European Union and the Lisbon Treaty: the birth of a new country
tonnerre
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Montag, 17.Dezember 2007
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On December 13th, 2007, exactly 26 years after
Poland called
for martial law in 1981 in order to gain back control over the
opposition, the European Union members have signed a treaty which became
known as the Lisbon
Treaty of 2007. This treaty practically establishes the European Union
as a state of its own, along with a new constitution.
Most of the flaws which have been pointed out in the EU Constitution are
also present in the Lisbon Treaty, but have not been addressed yet. As an
example, the Lisbon Treaty contains provisions that the EU may go to war
while individual member states may «constructively abstain»
– thus being practically incapable of preventing having to go to
war.
The Brussels Journal has an
analysis of the contract
by Professor Anthony Coughlan which enumerates 10 major changes the
contract is making (while surely going too far to the Eurosceptic direction
in suggesting that the harmonization effort in itself is wrong).
- It establishes a legally new European Union in the constitutional
form of a supranational European State.
- It empowers this new European Union to act as a State vis-a-vis
other States and its own citizens.
- It makes all citizens of European member states also citizens of
this new European Union.
- The same name «European Union» will be kept while the
Lisbon Treaty changes fundamentally the legal and constitutional nature
of the Union.
- It creates a Union Parliament for the Union's new citizens.
- It creates a Cabinet Government of the new Union.
- It creates a new Union political President.
- It creates a civil rights code for the new Union's citizens.
- It makes national Parliaments subordinate to the new Union.
- It gives the new Union self-empowerment powers.
While the establishment of an European state is certainly a long-term
goal to aim for, some elements of this treaty are still not acceptable.
The current contract still contains some provisions which are not adequate
for the constitution, and should be refined to meet the high democratic
standards set by the member states.
The military cooperation charter a rather unfortunate chapter, remembering
the controversy of the war against Iraq, which Germany and France chose to
abstain. Would such a situation take place in the future, then Germany and
France might be forced to participate in the war. This is of course one of
the consequences of the harmonization process, but there should be
provisions declaring that an unanimous decision is required in order to
go to war – the only way to really justify it. An exception would
of course be when an aggression against a member state has to be
encountered.
This looks like yet another treaty which has not been balanced properly
beforehand and needs a lot of further work before it will be adequate
for the reason it was intended to.
This document is in public domain
