Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-29-Speech-3-048"
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"en.20001129.7.3-048"2
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"Mr President, the draft Nice treaty is more like a constitution for a federal State than an agreement for an association of States. As a rule, the European Union’s laws are to be adopted by qualified majority voting so that all democracies in the individual countries can be voted down. There are still 65 categories of legislation requiring unanimity according to the Treaty of Amsterdam. It is now proposed that decisions should be made by qualified majority voting in 49 of these areas. We are therefore approaching the point of no return, beyond which a unitary State is unavoidable. The powers to be given to the EU by the Treaty of Nice treaty go beyond those exercised at federal level in many federal States.
The inner sanctum of the national States is now being penetrated, with majority decision making on aspects of social policy, labour market policy, taxes, industrial policy, culture, supranational parties and even our own salaries, so that we are becoming the EU’s highly paid representatives in the Member States instead of the voters’ representatives in the European Parliament, duly taxed in our own countries. Home affairs and legal policy are to be subject to majority voting as from 2004. Trade policy will make the EU countries resemble a State. We shall have to speak with just one disagreeable voice in the WTO. Decisions on foreign and security policy are also to be adopted on the basis of majority voting. Only on the subject of defence is unanimity still to be required. Otherwise, the right of veto will not figure very prominently in the new treaty, and countries without the right of veto resemble constituent States more than independent nations. Majority voting internally and joint representation abroad – this is clearly the blueprint for a State. What has been deferred to the constitutional conference in 2004 is not the content of the text but merely the icing on the cake of a text which may also come to resemble a proper constitution, that is to say a text containing firstly the Charter of Fundamental Rights, then the ground rules and, finally, an appendix listing the individual policies to which changes may be made without the need for tiresome ratification.
All that is missing is democracy. Democracy was forgotten en route. And that is the essential problem with the Treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice. More majority decision-making in which officials and ministers can vote down the electorate and elected representatives. In democracies, it is the other way around. Majority decision-making will destroy the right of veto for the Member States as parliamentary democracies, but the EU will not itself become a parliamentary democracy. With enhanced cooperation, the right of veto over treaty changes is also destroyed – not formally, but in practice – because a qualified majority will in future be able to ignore resistance from, for example, Denmark, Sweden and Great Britain or other places in which the undemocratic idea might arise of asking the electorate what it thinks. The federalists can achieve their desire for more integration, and the governments in Sweden, Great Britain and Denmark can ease their countries into the new arrangements once the decisions, binding in practice, have been taken. Nice will transfer so much power from the electorate that it ought to be treated as a genuine constitutional change and only come into force once it has been approved in referendums in those countries in which referendums are possible."@en1
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