NO TO THE EU CONSTITUTION

RMTnews :: may 2007 :: www.rmt.org.uk 26 H ow many people in Britain would vote for a document, drawn up in secret, which binds this country to join the euro, gives Brussels the power to privatise industries and services, dictates economic policy, gives the commission the sole right to make laws, militarises the EU and creates an EU police force whose officers are immune from prosecution? Not many? Well, EU institutions agree with you. That is why they want to avoid referendums at all costs on the proposed EU Constitution which enshrine all of the above into EU law. EUROPE SAYS NO At the 2005 TUC Congress in Brighton, delegates overwhelmingly backed an RMT motion rejecting the EU Constitution, following the no votes in The Netherlands and France. The Scottish STUC recently endorsed this opposition at its 2007 Congress in April and demanded a referendum if any constitutional document was once more proposed by the EU. However, Brussels is seeking to impose the EU constitution anyway without the need for referendums. In other words, the EU wants to impose the new rules, centralising powers to the EU, and ignore any democratic process as people tend to vote the ‘wrong way’. The strategy for doing this is to change the name of the Constitution while keeping the substance of the document the same. As EU Commission president Jose Barroso has said “the Commission and I have always supported the constitution. But let's be clear: we will ratify a treaty that is not the Constitutional Treaty. “It will be drawing from the latter but it will be different. It's the only possible way ahead,” he said. However, Barroso emphasised that the new EU treaty would act as a stepping stone to further transfers of power later: “nothing rules out the possibility of certain more ambitious aspects later on”. So the plan is to carry on without popular approval or consultation. A leaked letter from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to the other 26 EU leaders recently highlighted the fact that the “new” treaty will have much of the same “legal substance” as the constitutional treaty - while making a few “presentational changes” and using “different terminology” to describe the same plans. In a letter to other heads of government Merkel suggested that: “The consolidated approach of part one of the Constitutional Treaty is preserved with the necessary presentational changes”. UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has refused to publish the UK government’s response to Merkel’s letter. BLAIR’S LAST ACT Outgoing prime minister Tony Blair’s former adviser on Europe Sir Stephen Wall recently announced that Blair was preparing to lock incoming PM Gordon Brown into a timetable for bringing in the new EU Constitution at a key EU summit on June 22. “Tony Blair’s last act on the European stage will be to sign up to the timetable that Angela Merkel envisages, and Gordon Brown cannot repudiate that,” he said. This will mean that an outgoing Prime Minister will take constitutional decisions which binds both his successor and the country for years without consulting his successor or the electorate. It is widely believed that Blair wants to impose the Constitution as part of his NO TO THE EU CONSTITUTION, NO TO THE SERVICES DIRECTIVE, YES TO DEMOCRACY, YES TO TRADE UNION RIGHTS