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Nile Gardiner

Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator. He appears frequently on American and British television and radio, including Fox News Channel, CNN, BBC, Sky News, and NPR.

The EU’s monstrous UN power grab

 

By Nile Gardiner 

As Bruno Waterfield reported earlier, the European Union is moving significantly closer to acquiring the powers of a fully fledged nation state in the United Nations General Assembly. As Waterfield notes:

The proposals, following the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty and an increase in foreign policy power, will mean that Europe’s desk will be moved from the margins, where it sits with organisations such as Nato’s parliamentary body, near to the centre of the UN’s assembly chamber.

Baroness Ashton, the EU foreign minister or “High Representative”, will be given a special seat alongside a new European UN ambassador with “the right to speak in a timely manner, the right of reply, the right to circulate documents, the right to make proposals and submit amendments (and) the right to raise points of order”.

This is without doubt the biggest EU power grab since the introduction of the Lisbon Treaty, and combined with the formation of the EU diplomatic corps (European External Action Service, as it is officially known) represents a further giant step towards the building of a European superstate at the expense of the nation state. These developments should be of immense concern to anyone who cares about the erosion of British sovereignty within Europe and maintaining an independent foreign policy.

As Daniel Hannan wrote earlier this week, the EEAS has a budget 20 times the size of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, with 7,000 staff in 130 embassies. Incredibly, the House of Commons voted on Wednesday by 321 to 12 to approve the European External Action Service, despite a firm rejection of key aspects of the Lisbon Treaty when the Conservatives were in opposition.

Full credit to Douglas Carswell, one of the few MPs who voted against the Bill. Carswell is not only extremely sound on Europe, but one of the bravest and most principled backbenchers of his parliamentary generation. Here is what he wrote on his blog:

Yesterday, I voted against the government. Or to put it another way, I voted against the creation of the European External Action Service that the government bizarrely now supports. Not merely have senior Conservatives dropped their opposition to it, but coalition ministers apparently played a “decisive” role in making sure that the new EU foreign office got off the ground. How can it possibly be right for us to go along with the formal establishment of a European diplomatic corp? If one is a rebel for opposing this sort of nonsense, then we make rebels of our party, our country and our consciences.

No doubt Foreign Office officials will be selling these measures as inconsequential and of no threat to British interests. But they are a fundamental threat, and their long-term impact will be hugely negative for the freedom of the British people to shape their own destiny on the world stage. They are large steps towards the relentless goal of “ever closer union” craved by Brussels bureaucrats who dream of a European superpower, albeit toothless in military terms, and devoid of any semblance of economic growth or stability.

The march towards an EU seat at the United Nations as well as an EU UN Ambassador may ultimately spell the end of Britain’s seat on the UN Security Council. By agreeing to these proposals, London is playing with fire, with declining British influence and power the inevitable end result.

My former boss Lady Thatcher wrote in her brilliant book Statecraft:

That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever embarked upon will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era.

It is advice that should be heeded and acted upon by the new British government if it is serious about preventing any further powers from being handed to Brussels, and blocking the rise of a federal Europe.

Tags: Douglas Carswell, European External Action Service, european union, Margaret Thatcher, United Nations