After the so-called "period of reflection" following the French and Dutch rejection of the EU constitution, Germany has announced that it will use its presidency of the EU to impose it anyway.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted that her country's presidency, which begins in January, will relaunch the discredited document.
"We need a constitutional treaty and we need it before the next European election," she said. The election will be in 2009. Merkel will also work closely with Portugal and Slovenia, the next two nations to hold the EU presidency, to put the constitution in place after Berlin's six-month stint ends in July.
Just to recap, this constitution would create a European army to carry out a single EU foreign policy, make euro membership compulsory, turn the EU into a single legal entity with its own unaccountable courts and police, enforce unfair trade deals and privatisation and abolish all powers associated with modern nation states.
After meeting European Commission president Jose Barroso, Merkel reiterated that the EU constitution should not be slimmed down to make it more acceptable to increasingly hostile EU voters. She has not specified how to sell the abolition of representative democracy, but is expected to produce some meaningless flam about the so-called "European social model."
This relaunch has clearly emerged from a brainstorming session in Brussels. Former commission president Romano Prodi gave the game away when he grandly announced in the Financial Times this week that "last year was the year of mourning (for the constitution), this year is the year of reflection. Next year, will be the launching."
To you and me, that is euro-speak for "last year, the constitution was rejected, this year, we ignored results and, in 2007, we will impose it anyway."
EU commissioner Margot Wallstrom backed this deeply cynical strategy by confirming that "the commission would not like to depart too much from the constitutional treaty."
However, the federalists are in a very difficult position amid divisions among themselves and growing public hostility to EU institutions and the synthetic single currency.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has described the constitution as a "grandiose project which didn't come off," in a clear sign that the British government is distancing itself from an unpopular project.
Wallstrom has demanded that the abolition of national vetoes be written into the text for the touchingly simple reason that, "if you start to open up, you open everything."
Yet, even Germany's own constitutional court has put off rubber-stamping the constitution after German MP Peter Gauweiler challenged parliamentary ratification on the grounds that it would deprive Berlin of its power. Moreover, Merkel's cabinet approval last month of plans to turn the German conscript army into a global intervention force within the European Union also proved to be a disaster after a military scandal broke in the media the very next day.
Shocking photographs of Bundeswehr soldiers desecrating human skulls in Afghanistation, including an image of a soldier simulating oral sex, which were printed in the mass-circulation Bild newspaper has not endeared the German public to revanchist euro-militarism. Germany's KSK special military forces are also facing a parliamentary investigation after being accused of torturing a German-born prisoner in Afghanistan and spiriting him away to spend over four years in Guantanamo Bay before being released.
There are already over 9,000 troops overseas in Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia and Congo. The government argues that military capacity must be expanded to deploy 14,000 troops on at least five foreign imperialist adventures simultaneously. Ordinary Germans may see things differently.
The German political class is simply repeating what other EU elites are doing, ignoring domestic democratic aspirations in order to fulfil the euro-federalist agenda to build an anti-democratic superstate fit for corporate interests. But that is no easy task.
Just as the "liberal" proponents of military intervention in Iraq and elsewhere are increasingly bereft of any intellectual justification for endless war, while their leader George W Bush faces the wrath of the US public, so the federalists in Europe are being similarly exposed as they try to build an imperialist military empire in the image of the US.
For the left to confront these twin threats effectively, it could put forward a real alternative and argue for democracy, self-determination and peace not only in Iraq but across the EU as well.
__Brian Denny is a member of The (UK) "Campaign Against Euro-Federalism":http://www.caef.org.uk/ (CAEF) This article first appeared in the Morning Star.__
After the so-called "period of reflection" following the French and Dutch rejection of the EU constitution, Germany has announced that it will use its presidency of the EU to impose it anyway.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted that her country's presidency, which begins in January, will relaunch the discredited document.
"We need a constitutional treaty and we need it before the next European election," she said. The election will be in 2009. Merkel will also work closely with Portugal and Slovenia, the next two nations to hold the EU presidency, to put the constitution in place after Berlin's six-month stint ends in July.
Just to recap, this constitution would create a European army to carry out a single EU foreign policy, make euro membership compulsory, turn the EU into a single legal entity with its own unaccountable courts and police, enforce unfair trade deals and privatisation and abolish all powers associated with modern nation states.
After meeting European Commission president Jose Barroso, Merkel reiterated that the EU constitution should not be slimmed down to make it more acceptable to increasingly hostile EU voters. She has not specified how to sell the abolition of representative democracy, but is expected to produce some meaningless flam about the so-called "European social model."
This relaunch has clearly emerged from a brainstorming session in Brussels. Former commission president Romano Prodi gave the game away when he grandly announced in the Financial Times this week that "last year was the year of mourning (for the constitution), this year is the year of reflection. Next year, will be the launching."
To you and me, that is euro-speak for "last year, the constitution was rejected, this year, we ignored results and, in 2007, we will impose it anyway."
EU commissioner Margot Wallstrom backed this deeply cynical strategy by confirming that "the commission would not like to depart too much from the constitutional treaty."
However, the federalists are in a very difficult position amid divisions among themselves and growing public hostility to EU institutions and the synthetic single currency.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has described the constitution as a "grandiose project which didn't come off," in a clear sign that the British government is distancing itself from an unpopular project.
Wallstrom has demanded that the abolition of national vetoes be written into the text for the touchingly simple reason that, "if you start to open up, you open everything."
Yet, even Germany's own constitutional court has put off rubber-stamping the constitution after German MP Peter Gauweiler challenged parliamentary ratification on the grounds that it would deprive Berlin of its power. Moreover, Merkel's cabinet approval last month of plans to turn the German conscript army into a global intervention force within the European Union also proved to be a disaster after a military scandal broke in the media the very next day.
Shocking photographs of Bundeswehr soldiers desecrating human skulls in Afghanistation, including an image of a soldier simulating oral sex, which were printed in the mass-circulation Bild newspaper has not endeared the German public to revanchist euro-militarism. Germany's KSK special military forces are also facing a parliamentary investigation after being accused of torturing a German-born prisoner in Afghanistan and spiriting him away to spend over four years in Guantanamo Bay before being released.
There are already over 9,000 troops overseas in Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia and Congo. The government argues that military capacity must be expanded to deploy 14,000 troops on at least five foreign imperialist adventures simultaneously. Ordinary Germans may see things differently.
The German political class is simply repeating what other EU elites are doing, ignoring domestic democratic aspirations in order to fulfil the euro-federalist agenda to build an anti-democratic superstate fit for corporate interests. But that is no easy task.
Just as the "liberal" proponents of military intervention in Iraq and elsewhere are increasingly bereft of any intellectual justification for endless war, while their leader George W Bush faces the wrath of the US public, so the federalists in Europe are being similarly exposed as they try to build an imperialist military empire in the image of the US.
For the left to confront these twin threats effectively, it could put forward a real alternative and argue for democracy, self-determination and peace not only in Iraq but across the EU as well.
__Brian Denny is a member of The (UK) "Campaign Against Euro-Federalism":http://www.caef.org.uk/ (CAEF) This article first appeared in the Morning Star.__
see also
http://www.spectrezine.org/europe/VanBommel2.htm