EU ministers set sights on huge extension of personal powers

by Politicus

THE WHOLE process of passing power in successive EU treaties from national states to supranational EU institutions in Brussels increases the personal powers of ministers and government politicians all over the EU — at the expense of the power of national parliaments and peoples.

For every time a policy area is shifted from the national to the supranational level, government ministers, who are executives — i.e. part of the executive arm of government — at national level, and who must have a majority behind them in the national parliament (legislature) to get things done, are turned into legislators for 400 million Europeans at the supranational level of the EU Council of Ministers.

There they make EU laws in an exclusive club of 15 — soon to be 25 — persons, meeting behind closed doors, on the basis of package deals with one another. They are not responsible as a collectivity to any elected body, and of course cannot be collectively dismissed.

It can be seductive,indeed intoxicating, to the individuals concerned, especially if they come from small countries, but it is of course the antithesis of democracy.

EU integration thus means a huge accretion of personal powers to ministers at the expense of their own parliaments and peoples, as national government executives are turned into European legislators.

This seems to be the key reason why government ministers in all countries so much favour the growth of European Union power. For their own personal power grows with it. Two things are therefore happening every time there is a new EU treaty:

• power passes from the national level to the supranational; and
• at national level power passes from the legislative arm of government to the executive arm. The latter is a kind of coup in slow motion by senior politicians, government ministers — which is often connived in by aspiring ministers in so–called ‘opposition’ parties — at the expense of the democracy of their own peoples, parliaments and nation states.

While there is no benefit or advantage to the peoples and national parliaments of Europe in the proposed EU constitution,there are big personal advantages in it for government ministers and aspiring ministers.

This point is worth stressing by democrats as they opppose this monstrous EU treaty–cum–constitution. It explains to “ordinary voters” why government politicians want this. In Ireland it explains why taoiseach Bertie Ahern and the diplomats of the foreign affairs department are more interested in “keeping in with” and winning the approval of Messrs Chirac, Schröder, Berlusconi, Verhofstadt and the rest — who are their fellow members of that exclusive 25–person club of EU legislators, the European Council and the EU Council of Ministers — than defending what is left of the power of their own parliament and people.

This point also chimes in with popular disillusionment and disgust with mainstream political leaders for their subversion of democracy that exists so widely in most EU countries today, as well as in Ireland.

Europe again: It should be noted that the European parliament in Brussels hosts some 500 industry lobby groups who duly employ some 10,000 professions lobbyists.

The main focus of the ‘Lisbon’ agenda is for a self regulated competitive free market economy so that business (capital) can seek the cheapest labour in a european country that will give the largest profit.

Although these new countries joining the EU have had to open their borders to the free flow of capital, it’s a different story when it comes to the free flow of people. Anyone who attempts to campaign for a co-operative economy will be sidelined.