with the red cross on it. From now on, children will be taught in English, not German.

EU-Africa relations were strained at the recent conference when the EU was very grudging over the return of cash looted by dictators.

I hear Romano Prodi has invited ll his commissioners to sit down with him and speak his minds, Unfortunately the press were banned from this 'marathon'.

As more clouds of doubt gather around Romano Prodi's crime links in Italy, it is rumoured that several Commissioners are plotting a coup against his misrule.

A secret report to Tony Blair by one of his top advisers claims entering the euro would plunge the country into a boom-bust cycle.

Noticed a sudden lack of reports on how well Ireland is doing inside the single currency? Reports this week from the Emerald Isle say the economy is running out of control and, because they're in the euro, there's nothing they can do to stop runaway inflation.

Beware of the sheep! Rams' horns are deadly, according to the EU, and cannot be used for the traditional Scottish Borders skill of stick-dressing. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

The EU is frantically trying to smother yet another report which shows widespread fraud and corruption in Brussels, and no action being taken to cure same.

The DVLA told a pork-pie over its recent claim that passport photos on driver licences were a government idea - they were introduced to comply with an EU directive. Why the lie?

MARCH

The UK is as bad as Austria, and its shared spy network with the U.S. is an unfair advan .... er, a breach of human rights, according to the E.U.

Since the BBC couldn't find the time to tell you, here's the result of the poll of small businesses, which make up 90% of the UK's business community. They voted 6-1 against the single currency.A prize for the best suggestion as to how the BBC can misrepresent this (Not mentioning it, as they did, doesn't count).

Fancy some Rover Pie or Fluffy Turnover? You may soon get the chance. New EU directives mean pets cannot be cremated, and if buried must first be cooked. Next time you're offered meat at a funeral ....

Why are the French so obstructive over the seizure of war criminals in Yugoslavia. What with the US and UN also unhelpful, is it any wonder that 2/3 of all seizures so far have been by us Brits?

Tony Blair is mighty pleased at yet another empty EU promise to catch up with the internet revolution. Yet in July the French take over the presidency - and the smart money is on the rate of progress becoming somewhat retrograde.

Because several member states refused to have their reps seen in the same 'family photo'as Austria - so instead all visiting heads of state and member state reps are shown in a 'group photo'. Make your own jokes.

Whilst the British government bangs the drum about stopping the tidal wave of illegal immigrants, it has covertly agreed to enter the Schengen Agreement, which means any immigrant who gets into Italy can have the right to come straight to us - and of course the Italians will be only to pleased to help.

British eurofanatics are an odd breed. First they told us we should join the euro because we would suffer if we were out of it. The euro promptly collapses. Now they tell us we should have been in it 'because its collapse has pushed the pound up relatively'. Hmmm.

What decisive action did the EU take this week over Spain's failure to employ enough vets to check its cattle before export? A swingeing fine? A beef ban? No, a three-year extension.

The EU looks set to enforce the so-called 'Eastenders tax' on blank video tapes this summer.

Time taken to get the French to enforce the lifting of the beef ban, two years. Time taken to introduce yet another attempt to scrap the British veto on tax, two days. I rest my case.

The EU would like it known that it is a COMPLETE COINCIDENCE that the imposition of a new art sales tax happens just before the American art market become bigger than the European one for the first time. I'm sure you believe them.

The European Parliament has said it expects member states to teach their little citizens about the dreadful role their empires played in enforcing slavery in the past. Slavery yes, wiping out a large part of mankind, no.

Germany has voted to lift the beef ban - just. The vote scraped through the German parliament by nine votes.

The EU has accused the British government of following its rules and implementing its directives too much. Make your own comments.

An EU spokesman has threatened that the UK could be thrown out if it does not join the single currency. Or do I mean promised it will be thrown out?

Vegelate is dead! You remember vegelate; this was what European chocolate manufacturers wanted to force British chocolate sold overseas to be called. Instead it will be 'family chocolate', and the vegetable fats will have to be clearly labelled on the wrapper.

The Commission has threatened to overturn the 'compromise' on the new art tax which is going to destroy thousands (instead of tens of thousands) of jobs in the British art sales industry.

Denmark has set September 28th as the date for the referendum on the single currency, but the debate is already mired in covert pro-euro funding from both the government and the EU.

Brussels says it wants to clamp down on fraud and corruption - so it expects Britain to surrender its veto on taxes. Eh? Did I miss something there?

Brussels has rejected the idea of lifting diplomatic sanctions against Austria. We haf vays of making them come into line, yah?

Government minister Keith Vaz has admitted (as quietly as possible) that the City of London is doing even better outside the single currency. Unfortunately for him.

Three-quarters of all Brits consider the EU a failure, and the majority against joining has passed 2-1. But the 'good' news is that only 39% want to either leave the EU or dilute it into a free-trade area.

The UK has been told that it cannot ban illegally-produced foodstuffs imported from EU and EU-associate countries, even if it is dangerous. Strange then how they so swiftly banned our beef ...

The Channel Islands look set to be forced further away from Great Britain as the EU persecution over their tax laws intensifies.

Buy one, get one free - and enjoy it whilst you still can, for the EU plans to make this and free gifts illegal. No, I don't know why; sheer stupidity seems the best bet!

The Social Democratic Party, the minority government in Sweden, has moved towards endorsing the euro. Move quickly, boys- whilst it's still there!

The government is planning a children's board-game to encourage children to like the euro. How appropriate - if the euro keeps declining at its current rate, it'll soon be little more than Monopoly money!

What is the connection between a Polish female basketball player and Dublin? Well, a court case in France looks set to establish a precedent that any foreigner from a country with which the EU has an accord (last count = 23) is entitled to full citizenship rights, and the Dublin Agreement enables any country which faces someone insisting on these rights to dump them on the UK.

As the euro slides towards nothingness, the British government spends ever more 'preparing the country for it'. Rather like buying a ticket with S.S. Titanic on it, methinks - and an expensive one at £20 million this year.

An EU directive aimed at cutting fake subsidy claims by farmers will instead destroy hedgerows, which must be cut back if they exceed two yards in length.

If you think a privatized company in charge of our air traffic control is scary, then take a look at plans for the next EU intergovernmental (stress the mental) conference. Brussels plans to seize control of all air traffic control to itself. Think of that next time you board a plane ....

residents of Lostwithiel and Lanyhydrock in Cornwall are puzzled as to why a local road between the two places has been closed. Railtrack say it is to strengthen a bridge to conform with EU guidelines on heavy lorries - yet the road is unusable for such vehicles, as an ancient bridge further down prohibits their passage.

The government is growing to hate the small Essex resort of Leigh-on-Sea. For therein lies the butcher's shop of one David Stephens, who is refusing to sell his wares in metric and is daring the local authorities to take him to court. So far, nothing.

The Beamish Open Air Museum in Durham has been told it cannot sell sweets in pounds and ounces, but must metrify history to keep in line with Europe. First they change our history .....

Thanks to EU interference, Jorg Haider has now been able to portray himself as the democratic politician bullied out of office by foreigners. He'll still have all the power, and he'll soon be back - probably as Austria's chancellor.

 

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Re: how long will the EU stay in E?

As a EU citizen I've never had the feeling France was so dominant in Europe ... could be me of course ... my personal opinion is that I rather want Germany to handle more things, I personally like Germans more than I like the French (too stubborn for me :wink: )

How Britain is to become the new Master of Europe.

October 15, 2004

How Britain rose from its sickbed and became the envy of Europe

From Charles Bremner in Paris
The European Union believes it is witnessing a new British ascendancy



IN BERLIN, a thousand German music fans wave Union Jacks to a relayed broadcast of the Proms and Rule Britannia. In the Czech Republic, Tesco (a British supermarket chain) becomes a household name. In Paris, officials lament the British takeover of the European Union.
These are among many images that illustrate what much of the Continent sees as a new British ascendancy in Europe. Twenty years from the Thatcher revolution and a decade since the peak of Franco-German power, the former sick man of Europe has recovered to set the pace in a union that little resembles the version that reigns in the media and pub conversation of Albion.



In the view of much of Europe, Britain’s longstanding sense of inferiority, its perception of battling to defend beleaguered interests against a French-driven machine, has blinded it to a new reality: the British social model, business methods, diplomacy, economic affluence and cultural power are paramount in the new union of 25 members.

Less loved than admired, often grudgingly, Britain has perhaps not exerted so much all-round influence since the Edwardian age a century ago.

“The British model is very largely dominant in Europe,” says Nicolas Baverez, author of Falling France, one of a stream of books on French decline. “The French like to think that they are still the masters of Europe when they are no longer. The British refuse to believe that they are the new masters of Europe because they hate Europe so much.”

Britain’s lack of self-confidence often masks the country’s success as the pioneer of a looser, de-regulated, globalising, market-driven union. While Britons were anguishing this summer about giving up sovereignty under the new EU Constitution, much of “old Europe” was marvelling at London’s triumph.

Italy’s La Stampa newspapersaid: “Blair’s United Kingdom has been and still is the lion . . . and it alone has won the bout.”

Germany’s Handelsblatt said: “The British have fought excellently and achieved what they wanted . . . the remaining member states, including Germany, have realised that and have long since accepted London’s diktat.”

The new image of the British as fiendishly efficient negotiators, diplomats and businessmen is especially prevalent in France and certainly excessive. “It is almost embarrassing,” says one British envoy. “The French think that we have colonised Brussels, just taken it over, which is nonsense of course.”

The sense of British renaissance should not be exaggerated. The old Franco-German core that created and drove four decades of postwar integration is still active. Tony Blair’s Britain may enjoy the highest per capita income and lowest unemployment among the big states, but is still seen in some of old Europe as a rough-and-ready place of social inequality and crumbling infrastructure.

Mr Blair’s alliance with President Bush over Iraq has also damaged Britain in the eyes of much of the Continent. The British Prime Minister is still seen across the EU as the most dynamic national leader, but no longer as the hero that he was in the late 1990s.

In many places, drunken tourists and football hooligans shape the local view of Britons as much as those universal icons Harry Potter, Robbie Williams, David Beckham and James Bond. It could also be argued that French football players, Mediterranean cuisine, and the arrival of European companies have brought the Continent to Britain rather than the reverse.

But there is no dispute that Britain has achieved pre-eminence, thanks to a confluence of factors, including luck, talent and timing. Membership of the American-led “Anglo-Saxon family” has fuelled Britain’s economic and cultural penetration. The English language, which has eclipsed French as Europe’s lingua franca, is the main vector.

More than 40 per cent of Europeans claim to speak English as a first or second language, more than French, German, Italian and Spanish combined. Over the past decade, English has come to dominate work at the European Commission, long a French bastion.

Big companies such as Thales, the French-based defence and electronics firm, Germany’s Siemens and EADS, the Franco-German-led aerospace giant, have adopted English as their corporate languages. The Paris Education Ministry decided this week to impose “international English” as one of the five essentials in a new back-to-basics syllabus.

Since the collapse of communism, the “Anglo-Saxon” view of economic management, with the accent on competition and low taxes, has set the European agenda while the old regulated economies have struggled to shed the burden of the welfare state.
“The model that took the EU through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s is now failing the people of Europe,” Digby Jones, the CBI’s Director-Gerneral, said recently. “It is not British arrogance or Little Englander to say this. Britain has taken some very hard decisions over the past 25 years . . . these policies have delivered the most successful economy in Europe.”



The long-reviled NHS is attracting interest in France, Germany and the Netherlands, where more lavish systems are threatened with bankruptcy. German and French doctors are even migrating to work for the NHS, where pay is better.

London has prospered as the EU’s business capital. Britain has become the top destination for European investors. The UK is now the favourite for investment in research, development, software, electronics, pharmaceuticals and financial services. “London is the place to be. There is a buzz like nowhere else,” a senior manager in a Spanish multinational said.

The opulence of South East England, where salaries are the highest in any European region, is striking to visitors, who are amazed by the luxury cars and prices. On the Continent, British homebuying is pushing the poorer natives out of the market in some regions. Thanks in part to British budget airlines, Britain now has the EU record for foreign holiday homes.

Britain’s open, pragmatic approach to business is influential from Scandinavia to Portugal. In Germany, Anglo business values have lately driven out postwar thinking about the social market economy. Senior German executives ended up on trial last year over “fat cat” payoffs derived in the take-over of Mannesman by Britain’s Vodafone. The case collapsed this year, implicitly enshrining the more naked style of British capitalism in Germany.

Praising the British model, Rainer Bonhorst, an influential German commentator said: “Britain today has the most flexible and effective job agencies in Europe. This would have been unthinkable 20 years ago when the UK was the European model of stagnation and decline.” Thomas Kuehr, of T-Ventures, a pioneer of the private equity market in Germany, said: “Britain is way ahead of the field in Europe in creating a mature private equity market. The example of Britain shows that one can be toppled from the pedestal and yet climb out of a depression again. Our task is to learn the English lessons without experiencing the English decline.”

While big British firms now own local brand names in the EU or have made themselves household names, such as Tesco in Poland and the Czech Republic, less visible successes are the entrepreneurs who have moved in to local business. John Sutcliffe, who developed Felixstowe port, is rebuilding the Polish port of Gdansk. Richard Hardman, who made his name prospecting North Sea gas, has five drilling prospects in Poland.

Miles Graham, who has just taken over Body Basics, Central Europe’s leading cosmetics retailer, in Prague, says: “There is undoubtedly a perception in the Czech market that the Brits do business differently from other Europeans and I am proud of that. The Brits are seen as being reassuringly straight and open.”

Britain’s success in the grittier game of EU politics springs from a native tradition. Despite its self-imposed exile from core policies such as monetary union and the Schengen border-free zone, Britain has used its skills as an old-world power to forge its dominant place in Brussels. Mr Blair’s tactics won the appointment as new Commission President of José Manuel Durão Barroso, the pro-Atlantic former Portuguese Prime Minister. Paris was aghast when he appointed free-market liberals in the Anglo-Saxon mode to the most powerful commission seats, including Peter Mandelson at Trade. “The British do not just have their hands on the official levers, they make all the running in the lobbying and lawyering in Brussels,” a French diplomat said.

With the tide running in Britain’s favour, it has become fashionable to forecast the end of the present union. After the British reject the constitution, the argument goes, France and Germany will relaunch a federalist, euro-zone club around the old community core, leaving the British to lead the rest in an “Atlantic arc” trade zone.

However, this vision is already out of date because it would lock the slower-growing, slow-reforming economies (France/Germany etc) inside a ring of high-performing, modernising nations (Britain/Eastern Europe etc).

François Bayrou, leader of the UDF, the pro-European centrist party in President Chirac’s coalition, says: “The EU cannot survive without Britain, which is much admired everywhere. It must find a way of keeping Britain inside and not resort to trying to relaunch a core of federal- minded states.”

 

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RE: how long will the EU stay in E?

The economic basket case called the European Union

Why it cannot hope to challenge American supremacy (However, can BRITAIN become a Great Power again?!)

Glenn Reynolds calls attention to an essay by respected historian Paul Johnson, "Europe's Utopian Hangover." Prof. Johnson points out that the EU’s main members, France and Germany, don’t really have the economic power to match their political or military aspirations:

The EU is a French concept and is still largely run according to French ideas. And France is the archetypal EU country. If you have a regular job in France, your life is, in theory, lyrical. You work 35 hours a week. You generally get four weeks of holiday in August, plus a further three weeks throughout the year, in addition to 11 state holidays. Full medical care is provided, even in retirement. Retirement age varies, but it is now typically 55. Pensions may be two-thirds to three-quarters of a person's salary at the time of retirement. ...
But Johnson observes that the welfare society there can’t be sustained by shrinking national economies. Hence,
The EU has discovered, since the autumn of 2001, that it has little ability to determine events because its armed forces are small, underfunded, obsolete and ill-trained (with the exception of Britain). Apart from making trouble at the UN, France and Germany--those two former military giants that once made the world tremble--have been mere spectators.
I would add that the European welfare states are having to confront some demographic realities:
One study by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, predicts that the median age in the United States in 2050 will be 35.4, only a very slight increase from what it is now. In Europe, by contrast, it is expected to rise to 37.7 from 52.3

The likely meaning of this "stunning difference," as the British weekly The Economist called the growing demographic disparity between Europe and the United States, is that American power — economic and military — will continue to grow relative to Europe's, which will also decline in comparison with other parts of the world like China, India and Latin America.
In case you haven't read WOC's post on 12 under-rated global trends, do so. One of the 12 is Europe's looming pension crisis, where we find the following tidbit from the UK Independent:
The implications of ageing on the European social welfare model, where the current generation of working people pay the benefits of the current generation of retirees, have been so widely recognised that there is a danger of "pension fatigue" overtaking electorates. The core problem is that welfare systems that were developed at a time when there were more than four workers for every pensioner cannot function when there are fewer than two. (In the case of Spain and Italy, there will actually be fewer workers than pensioners when the present 20-somethings retire.)
But that's not all. Not only is Europe's population aging, it is growing smaller. Either Europeans need to increase their own birth rate (perhaps, as it has increased in France recently) or they will need to increase immigration. But anti-immigrant sentiment is rising there.

Governments' suggestions to raise the pension-eligibility age are strongly resisted.
"In reality, a legal retirement age of 80 is what we should aim at," Erich Streissler, an Austrian economist, wrote in a newspaper article.
Fat chance. In fact, more than half of men across Europe stop working between age 55-65.

These facts are worth remembering when discussing whether the United States should woo Old Europe into providing substantial assistance to nation building in Iraq. Plainly put, Germany and France have neither the economic nor military power to back up their diplomatic desires.

Remember that last Spring France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg announced that they will form a new combined armed forces with its own command structure and headquarters.
France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg . . . vowed to press ahead with a full-fledged defence union, brushing aside warnings that the move would entrench the European Union's bitter divisions over Iraq and could lead to the break-up of Nato.
Increasingly, we are seeing that American security interests are more and more divergent from those of France and Germany. Luxembourg and Belgium are militarily irrelevant.) Meantime, the US and UK find that their common security interests are as strong as ever, and maybe stronger than anytime since World War II.

France and Germany cannot hope to mount a credibly serious competitive challenge to the US alone, much less the US and UK together. In fact, the formation of this new combined army is almost a purely political act, not really a truly defense-oriented one (assuming that the force is ever actually formed at all).

There is no common enemy facing France and Germany that makes such an arrangement useful. In fact, France and Germany really face no military threat at all. The USSR is gone and the only other significant land power in Europe in Britain, which is certainly no military threat to the continent.

The announcement of the new combined armed force was really a propaganda ploy against the United States. Of course we have no military designs against the continent, but the point is that Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder want to form a power pole in opposition to the US. They want to be perceived as major players, not aligned with the US, on the world-power scene.


But knowledgeable people aren’t fooled. All four countries of the new alliance together cannot hope to match American military spending or manning; they have neither the will to do so nor, as Prof. Johnson shows, the economic capacity. Together they have exactly one aircraft carrier (Britain alone has THREE!), very little airlift (Britain alone has one-third of the total EU airlift capabilities) (none of it strategic quality), no heavy bombers (Britain has a few) and land forces much less resourced and poorly trained compared to the US. Technologically their militaries are at least a generation behind the United States with no hope of catching up.

The entire defense picture in Europe is very confused, though. NATO is politically stressed as never before. It entire raison d'etre, the USSR and Warsaw Pact, is gone, leaving NATO a defense alliance with no meaningful enemy. Besides, NATO almost was fractured earlier this year when France, Belgium and Germany vetoed delivery of Patriot missiles to Turkey, a NATO member that requested the assistance as a defense against potential Iraqi missile attack when the Iraq war started.

The European Union has set up a military command structure that basically duplicates NATO’s except that America, Canada and European non-EU states are not included. Last February, England and France announced they would form a combined aircraft carrier battle group to be permanently available for offensive military action worldwide. However, England’s Tory politicos accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of using the scheme as a deal maker to convince French President Jacques Chirac to back upcoming offensive action against Iraq. France opposed the Iraq war anyway and since then nothing more has been heard of the combined carrier group idea.

My analysis: The United States will continue to prop up NATO with words and money, while in deed disentangling itself from it. A review of American basing in Europe is already underway, but will become quite serious before long. Philip Carter wrote that not only will the location of US bases in Europe change, so will the nature of the bases themselves.
Moving bases from one part of Europe to another is small potatoes. Instead, I think we're going to see a transformation of the nature of these bases -- from permanent garrisons to "lily pads" from which the American military can leapfrog abroad. Instead of maintaining large units in Europe like we do today, I think we're moving towards a model where we keep all these units in the United States, with their equipment pre-positioned in places like Diego Garcia and Eastern Europe, ready to deploy with them as a package to anyplace in the world. This would substantially lower operating costs, and increase the quality of life for soldiers who would choose to live in the United States (there will still be plenty of overseas opportunities for those who want to go). Moving out of Western Europe, with its gargantuan Cold War-era bases, is one step towards this new vision.

Quite so. At the same time, look for defense ties between the UK and the US to grow even stronger, with probably a lot more combined exercises in the years ahead. I'll even predict that the Iraq war was Britain's doorway to returning to true Great Power status. (But we won't know for a few years.)
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[Blackleaf]

RE: how long will the EU stay in E?

By 2030, the EU will have 30 members states, more than it has now. But it's share of the world economy would have shrunk.

Analysis: French study says Europe fading
By Martin Walker
UPI Chief International Correspondent

Published 5/14/2003 1:40 PM

WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) -- Europe is predicted to become a second-ranking economic force over the next 50 years, its share of world output almost halving from its current 22-percent share to 12 percent, a top French think tank reported Wednesday.

Over the same period, the United States is expected almost to retain its 25-percent share, which will by 2050 be matched or even outpaced by China as the world's dominant economy.

"The enlargement of the European Union will not be sufficient to guarantee parity with the United States," says the report from the prestigious French Institute of International Relations. "The EU will weigh less heavily on the process of globalization and a slow but inexorable movement onto history's 'exit ramp' can be foreseen."

Even that decline to a 12-percent share of the global economy is based on IFRI's assumption that Europe welcomes 30 million young immigrant workers from North Africa and the Arab world, to swell its thinning labor force. Europe's falling birthrate, along with rigid labor markets and early retirement, means that even the enlarged EU won't be able to keep up with U.S. and Chinese growth rates over the next five decades.

The IFRI report, titled "World Trade in the 21st Century" carries some sobering political implications for European policy-makers. Currently no match for the United States in military or political weight, the EU prides itself on being America's economic and commercial equal. But a shrinking economic weight in world affairs will render Europe even more marginal politically.

The report comes in the month that U.S. President George W. Bush is to fly to France for a potentially difficult G8 summit, grouping leaders of the world's leading industrialized countries. The Bush administration is still resentful of French and German opposition to the Iraq war, and U.S.-EU trade rivalries are sharpening fast. The United States this week brought legal action under World Trade Organization rules against EU import restrictions on U.S. foods grown with genetically modified organisms.

The report could strengthen those in the Bush administration who argue that Europe's stalled economies and feeble military strength means that it is less and less important to U.S. strategic concerns. And coming from a think tank in France, a country that has long sought to build up the EU as a counterweight to U.S. predominance, the IFRI report suggests that the United States has little to worry about and the EU has few cards to play.

The IFRI report suggests that Europe could delay, but not fundamentally alter, the process by creating a European economic space that would include Russia and former republics of the Soviet Union, along with Turkey and North Africa to create a larger trading zone. But given the political difficulties Europe currently experiences with large-scale Muslim immigration, and the resistance to Turkish aspirations to join the EU, it is far from clear that Europe's voters would agree to save their economic status by changing their largely white and Christian club into an increasingly Islamic entity.

Even if it does absorb 30 million new immigrants by 2050, the European population is still expected to decline in the years 2000-2050, from 493 million to 434 million. In the same period the population of China is expected to grow from 1.34 billion to 1.5 billion with North America -- the United States, Mexico and Canada -- rising from 413 million to 584 million.

The report also predicts that by 2050 Europe will have 30 member states; the 15 current members, the 10 to join in 2004, plus Bulgaria, Romania, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland.

Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International


http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID...14-122957-7750r
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RE: how long will the EU stay in E?

By EURSOC Two
08 July, 2004

Someone in Brussels must want to make life really difficult for Tony Blair. Not only does the Prime Minister face an uphill struggle to convince Britons to sign up for the European Constitution, but according to reports today, he will have to do so while Britain loses its rebate and becomes Europe's largest net contributor of funds.

These extraordinary proposals are aired in a plan produced by the EU Budget Commissioner, Michaele Schreyer.

Eurocrats have been greedily eyeing Britain's £2 billion annual rebate for years. The rebate was won by Margaret Thatcher in 1984, when Britain was last Europe's biggest net contributor. Blair is thought to find the rebate difficult to defend politically, not least because it eats into cash which could go to Britain's less well-off allies in central Europe. It is thought that the PM would be open to proposals to reduce or remove the rebate, provided a wider revision of EU budgetary policy was undertaken. In any case, government spokesmen defend the rebate because Britain gets little back from the EU: Other nations, with larger agricultural sectors, do better via Common Agricultural Policy subsidies.

However, some insiders claim that rather than use the rebate to help poor central Europeans, Britain's loot would be divided among other wealthy contributing nations in western Europe.

Not content from stealing from the rich to give to the rich, the report proposes doubling Britain's contribution to the EU. The Independent says this would bring Britain's contribution of Gross Nation Income up from 0.22 to 0.51 percent.

British EU insiders reacted angrily: UK commissioners Neil Kinnock and Chris Patten are pleading with Schreyer to rethink her proposals. Patten said, "It is such a self-evidently unfair proposal that it is politically naive. Doubling the UK's contribution is not a sensible option."

The report makes Tony Blair's job of selling Europe to Britain even more difficult. Canny Eurosceptics are surely already working on an "EU tax" which would demonstrate how much British taxpayers would bankroll the EU under the proposals.

Commentators never seem to tire of telling Britons how much better continental Europe's welfare system is than our own. When a tenth, a quarter or a third (whichever figure is currently fashionable) of British children are said to grow up in relative poverty, it will be impossible to justify paying another £10 billion a year to Brussels.

Britons will wonder why the UK, with a similar population and economy only slighter larger than France's, will have to pay so much more: France stitched up Common Agricultural Policy funds last year, ensuring it retains the lion's share of this corrupt subsidy system for years to come. Under the proposals, Britain would pay 50 percent more than France.

Voters might be persuaded at a stretch to fork out cash to help Britain's allies in central Europe. But to fund France's farmers and Brussels' swollen and unaccountable bureaucracy? To help line the pockets of bent MEPs and prop up endless cash-hungry committees? Not a chance.

EU commission president Romano Prodi has a handy catchphrase for the new drive for funds. He says that "You cannot have more Europe for less money."

Britons - and we suspect, most other Europeans - have a ready answer for that. If less money means less Europe, well, voters will take less Europe.

http://www.eursoc.com/news/fullstor...K_For_Cash.html

 

[turubawebmaster]

i think USA and Canada should adapt to the schengen accord way since the border is the longest and friendliest