11 May 2012
Both the federalists that dominate the EU and the member states that allowed Greece to join the Euro, are partly to blame for the rise of far-left fascism in that country.
The institutional processes that supposedly assessed Euro compatibility for the Greek economy, in whatever scant form, are now proven to have failed.
This illustrates the need for a powerful, objective, process within the EU itself to assess the appropriateness of expanding its own powers. This process should be accountable to member states.
This is to protect the EU against the dominating federalist agenda that rules it from within; an agenda that has risked, to a breaking point, general sustainability of inter-state economic relationships and almost caused a constitutional crisis in Greece.
This federalist agenda is clear from the expansion of the EU's powers in each consecutive inter-state treaty: the aim is to turn the EU into a super-state.
The harm that this federalist approach to the construction of the Euro has caused in many countries makes it clear that the economic benefits of a common market among European states are dangerously subservient to a federalist agenda in Europe.
Said agenda has blindly turned fundamentally economic decisions into political ones, with little if any direct input from the peoples it seeks to govern.
In the rise of the Greek fascist party Golden Dawn, we see a clear statement of visceral democratic intent: evidence that the electorate will attempt to check an EU that places federalism above the goal of economic stability and sustainability.
This democratic check is also illustrated by the rise of New Democracy, the anti-bailout party in Greece.
The Golden Dawn (Chryssi Avgi) group won 21 seats in the Greek elections, and its supporters have been accused of carrying Hitler slogans, acting out far-left Nazi salutes and threatening journalists.
Greece's reaction to the EU is an extreme response to those seeking to set a myopic federalist agenda among European states.
The federalists did this to further their own personal ideals of integration without a clear democratic mandate, at the risk of abusing the trust of the people who would suffer most from the subservience of economic reality to federalists' political aims: the peoples of European states.
The same dangerous democratic deficit exists in Britain.
The British people once voted for a common market, which was then not known to be a paternalistic social market project. To that end (and that end alone) they were happy to have rules pertaining only to the functioning of the common market override their national legislature.
The unforeseen crucial change of direction of the common market to create the EU illustrates that today there is no democratic mandate from the British people for an EU.
Much of the British public still trusts politicians to the extent that they cannot see the distinction between the following three:
(i) A common market run on free-market principles (the idea of Europe sold to many British Conservatives and the British people in 1975);
(ii) A paternalistic (nanny-state) over-regulated common-market;
(iii) An EU that has a nanny-state over-regulated common market as a side-show project and carries out national law-making from youth to tourism policy (as the EU does now under the Lisbon Treaty).
This ignorance may possibly result in a visceral backlash (a very un-British thing indeed) if the British economy and / or the European project goes wrong to a more palpable degree.
Until then, perhaps, the federalists in Britain and their acquiescing supporters will get away with it.
All this aside, the European federalists ought not to put the cart before the horse, even if their goals are not commonly accepted.
They are the ones that need the support of referenda across member states for the continued expansion of the EU behemoth, more than anyone else pondering the appropriate policy for the future of Europe.
A series of informed referenda, where the implications of the EU’s federalism are told cleanly and honestly, are needed across Europe.
To explain further: English law places an obligation on doctors to ensure patients fully understand any procedure to be carried out upon their bodies (termed informed, as opposed to uninformed choice)- the same should be the case for people concerning the destination of their nation, particularly when diminishment of the nation state is on the cards.
This is particularly required if we are to avoid the harmful potential repercussions of the EU federalists' wish to put democracy and economic reality second to federalism - as seen in Greece.
We must have a British referendum on continued membership of the EU if we are to stop the search for a democratic voice taking an extreme form, as it has in Greece.
