EU voters don’t fancy the idea of a totalitarian, nanny super-state
Eurocrats all over are wondering what went wrong.
The problem seems obvious to me.
Citizens who make all this democracy possible have so far been expected to leave the thinking to their leaders and just mark their ballots in the “correct” way.
Most of our Eurocrats regarded the referenda as mere formalities. A classic example is our re-vote on Nice once it had all been “explained properly” to us.
Most of the explaining then, as now, consisted of scaring people about jobs lost and horror stories of recession.
In several countries the elected leaders decided to hold no referendum at all.
Maybe they were leaving nothing to chance in the wake of the Nice debacle. It is clear now that the principal aim all along, since the 1957 Treaty of Rome, has been to create a European super-state to give the continent some proper clout in the new world order.
Yet it could not be sold to Europe’s very diverse populations in such packaging.
So first we had the Coal and Steel Community, then the European Economic Community, then simply the European Community.
Each quietly merged into the next until we found ourselves one morning in the European Union.
At this point people wondered if tomorrow they would wake in the United States of Europe.
The prospect terrifies some, but I must admit to having mixed feelings.
Unity would give Europe more muscle in the world, which is fast becoming a big boys’ club.
It is also great to be able to travel so freely around the EU, and if you don’t agree with the judgements of your own courts, maybe you can take your blues to the European one.
The problem, as far as I can see, is that the EU project seems to have brought all the worst out in the Eurocrats.
The EU has an unpleasant, totalitarian, nanny state feel to it. It is also clear that most Euro pen-pushers have never heard of “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” and our own government models itself more closely on this principle every day, especially our minister for legislation, Michael McDowell.
Underneath everything, many people feel they have been lied to all along, tricked in stages into an EU which they hardly understand. Whether intentional or not - and I believe it has been - this approach has backfired badly on the Eurocrats.
They have squandered their credibility and now any project they promote is treated with suspicion. Is it any surprise the EU constitution is now viewed with a jaundiced eye as the latest in a series of arcane deceptions?
I’m trying to read it myself. It’s a bulky, 500-page tome.
It takes time to go through something this size and I doubt most people would have, or would take, the time to check what they are being asked to approve.
Instead it is being pushed at them as usual by our governments with all the aggressive pitch of a Costa del Sol time-share salesperson.
The voter has now become just another form of consumer.
And just as they would if a contract was being shoved into their hands in a Spanish holiday villa, voters are backing off.
Nick Folley
36 Ardcarrig
Carrigaline
Co Cork
