When I was growing up my mother fooled us every April lst. She swapped the breakfast
cereals, sounded false alarms, and got us to polish the house because "loo F'lirpA"
was coming to dinner. I was very gullible then.
My kids try to catch me every year with a ketchup-coated "hurt" finger
or a changed clock. Occasionally they are successful but I am harder to fool now.
I wonder are we as a people harder to fool? I hope so. We hear passing mention of
the EU Constitution. Last week there was brief comment about Bertie's quiet lobbying
for unanimous support among prime ministers and presidents for the Constitutional
Treaty so that the Constitution could be done and dusted this year. Did anyone notice
that Bertie wasn't asking us?
What is this Constitution thing all about?
This year the Irish Government and the main opposition parties are involved in an
elaborate hoax and I hope, we are not going to be fooled and fall for it.
The aim of the hoax is to substitute the European Union of today with a different
European Union. In other words, the aim is to abolish the existing confederation
of sovereign states contracted by a series of
treaties to cooperate in certain areas like economics and replace it with a new European
super state.
The hoax is based on the use of familiar words and terms like "EU" and
"European Union" being given new meanings. The first provision of the proposed
EU Constitutional Treaty if accepted is to found a new EU on the basis of its own
Constitution. In effect repealing all existing EEC/EC/EU treaties. The Single European
Act, Maastricht, Amsterdam, in fact everything from the Treaty of Rome 1957 to The
Treaty of Nice which we ratified only last year after a second referendum.
The "Treaty Establishing A Constitution for Europe" to give it its proper
official title declares the existing European Union abolished and then immediately
establishes a new and very different entity called the European Union. Smoke and
mirrors, rabbit in top hat! Notice it will not be called the New EU or Euro II for
that would give the trick away.
Unlike a typical Fools Day joke, if we fall for this gag, we can't laugh it off and
return to normal because normal will have shifted. Super state by stealth! We will
no longer be citizens of an Irish State but citizens of a European State with an
Irish province. We will be ruled by two EU presidents; a president of the Commission,
now Romano Prodi and a president of the Council, a new job.
We won't choose these presidents. Neither will be popularly elected. We will have
a European capital, European Foreign Minister with a European foreign policy and
diplomatic service. It will be illegal for Ireland to decide our own foreign policy.
So much for neutrality. Our Irish Constitution and courts will be subject to being
overruled by the EU Constitution and the European Court of Justice.
The new EU Constitution will extend the EU dominance that is at present still limited,
to virtually every aspect of life, with the scope to extend it further as desired.
We will no longer have one vote out of 15 or 25, as we expected to have after expansion
and as we agreed in the Treaty of Nice. We will represent 4 million people out of
450 million and our vote will be worth less than 1% of that total. Six months ago,
the Czech President, who seems more up front with his 11 million people than Bertie
is being with us, warned them that "This is crossing the Rubicon, after which
there will be no more sovereign states in Europe with fully fledged governments and
parliaments which represent legitimate interests of their citizens, but only one
State will remain. Basic things will be decided by a remote 'federal government'
in Brussels and, for example, Czech citizens will be only a tiny particle whose voice
and influence will be almost zero.....We are against a European super state."
So where did this EU constitution come from? It came from the top, not as constitutions
historically do, from a people committing themselves to democracy and justice. The
people of Europe never asked for it. The EU Constitution came from behind closed
doors, literally. I asked an MEP about the rumoured Constitution early last year.
The MEP could give me no information other than that it was being worked on by former
French President V. Giscard D'Estaing and an appointed, not elected, convention and
that it was all being done with the utmost secrecy. It was interesting that it was
unveiled section-by-section last year just as the bombs started to fall in Iraq and
the attention of the world and its media was far from Brussels.
With a house full of April Fool tricksters, I will be on my guard tomorrow hoping
to get through the day unfooled. I would suggest that we all practice the same vigilance
this year. The tricksters are very much here and they are trying to fool us out of
our democracy, self-determination, courts, neutrality, influence in Europe and anything
else they have no use for.
April Fool is coming fast, will we be the biggest fools at last?
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