The political process in the EU has failed. If they can’t agree on something as fundamental as a constitution, we shouldn’t be over there supporting them. They’ve had years and years to draw up a constitution.
Withdraw all our troops from Europe now. |
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Written By:
Keith_Indy
URL:
http://asecondhandconjecture.com/
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I’m convinced that journalists these days don’t understand the material they report. First, the "Constitution" they tried to pass last year was a TREATY. It has to be a treaty, as it is an agreement between sovereign states. The choice to have public referenda on it was made by some states out of domestic political concerns, but not because there was any legal necessity to do so. In fact, they were criticized then for calling it a "constitution" because it really was a re-organization of the EU to account for an expanded membership, plus new institutional processes and certain guarantees of individual rights. But even what they passed two years ago (and didn’t ratify) was really just a complex treaty, not a constitution.
I’m also not sure why they believe that leaders friendly to America and opposed to too strong a centralized Europe (Sarkozy and Merkel) would be wanting a super state. Perhaps some Americans are just getting paranoid about European integration. Well, there is no need to be. It won’t be a super state — it can’t be a superstate. It won’t be anti-American, though it won’t be subordinate to America like Cold War Europe. It won’t have a common foreign policy because the interests within Europe are too divergent.
Keith: The EU consists of 27 sovereign states, they are not and cannot be a United States of Europe. So I don’t think we should expect them to pass a "constitution." However, they have passed numerous agreements starting with the original ECSC back in 1952 to institutionalize cooperation and integrate many economic and political functions. I think a superstate would be a very bad idea, because with 500 million people it would be too large to function in any kind of centralized manner. |
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Written By:
Scott Erb
URL:
http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/~erb/blog.htm
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Oh Keith, I almost forgot: Yes, we should withdraw our troops from Europe. I think NATO is obsolete. |
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Written By:
Scott Erb
URL:
http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/~erb/blog.htm
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