tenpastmidnight blog
Making hay while the sun shines
» Thursday, June 02, 2005 «
EU treaty
(Random rambling that should probably be ignored:)
So the French and Dutch have voted not to accept the new EU Constitution, but no politician wants to come out and say it's stuffed.
OK, so several countries have accepted it, including Germany, but the thing is there's no way us Brits are going to say "yes" in a referendum to anything to do with Europe at the moment, and there's no even a decent "Yes" campaign over here to explain why it's a good thing and we should vote for it. With two of the three most powerful countries in Europe not ratifying, this treaty is a dead duck, but apparently the first European politician to point this out is going to get blamed for it failing, so none of them want to.
Well, there's a good reason for not voting for it - it appears the people in power in the EU are actually a bunch of school children, not serious politicians interested in helping out the member countries and more involved with who they should blow raspberries and who's in the right gang.
One problem I have with going deeper in to Europe is I can't see why it's necessary, at least at the moment. We've got a strong trading union of a bunch of countries close together, that makes sense. Deciding all these different economies should jump together seems rather mad. I tend to feel the 'European project' is trying to rush forwards too fast. It wasn't that long ago that Europe was at war, and just before that, we were at war again.
I feel taking it easy and seeing this for the long-term project it must be is the way to go. I don't see why we have to have a single currency now or a common economic policy across the whole of Europe now. Rushing towards central governance seems to be a way for certain politicians to get in the history books, which is not a good reason for doing it, which may be a reason people are reacting negatively to the treaty, even though it seems to have many good parts.
Anyway, this post isn't really going anywhere. I'll probably need to re-write it or zap it at a later date.
So the French and Dutch have voted not to accept the new EU Constitution, but no politician wants to come out and say it's stuffed.
OK, so several countries have accepted it, including Germany, but the thing is there's no way us Brits are going to say "yes" in a referendum to anything to do with Europe at the moment, and there's no even a decent "Yes" campaign over here to explain why it's a good thing and we should vote for it. With two of the three most powerful countries in Europe not ratifying, this treaty is a dead duck, but apparently the first European politician to point this out is going to get blamed for it failing, so none of them want to.
Well, there's a good reason for not voting for it - it appears the people in power in the EU are actually a bunch of school children, not serious politicians interested in helping out the member countries and more involved with who they should blow raspberries and who's in the right gang.
One problem I have with going deeper in to Europe is I can't see why it's necessary, at least at the moment. We've got a strong trading union of a bunch of countries close together, that makes sense. Deciding all these different economies should jump together seems rather mad. I tend to feel the 'European project' is trying to rush forwards too fast. It wasn't that long ago that Europe was at war, and just before that, we were at war again.
I feel taking it easy and seeing this for the long-term project it must be is the way to go. I don't see why we have to have a single currency now or a common economic policy across the whole of Europe now. Rushing towards central governance seems to be a way for certain politicians to get in the history books, which is not a good reason for doing it, which may be a reason people are reacting negatively to the treaty, even though it seems to have many good parts.
Anyway, this post isn't really going anywhere. I'll probably need to re-write it or zap it at a later date.
