The pretext for this transparent attempt at empire-building
beyond the boundaries laid down for Europe's bureaucrats was
the claim by Brussels that it had the right to insert criminal
penalties into laws to protect the environment.
How refreshing, when a mainstream source occasionally calls a
spade a spade.
As anyone who examined the proposed EU constitution knows, and
as European voters fortunately noticed, the EU program is
about creating an undemocratic, elite-controlled government in
Brussels, with all essential sovereignty removed from national
governments.
Meanwhile, the media coverage of Brussels activities nearly
always focuses on those EU initiatives that are green and
politically correct. Elites are laying out a green garden path
to fascism and for the most part it's been working. In this
article we see the paradigm clearly revealed.
We may wonder why the Times agrees with this view, what it
calls 'empire building'. But then the whole question of why
Britain is in the EU, but not quite, is not easy to fathom.
The best I can figure is that Britain serves as an
Anglo-American infiltrator of the EU, frustrating its progress
whenever possible, and providing token support for PNAC
policies from within the EU, while keeping control of its own
currency - one of the crucial necessities of sovereignty.
rkm
--------------------------------------------------------
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,542-1779242,00.html
Editorial from THE TIMES, London, Wednesday 14
September 2005, page 19
LEGAL TRESPASS: THE EUROPEAN COURT HAS GRAVELY
UNDERMINED THE SOVEREIGNTY OF EU STATES
For the first time in its 53-year existence, the European
Court of Justice has given the Commission in Brussels the
power to impose criminal sanctions. In a landmark ruling that
is as ominous as it is deluded, the Luxembourg-based court
yesterday overruled the governments of EU member states,
removing from them the sole right to impose their own
penalties on people or companies breaking the law, aned giving
the unelected EU Commission an unprecedented role in the
administration of criminal justice.
The pretext for this transparent attempt at empire-building
beyond the boundaries laid down for Europe's bureaucrats was
the claim by Brussels that it had the right to insert criminal
penalties into laws to protect the environment. The
Commission said that unless it did so, its attempt to halt
cross-border pollution would be ineffective. But in 2001, 11
of the 15 members,including Britain, insisting that only a
national government has the right to fine or jail its
citizens, vigorously oppposed this action. Instead they
proposed a "framework decision", excluding the Commission and
including only governments, to deal with transgressors. The
Commission called in the lawyers and, extraordinarily, the
European Court agreed that it had the right to impose
criminal sanctions.
This is a dangerous step in the wrong direction. The
Commission, chafing at criticism that it is too powerful and
too interfering, has been itching to reassert its authority.
It is not a sovereign pwoer but a civil service executive,
supposedly appointed to swrve EU common interests. In recent
years the Commission has worried that its right to initiate
legislation, under the Treaty of Rome, was being eroded. EU
ministers, when discussing urgent issues such as terrorism,
sometimes came up with their own proposals for new laws. But
to retaliate by trespassing on the sole right of governments
to imprison their citizens is a serious expansion of and
misunderstanding of the Commission's role.
The ruling also reveals the mindset of the court, and
confirms the lingering suyspicion that, when faced with a
choice between subsidiarity or strengthening the EU's federal
powers,it will, invariably, choose the latter. The decision
highlights the contradiction at the court's very heart - of
course a federal court will expand federal powers. It gives
substance to all the worries in Britain and those countries
that have voted against the EU constitution that any point
vague enough to require legal clarification would always
prompt a ruling reinforcing the EU's central bureaucracy and
federal power. This lamentable judgement strikes at the heart
of national sovereignty and Britain's ability to decide the
law for itself.
The Commission is entitled to argue that draft laws should be
effective. But it is up to elected national governments to
define and enforce the law. Already elated Commission
officials are proposing similar criminal penalties in other
areas. It is not their right. Democracy yesterday suffered a
grievous defeat in a court whose contempt for sovereignty
verges on the criminal
_________________________
--
http://cyberjournal.org
"Apocalypse Now and the Brave New World"
http://www.cyberjournal.org/cj/rkm/Apocalypse_and_NWO.html
