June the 4th, European Elections

Saying no to the Lisbon treaty

The Lisbon Treaty is the renamed European Union constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.
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The Lisbon Treaty turns the EU into a state in its own right and gives the bloc its own legal identity. The unaccountable European Court of Justice, an EU institution, would effectively become the ‘supreme court’ of the EU.

Under the treaty, the unelected EU commission would propose all EU law which would then be imposed on member states by the council of ministers mostly on the basis of qualified majority voting.

The treaty also contains a so-called ‘Paseralle clause’ which would allow the EU to give itself more powers as it sees fit without the need for any more treaties.

The Labour government was elected in 2005 on a manifesto promising a referendum on the European Union constitution, which has now been rehashed as the Lisbon Treaty.

The House of Commons’ European Scrutiny Committee even described the Lisbon Treaty as: “substantially equivalent” to the EU Constitution and former French President Giscard D'Estaing even told us the treaty was a con.

“Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly. “All the earlier proposals will be in the new text, but will be hidden and disguised in some way," he said.

As part of this strategy, Gordon Brown’s government reneged on Labour’s manifesto promise to hold a referendum and instead forced the treaty through parliament with Liberal Democrat and Tory help.

The Irish electorate has also been told that they must vote for a second time on the Lisbon Treaty by October 2009 having voted to reject it in 2008. Why? Because EU and Irish politicians have decided Irish voters’ must be overruled.

Politicians across Europe hold their electorates in contempt: refusing to hold a referendum on the Treaty despite voters in France, the Netherlands and Ireland rejecting their plans for an undemocratic, neo-liberal superstate.

Vote No2EU - Yes to Democracy to oppose the Lisbon Treaty and defend democracy across Europe.
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Stand up for workers’ rights

The social dumping of exploited foreign workers in Britain is being carried out under EU rules demanding the “free movement of capital, goods, services and labour” within the EU. Successive EU Directives and European Court of Justice decisions have also been used to attack trade union collective bargaining, the right to strike and workers’ pay and conditions.

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The Single European Market, created by the Tory government with the Single European Act in 1987, creates a pool of working people to be exploited and treated no better than a commodity like a tin of beans. These EU rules allow employers to escape from national collective bargaining and employment legislation and impose lower wages and worse working conditions, creating a “race to the bottom”.

These EU rules, which no-one asked for, have been behind some of the most bitter industrial disputes in recent years, like the Irish Ferries dispute, the strike of Gate Gourmet workers at Heathrow, and the Lindsey oil refinery workers’ strike.

The European Court of Justice has even decreed in the Laval and Viking cases that collective agreements that protect workers’ conditions contravene the ‘free movement’ of labour in the single market.

The recent protests at Lindsey, supported by workers across Britain, were not against foreign workers or xenophobic. These workers were simply defending the fundamental right to work under union agreements – a right not given by EU directives or treaties.

The so-called ‘free movement’ of labour is part of the development of a deeply racist Fortress Europe which would increasingly exclude people from outside the EU and undermine wages and working conditions inside the bloc.

To ferry workers across Europe to carry out jobs that local workers can be trained to perform is an environmental, economic and social nonsense.

If ‘food-miles’ represent an unacceptably large carbon footprint, then ‘labour-miles’ and shunting human beings around Europe in the pursuit of profit is even more damaging.
In the 1980s recession Tory minister Norman Tebbit famously told the unemployed to ‘get on their bikes’ to look for work. Nowwell-shod government ministers advise workers in Britain ‘to get on a plane’ and find work elsewhere in the EU!

Vote No2EU - Yes to Democracy to resist the EU turning human beings into commodities to be shunted around Europe while local workers are excluded from being able to provide for their families.
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Reject the EU gravy train

No2EU -Yes to Democracy will not sit in the European parliament. If elected our candidates will only nominally hold the title MEP and will not board the notorious EU gravy train.

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The so-called European ‘parliament’ is an expensive fraud which has no law-making or parliamentary powers. All EU laws are proposed by another EU institution, the unelected European Commission, which is heavily influenced by corporate and big business lobbyists.

A recent report showed that MEPs can make over one million pounds from a single five-year term by claiming various allowances and even for assistants for whom no record exists. The pay of British MEPs’ will rise by even more after Junes election.

While in the real world banks go under, shares nosedive and hundreds of thousands of workers lose their jobs, EU elites continue to enrich themselves at the taxpayers' expense. If you vote No2EU - Yes to Democracy we will continue to campaign against the Lisbon Treaty and wasteful and corrupt EU institutions and demand the repatriation of democratic powers to member states.

Vote No2EU - Yes to Democracy to protest against self-serving and well-heeled political elites that serve EU institutions which impose laws on over 500 million European citizens without their consent.
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Keep your public services public

The Lisbon Treaty and the EU’s privatisation agenda represent a significant threat to working class communities and to the services we all rely on.

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The renamed EU consttituion forces governments to hand public services over to private corporations – that means handing fat cats control of railways, schools, postal services, energy and even social services across Europe.

Under Article III-147 of the EU Constitution: “A European framework law shall establish measures to achieve the liberalisation of a specific service”. That provision remains in the Lisbon Treaty.

This commitment to ‘free competition’ enshrined in successive EU treaties was the main reason that Tories originally supported the EU. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher signed the Single European Act in 1986 to establish a single European market and John Major agreed the Maastricht Treaty, which created the Euro, the European Central Bank and tied European economies into a ‘Growth and Stability Pact’ that squeezes public investment in public services.
The current economic crisis was created by these discredited neo-liberal policies yet, under the Lisbon Treaty, they become constitutional goals. We should be defending public services in Britain not allowing bankers and eurocrats take them over in order to make money for big business in Europe.

Vote No2EU - Yes to Democracy to defend public services such as Post Offices and the NHS and to renationalise our railways and develop manufacturing in Britain.
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Vote to keep out the BNP
The main political parties’ support for the turning over of major legal, economic and political powers to unelected and remote EU institutions has alienated millions of people from politics and has played into the hands of the far right.

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The growing cynicism created by politicians is leading to a rise in support for far-right, fascist parties such as the British National Party.

Yet, the BNP has no answers. They peddle hate and seek to undermine organisations that working people rely on to protect them like trade unions.

The BNP claims to oppose the European Union but its leader, who denies the holocaust took place, can’t wait to get on the gravy train and link up with other fascist parties from Italy and France in the European parliament.

Vote No2EU - Yes to Democracy to oppose the BNP and resist the threat to exploit the current economic crisis to promote racist political ends.
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The economic crisis and the EU
In efforts to resolve the finanical crisis a recapitalisation of banks has taken place in EU Member States using taxpayers’ money. The Hungarian government has been helped out by the IMF to the tune of £11.2 billion.

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EU member states in eastern and central Europe are in dire economic circumstances. Latvia now has an IMF loan of £1.7 billion. Ireland, Greece, Portugal and other member states have economic problems and in all these eurozone countries there is growing unemployment and related social problems.

All this is opposite to the criteria and rules of the EU Growth and Stability Pact. Hungary and Latvia were not helped by the euro. All this shows that the Pact has been shredded and the euro system has failed.

The euro is controlled by the European Central Bank (ECB) which dictates interest and exchange rates. These are two key levers which should instead be used by national governments to control their economies. Britain is in the penultimate stage to join the euro and has also carried out the criteria.

By obeying the strict criteria of the euro considerable damage has been done to the public sector. Control of economies in the eurozone is exercised by the EU Commission, Council of Ministers and ECB directly over national interests. The crisis is being used as an excuse to press for complete ratification of the Lisbon Treaty which would impose the euro on all member states.

Leading Europhiles like Denis MacShane and others claim that Britain should join the euro to help resolve the fiscal crisis. Ireland is being pressed to ratify the EU Constitution.
Cuts in public sector spending and the forcing down of wages continues and will worsen in any recession and be used to resolve the problems of bankers whilst workers are asked to tighten their belts.

Nation states with the right to self-determination and their governments are the only institutions that can control the movement of big capital and clip the wings of the trans-national corporations and banks. This means democratic control of the major banks, including the Bank of England, and full public ownership and democratic accountability of railways, postal services, NHS, and the energy industry.

To revitalise the economy, Britain must return to creating wealth based especially in manufacturing, hi-tech and trade across the world.

An end must be made to the dependence on service industries especially the financial sector. To return to an economy based on manufacturing requires massive investment and where appropriate protection of home industries. It is the only way to ensure jobs and a decent safe future for the peoples of Britain.

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The Lisbon Treaty further militarises the EU

One of the articles of the Constitution allows for the death penalty to be introduced "in time of war or of imminent threat of war".

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The Lisbon Treaty certainly gives plenty of scope for conflict. Put bluntly, it develops an armed wing for the EU, complete with its own military-industrial complex, which will fight resource wars in the interests of the biggest European military powers, namely Britain, France and Germany.

Moreover, Tony Blair's foreign policy guru Robert Cooper openly promotes a new form of direct European military colonialism. He claims that this new imperialism will require us to get used to "double standards". "When dealing with old-fashioned states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself," he says.

For Brussels this means developing an EU rapid reaction force that will carry out military operations in the interests of "Europe". EU Chief of military staff Lieutenant General Rainer Schuwirth insists for that to develop "national governments have to give away their authority over their army" and EU must be "deepened", as envisaged within the renamed EU constitution.

If brought into force, the constitution will demand that member states "actively, unreservedly and loyally" support a single foreign and military policy. This power is, of course, one of the major attributes of a state, along with a head of state, a single currency and a framework of law. The constitution provides for all these attributes despite the fact there has been no popular call for them to exist at all.

The Lisbon Treaty also formally ends the military neutrality of Ireland, Denmark, Sweden and Austria, also without asking the citizens of those states. The text replaces the Nice Treaty provision that the progressive framing of a common defence policy "might lead to a common defence, should the European Council so decide" with the provision of the constitution that it "will lead to a common defence, when the European Council, acting unanimously, so decides".

Article 1.40 lays down that "before undertaking any action on the international scene each member state shall consult the others within the European Council or the Council," constitutionally precluding member states from conducting an independent foreign policy. The Lisbon Treaty does allow for sub-groups of states, ie the most powerful ones, to use EU institutions for closer military integration amongst themselves in a mechanism known as "structured cooperation".

The Lisbon Treaty does not require EU military actions to be in accordance with the United Nations Charter.

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Defend your civil liberties

Human rights organisations such as Statewatch and Liberty have consistently warned that the European Union is accumulating a vast range of powers that pose a threat to civil liberties across the continent of Europe.

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The Lisbon Treaty will continue this process by expanding the role of EU police force, Europol, whose agents have been granted immunity from prosecution.

The EU Arrest Warrant also enables the authorities to have individuals extradited from one member state to another with varying judicial standards without the need to provide evidence against the accused.

EU directives give state agencies the right to monitor all electronic traffic including data relating to e-mails and websites we visit, without a court order.

Article 108 of the EU treaty makes it an offence for an elected government, MP or MEP to in any way try to influence the deliberations of the European Central Bank, which manages the euro.

Article 52 of the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights attached to the Lisbon Treaty gives Brussels the right to suspend any human right if deemed in the 'general interest' of the EU.

These and other measures, taken together with the completely undemocratic structure of the EU, means that a system of Brussels-based government is taking shape which represents a huge threat to the basic freedoms of ordinary Europeans.

"The emerging EU state is indeed different to the national state, not just because it exercises cross-border powers, but rather because even traditional, often ineffective, liberal democratic means of control, scrutiny and accountability of state agencies and practices are not in place, nor is there any political will to introduce them"
Tony Bunyan, director of human rights group Statewatch

Vote NO2EU–Yes to Democracy to oppose the authoritarian system that EU political elites have been quietly working towards.