"Germany is usually portrayed as rabidly federalist".
The truth is that the German people are no more in favour of a megalithic
EU state than most.
Their politicians, however, love the idea .
The problem of the German people is that one trait they have retained
from their murky past is a deferential obedience to those in
authority.
And when those in authority have spent all their
formative years and much of the rest of their adult life in a state
of no respect for the individual and where the Stasi corrupted the
whole nation the rest of us must always remember that salient fact.
This piece rehearses the known incidents but it is useful for naming
names and detailing processes in a succinct way
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PRIVATE EYE 1215 25/7-7/8.08
EU-phemisms
(French official spokesman) "After only a month the French EU
President has brought Europe together"
Translation : "We've pissed off everybody"|
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Brussels Sprouts
While European Union leaders conspire to ignore swathes of the
electorate by calling for ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, a
rearguard action is being fought in Germany and elsewhere.
Though Germany is usually portrayed as rabidly federalist, lawyers
there have unravelled the plot enshrined in both the European
Constitution treaty and the subsequent Lisbon treaty to hand yet more
power to Brussels. German president, Horst Kohler, has now refused
to sign off Lisbon until Germany's highest constitutional court rules
on two legal challenges by two right and left-wing MPs , Peter
Gauweiler and Diether Dem.
Their appeal follows a finding by Professor Dr Dietrich Murswick that
both treaties were exactly the same and undermined German people's
democratic rights - notably by allowing the EU to change its
regulations as it pleases without consulting national parliaments.
This power-grabbing plan was first unveiled by German law expert
Professor Karl-Albrecht Schachtschneider, a specialist in the first
constitutional treaty. "It's been done in quite a sophisticated way
and has taken me some time to unravel it. The ordinary politician
cannot be expected to understand this treaty".
Though German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the man who drafted the
first constitutional treaty, former French president, Valery Giscard
d'Estaing, admit both treaties are exactly the same. in Britain Lord
Justice Richards and colleagues in the high court decided the two
treaties were completely different when they dismissed Stuart
Wheeler's challenge for a UK referendum.
Meanwhile the Czech Republic's constitutional court is also debating
the legality of the Lisbon Treaty and in Poland President Lech
Kacazynski has said it would be "pointless" to sign it after the
Irish no vote. Undeterred the European Commission has, er, ignored
it, calling for ratification, and MEPs cheered on the reintroduction
of the EU's abandoned flag and anthem the day before Richard made his
ruling in the British high court. Democracy, anyone?
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