UK Red Lines intact
Just got our hands on the latest draft of the treaty.
Tony Blair can claim that he has won all his red lines. Of course, many will feel this was utterly predictable and of course Conservatives and others will say that there is plenty here that deserves a referendum. But Mr Blair has made their job that much harder.
There is just about an opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights ("Blair wins right to torture" may not be the headline in many papers, but stillβ¦) It says:
"In particular, for the avoidance of doubt, nothing in title 4 of the Charter creates justiciable rights applicable to the United Kingdom."
The Javier Solana role stays as High Representative (rather than Foreign Minister, as the constitution proposed).
EU foreign policy will be decided by "The European Council and the Council acting unanimously". And the European Courts won't have any say over it. None of this will effect the "existing legal basis, responsibilities, and powers of each member state," the draft says, and there's a similar statement about the new foreign affairs job. It stresses there are no new powers given to the European Parliament or Commission.
In the area of justice and home affairs, there are more opt-outs for Britain and an agreement that a third of countries can agree to do more together if they want to.
Still poring over it, but I think itβs safe to say that while Eurosceptics won't like it, it is a lot weaker than the old constitution, and enthusiasts for "ever closer union" will feel gravely let down.
The European Parliament will hate it, and there will be lots of grumbling from disappointed European enthusiasts. Of course itβs not yet a done deal.
Others may kick up a fuss, but the real headache for the other leaders is Poland. Nicolas Sarkozy is straining hard to be seen as the summit saviour. He left the dinner and asked Tony Blair to come with him. They called the Polish prime minister in Warsaw and then saw the president here. Then they rang the PM again. The twins wouldn't budge and the two presidents and the prime minister went back to the dinner.
Now the Germans are suggesting that everyone else should sign up and open an intergovernmental conference, to discuss the detail behind the detail of the Reform Treaty. This is widely seen as an aggressive act, stressing the isolation of Poland - with only one precedent in the 1980s, when Mrs Thatcher wouldn't sign up to something or other (I will check exactly what and how it turned out).
But it seems to me itβs actually handing Poland a trump card. All it does is defer the problem, underline that Poland can wreck the process and increase the risk that everyone else will open up their own issues. But I will ponder this further.
UPDATE: Sounds like the Poles are on board. Some sort of offer to not touch the Nice Treaty voting system until 2014. So not "Nice or death" as Polish slogan went, but "Nice or 2014". By which time, we might all be dead.
UPDATE 2: 1.45AM... You would have thought they would just sign up and go home. But no, the full meeting has broken up and the leaders are holding more one-to-one meetings. The Belgians are objecting that the UK has been given far too much. Someone says itβs going to be 6am. I think they've talked so much they've used up all the oxygen in the Council building. Itβs certainly sticky and hot in here.
UPDATE 3: 4.40-ishAM I'm dozing and the mobile goes. "A mandate has been agreed."
Iβm Mark Mardell, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's North America editor. These are my reflections on American politics, some thoughts on being a Brit living in the USA, and who knows what else? My 
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Traitor Blair must be arrested now!
Hi Mark,
Any word as to the state of play regarding the EU's Legal Personality?
As I recall Mrs Thatcher initially wouldn't sign up to an Intergovernmental Conference to draft the Single European Act, which enshrined the use of Qualified Majority Voting in the Council on most issues. To do so would have required the UK to give far more ground than she was prepared to give, as she felt that it was perfectly possible to achieve the same end within the terms of the Treaty of Rome, without setting in stone the abandonment of the UK's veto on key areas. In the end she relented, fearing that to be too stubborn on that issue would see the others go ahead with Britain left behind as she had been in the 1950s, thus putting at risk the Single Act's commitment to the Single Market, which was a key British interest, enabling the creation of "Thatcherism on a European scale". Hopefully the Kaczinskis, like Mark, will sense the precedent and remain on board, but you raise a good point in that Poland is perfectly capable of wrecking the process, whereas Britain in 1985 could easily be ignored due to its semi-detached situation (though Delors, Mitterrand etc were adamant that the UK play a constructive role, not least due to the influence of the Commissioner for the Internal Market, Britain's Lord Cockfield).
Mark
You posted without a thorough re-read, putting 'None of this will effect'.
How can Blair claim to be victorious? The EU is ALREADY a megastate. Javier Solana is ALREADY the EU's foreign minister and (even though not granted a permission by anyone) represents, as a self-appointed FM, European nations abroad. He is the one negotiating with Ali Larijani.
Betrayed yet again by "our " leaders , Blair is a as near a dodo as can be for a Prime Minister but he still signs up for this " Treaty". We need to have a say via a referendum.
From my point of view Croatians wants to become fully-fledged member of the EU Union. EU made job that much harder on Croatia, settlement based on deeply felt injustices and support for the Titoist-style Communists. Sanader and Mesic have Croatia join as quickly as possible and at any cost is a reflection of their utter bankruptcy as leaders. Their EU fast-track policy is a cheap substitute for the kind of real reforms Croatia needs to undertake if it is to become a healthy, prosperous and vibrant democracy.
The economic and political injustices
Croatia will be transformed into the Puerto Rico of Southeastern Europe: an impoverished economic and political colony of Brussels, whose main purpose is to serve as a tourist destination for vacationing Europeans. Yet as the bulk of the Croatian people suffer, the former communist, as well as current leaders elites will prosper. They will continue the Titoist-style cronyism and rampant corruption that is stunting the country's development. They will make sure to siphon off large chunks of targeted EU subsidies and foreign aid which will enable them to preserve their fancy cars, apartments and privileged status. The current leaders are slick Balkan conmen masquerading as statesmen. If EU falls in Croatia EU is finished.
The injustices of richer country taking from a poorer country's
Hunger for Croatia's Adriatic coast and land is not fair: But Slovenia now a part of the EU gang, is not the only country, EU's land grab crime is lower then we as a free people can prosses. The EU's top diplomat, Jose Manuel Barroso, warned Croatia, no its bully' Titoist-style leaders in Croatia for Adriatic coast and fishing in Croatia's waters. Slovene and EU fishermen like to be able to go about their business unhindered in Croatian waters. What is sad about all this, is the fact that Italy and Slovenia, now a part of the EU gang, disallow Croatia from fishing in their waters, yet they create a storm if Croatia wishes to place the same regulations on their own waters. This is an example of a richer country taking from a poorer country's resources. If this poorer country says anything, then the richer country calls his gang (the EU countries) and they try to intimidate Croatia into giving in. This is just one of many examples.
The injustices of Hague
There is only one man who stands in the way of this path to Croatian destruction: General Ante Gotovina who was charged for drive out rebel minority Serbs. The general is in Hague offering the last line of resistance to the disastrous policies of appeasement by both Sanader and Mesic. By preventing Croatia's bankrupt ruling class from turning the country into a vassal of EU, Gen. Gotovina is saving Croatia one more time. Carla Del Ponte imagined General Ante Gotovina would be an appropriate political "counterpart" for Slobodan Milosevic and other Serbian war criminals such as Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, although the former General Ante Gotovina defeated them and stopped their very crimes. His operation, because of which he is currently awaiting trial in The Hague, was evaluated by the western military experts as one of the cleanest ones in the contemporary Western military history. It caused a minimum of the incidents, given its large scope and an unfavorable balance of forces in the region in which Milosevic's frenzied butchers were fully equipped for the war. The only crime bigger than the war crime is the post war one, for which the aggressor is absolved. Let there be no doubt, Serbia is guilt as sin of the massacre Croatia and Srebrenica. Genocide is not a crime like shoplifting, or even simple first-degree murder. Genocide is not a matter for a protracted criminal trial by an organization that can barely utter the word βgenocideβ while hundreds of thousands and butchered in Darfur and Somalia and Rwanda and ...
And the EU wonders why there is a growing anti-EU feel in Croatia. It seems that the Croats will endure this insult, in the name of peaceful reintegration. From my point of view, the EU could have made a decisive statement that it would no longer tolerate injustices but it didnβt. It looked into the face of evil, blinked, and babbled in bureaucratic impotence.
>> None of this will effect the "existing legal basis, responsibilities, and powers of each member state," the
Mark
This should read "None of this will affect" (not "effect"). A huge difference between the two meanings!
All that's changed is the timetable. Poland will lose its voting advantage which lured it into the EU in the first place in seven years instead of sooner, that's all. The process actually has real advantages when taken slowly because each small incremental step represents only a minor erosion of indvidual sovereignty and the member nations have time to adjust to it into their national psyche as the new reality. Each time a new small change is proposed, it will seem petty and obstructionist to oppose it and the country in opposition will be told that if they don't like the EU they could just leave. As time goes on, this will become increasingly difficult and eventually impossible.
The other process at work is the ethnic heterogenicity of Europe's population so that there will be no real national identity or distinction left anywhere in few generations. By that point it will be seen as absurd for Britain to be a holdout for not adopting the Euro for example since by then every other EU member will have done it and it will be argued that it doesn't make any sense. This is like a series of lobster traps where each step further down the tunnel makes it impossible to go backwards. The fear of being kicked out of the EU altogether will be so overwhelming as to be no longer considered a politically viable option. How ironic for one of the largest and most successful economies in the world to fear going it alone but instead finding it necessary to tie its fate to a large number of far weaker econonies to which it is involuntarily a net subsidizer.
Could anyone imagine an American President literally within days of leaving office, a lame duck as we call them negotiating a foreign treaty in which he will make previously unspecified concessions to other governments over which the legislature would have no veto or which would simply be rubber stamp them? We'd have a second American revolution on our hands.
Mark, a question.
If the UK left the EU and we set off on our own both politically and economically how long do you think it would take before other EU countries realised they were being left behind?
Without the shackles of the EU we would be charging ahead economically so fast that the EU institutions would choke in the dust. Without the burden of EU regulations our businesses would prosper and without the cost of EU membership our services could be fully funded. Our politicians wax lyrical about the benefits of the EU but refuse to contemplate a cost benefit analysis and we all know why don't we.
Roger (9):
"Without the burden of EU regulations our business would prosper and without the cost of EU membership our services could be fully funded"
So how comes Roger that for much of the last 20-30 years, one only has to travel across the channel to find vastly superior healthcare, public transport, education etc. etc. Surely according to your argument, the EU and membership of it has stifled all of those mainland countries' economies so that they're struggling and on their last legs....
In fact, I can only hope on re-reading your entry that your tongue is firmly wedged in your cheek....
(Or perhaps it isn't.)
No European country is big enough to have an effect on the world anymore. Germany is the only one that potentially could, but historical reasons make it very hard for Germany to act. A United Europe, however, would be the most powerful actor in the world. It's such a shame that the small minded prefer to bury their heads in the sand, and to stop those of us who want to actually have a voice in the world.