21 June 2004 Blog Home : June 2004 : Permalink
So our glorious leaders have negotiated a glorious treaty that will ensure EUrope's glorious future as a single glorious geopolitical entity [note that acording to Section V, subsection 53 paragraph 69 the word Entity refers to a large pile of stinking horemanure tied up in red tape - see appendix BS subsection 1 for exact dimensions, age and rules of origin of said manure and subsection 2 for the appropriate dimensions colour, and adhesiveness of the tape. Also note as per subsection 3 that the red tape must enclose the manure so as to remove the possibility of olfactory offence to the possessors of sensitive nasal apparatus]. But I jest and levity may not be appropriate.
Unlike the writers of the US constitution, who eschewed bureacratic langauge to produce a document of clarity and vision, the EU writers seem to have taken lessons at the Sir Humphrey Appleby school of "clarity via obscurity". Personally I can't read this stuff for more than about 2 minutes before thinking of writing a polite note to Al Qaeda asking them if they wouldn't mind crashing their next plane into the European Union quarter of Brussels but fortunately the people at EUReferendum have greater dedication to the cause and have waded through the thickets of subclauses and forests of Articles to find out what the leaders agreed to. If you want to read their nice 16 page PDF summary then you can find it on this very website since I offered to host it as blogspot doesn't seem to let you do that sort of thing.
One thing that they point out at the beginning is that what the aforementioned glorious leaders signed wasn't actually the consitution itself merely the the list of ammendments to the monster document. The Eurocrats are at this moment cutting, pasting and translating the final version based on these mmendments and it should be available in a week or two just before they all pop off on their summer holidays.
As someone who once thought the EU was a good idea and still thinks that the basic concept of a unified Europe to economically and politically sensible I'm embarassed by this document. A constitution is the sort of key document which should embody the spirit of the entity and elucidate its vision and goals in ways that inspire its readers to want to participate actively in the attempts to achieve them; hundreds of pages of dense legalistic prose with references back and forth to other paragraphs is not something that I consider to be inspirational. Consider for a moment the following amamendment to Article III-88 (1):
In order to ensure the proper functioning of economic and monetary union,
and in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Constitution, the
Council shall, in accordance with the relevant procedure from among those
referred to in Articles III-71 and III-76, with the exception of the procedure
set out in paragraph 13 thereof, adopt measures specific to those Member
States whose currency is the euro.
Upon reflection, perhaps I am doing the drafters of the EU constitution a disservice. The constitution does indeed embody the spirit of the EU as it really is. That is to say the spirit of obfuscation, of backroom compromise, special exemptions and belief that the self-elected elite knows best. This latter is of course manifestly untrue, if the elite really did know best then the EU's growth rate would have increased as integration and the more integrated countries would have the best growth rates. As it happens the UK has about the best growth rate of the last 10 years and as David Smith, the economics editor for the Sunday Times, writes the UK benefits the EU far more than vice versa.