EU project avoids democratic scrutiny

YOUR Europe correspondent, Ann Cahill, makes a number of questionable claims in her criticisms of Declan Ganley and Libertas (December 15).

She seems to imply that because the Lisbon Treaty and previous EU treaties were drawn up and agreed by elected leaders and ministers this means the content of those treaties is democratic.

But this is not logical. It is perfectly possible for democratically elected leaders and ministers to agree to a political system that is in itself not democratic.

This is precisely the claim made by no campaigners.

There is also the consideration that for decades the whole European project has been carefully guided by a figure who never held office — Jean Monnet, a committed supranationalist and internationalist. Paul-Henri Spaak, another important architect of the EU, advised Monnet, as journalist Christopher Booker relates, that “the only way to achieve their goal — a politically integrated Europe — was to pretend that it was only a common market”.

Booker also mentions that Altiero Spinelli, another of the EU’s progenitors, “wrote that the aim should be stealthily to assemble the components of a supranational government and only to declare its true purpose at the end of the process by unveiling a constitution”.

So from the very start the whole EU project was based on a deceptive circumvention of democratic scrutiny.

And the fact that the long desired constitution has now been rejected three times — the last time in the form of the Lisbon Treaty — indicates that the European people do not share their leaders’ desire to integrate their countries into an evolving federal superstate.

Michael O’Driscoll

Menloe House

Blackrock

Cork