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If things do move in the 'right' direction for us in the EU, it will be interesting to see the reaction of France, which is notoriously intollerant of organisations that they cannot dominate (EU, NATO etc.)

Personally I think that we are 'better off in', and the maturing of the alliance towards a free market economy is a good thing?

Given the topic, whats the bet for pposts on this, 150? 150++ I think...

Fair bet, Oberon. However, until the Conservatives (and the British public at large) wake up to the fact that we are economically, politically and socially better off it, such articles by the FT are no more than a smokescreen. It also makes Westminster machinations about who gets selected for a safe seat irrelevant: a middle manager's salary for the role of a glorified social worker with all power emanating from Brussels.

Is associate membership possible under current EU legislation?
I would like to see the UK in very close association with existing EU states (I believe strongly in the two founding principles i.e. to band together to avoid WW3 and the common market) but abhor the bureaucracy, micromanagement, red tape, corruption, waste, lack of commonsense etc that now seem to me to epitomise the EU.
It all apppears to be a socialist paradise.
I would however welcome being a sovereign state in association with all the others. As I believe the UK is a net importer from the EU, I can't see that they would refuse to trade with us, whereas we could trade with the whole world without restriction. Other states might then want to follow our lead.

One is far too tempted to say we have heard all of this before, and despite the FT’s best cajoling, I and many many others remains to be convinced of the case of greater European integration, even were that integration to be more liberal in its approach (that Tory liberalism, not Liberal Democratism).

Fist of all, we should all welcome Europe’s turning to the right, their economies will only be more successful in the long term as a result. However, there remains a great deal to be done and a good deal of caution that these moves may well end up stopping some way short of where the UK is, even after nine years of Labour.

The argument from at least some on the European right is that if the UK actively played a constructive role, we could shift the debate even further down the road to liberalism. In this supposition, these Continental liberals may well be right, but the cost to the UK would be two fold. First there would be the need to sacrifice a further degree of our sovereignty (which many would rightly find unacceptable). Secondly, moving Europe towards liberalism would in no way mean the UK itself would move further to the right. Rescuing the European right from the folly of their nations embrace of various forms of socialism and soft paternalism would be a noble battle, but one which would cost us very dear.

Nations of Europe should embrace liberalism because it is the best system to bring the broadest degree of prosperity to the greatest number of their people. They have to win the intellectual argument, to introduce liberal measures by stealth is only a second best option. IDS is right in that the institutions of Europe do not posses a demos, they are not seen by any European as the natural store of democracy, that is why the battle for liberalism needs to be fought on a national level. Imposition of liberal ideals from Brussels, however tempting as a short cut to a better Europe, is not going to win the hearts and minds of the mass of Europeans. Without winning the war of ideas, we are unlikely to turn Europe permanently to the right, however much winning individual battles might give us hope.

Mrs Merkel could lose the Berlin Chancellery at anytime given her precarious grand coalition.

Yes but without Angela Merkel the SPD would be destroyed at the polls; and the CDU would have a majority under Christian Wulf as CDU leader

"I believe strongly in the two founding principles i.e. to band together to avoid WW3 and the common market"

What war has the EU itself prevented David?

Surely, the way to prevent World War is to ditch regionalist power bases and to operate at the 'World' level, ie internationally?

I totally agree with your aim, but surely international solutions, security etc can only be achieved internationally, not by growing regional groupings.

International reform not EU reform is needed to address our 21st century global challenges.

One of the biggest problems that I see with the concept of "Europe moving in the right direction", is that the further down the road of economic liberalism that the EU goes, the less meaning the whole project has.

For free trade, the whole EU infrastructure is completely irrelevant and redundant. It was built as the kernel of a new country. If a new country called Europe is not to be formed, then what should it do?

The EU also has a very deeply rooted sense of purpose, that will not be easily deflected. This is reinforced by the belief among its inner circle that every problem has an EU solution. For such people, the Barrosos of this world are just a bit of turbulence.

If in a few years time Barroso is replaced by another Delors, then the ratchet will start to turn faster again.

The EU has periodically raised the hopes of the pragmatic only to dash them again. Each time the ratchet has turned further and the power left in Westminster eroded a little more.

Lets not fall for this trick once again. All we need from our neighbours is free trade. So why not create a framework that gives us that without all the rest of the poisonous Euro Socialism.

I love that image! EU bureaucrats/ leaders pontificating whilst the poor are excluded from the EU rich men's selfish garden.

While the treaties continue to commit all member states to the relentless pursuit of "ever closer union", the EU will continue to move in the wrong direction. That's still true even if it's re-worded as "united ever more closely" as in the Constitution.

'The EU is moving in the right direction' - would that be the move from Brussels to Strasbourg, or the move from Strasbourg to Brussels?

Corruption there is endemic, its accounts haven't been audited since the old King died, honest MEPs admit it's a gravy train, what gives with the 'right direction' schtick?

"Europe moving in the right direction" !!! They must be joking !! The CAP is still in place, 60-70% of all our laws are made in Brussels; Blair was properly outsmarted in the Budget deal and we will be paying through the nose. We are increasingly getting sub-standard and irrelevant materiel for our armed forces to harmonise them with the EU and British soldiers are dying as a result.

"Better Out Now" is the only answer and get an arrangement like Switzerland.

If they allowed member states to introduce Capital Punishment and Torture and scrapped The Convention on Human Rights that would be a major step in the right direction, otherwise if they continue to push for a Common Security Policy if they switched to being commonly for the War on Terror - but I don't see this happening.

Abolition of Free Movement of Labour also would be an important counter to Organised Crime and Terrorism, member states still need full control of their own borders so long as each has seperate Immigration rules and methods.

When challening the authority of the EU I think it would be more helpful if we used the word "democracy" instead of "sovereignty". It's much harder for pro-Europeans to argue for the pooling of democracy and generally the word has a much stronger ring to it.

Are we switzerland ? a very rich , small, banking nation with a unique internal structure and a history of the good the bad and the ugly stashing their cash in our vaults? Part of the same land mass as Europe so having easy travel? No. we're an island off the coast of France with many , many business links to Europe which would be irreperably damaged if we were foolish enough to take the 'Better off out route' to economic oblivion.
For example, some cornish people might like a 'better off out' approach to the Union , however in reality everyone knows that cornwall wouldn't be able to survive economically outside the Union. So they don't do it.
The point i'm making is I am a Conservative because i believe in reality , particularly economic reality, not ideology or utopian fantasy. Some people may approach europe from the viewpoint of a nationalist ideology. we don't have that luxury - we have to be realists.
How can we get a good deal for the country if we won't sit at the table and put Britains interests across?

This idea we can just get out of the EU and get a position like switzerlands is as much a utopian fantasy as socialism and just as disastrous economically.

I am prepared to write more in this vein for The Platform if all you closet UKIPers want to get your blood pressure up, or the Editor fancies another dynamite discussion like the one over the Victoria Kluk piece.
But i think you get my drift. In short, Grow. Up.

The absurd systems of subsidies and trade barriers need to go as well.

I would no more buy the FT for its editorial guff than I would buy the Sun to read about prospects for the European banking sector.

If they allowed member states to introduce capital punishment and torture...that would be a major step in the right direction (for the EU) -YETANOTHERANON.With opinions like that I'd want to withold my name too!
Personally I think this piece reflects more on the wishes of the FT rather than what is really happening inside the EU.As Christina Speight points out the CAP is largely unreformed,the accounts are still not signed off there are still moves to revisit many of the powers of the constitution. With the issues that really matter things are not going 'our way' at all.

Did i see you mention border control earlier, hmm interesting, particularly as half of poland appears to be living in the UK at the moment.

Well if the EU continues as at present we'll soon have a border with Syria and Iraq which should make it easier to get deeply involved in The Middle East !

Hooray, can we have Israel in the EU? then we can send in EU ground troops to get all those Islamists!

Posted by: David Banks | July 25, 2006 at 11:25

"This idea we can just get out of the EU and get a position like switzerlands is as much a utopian fantasy as socialism and just as disastrous economically."

But that is precisely the point: the raison d'etre of the EU is to build a humanist and socialist Utopia called Europe. The behaviour and attitude of the controlling forces within the EU has been, is now, and always will be that nothing and no-one will be allowed to get in the way of their achieving 'their' vision of heaven on earth.

The ECJ has already ruled that criticising the EU is akin to 'blasphemy'. How long will it be before organisations critical of the EU are outlawed? How long before children are encouraged to 'denounce' their parents for being 'unEuropean'? How long before we have the midnight knock at the door?

We have a simple, stark choice. To stay in the EU and become an administrative province in which our Westminster Parliament has all the authority and power of a Parish Council (recall Kenneth Clarke's infamous statement in the International Currency Review (Vol 23, No 4) “I look forward to the day when the Westminster Parliament is just a council chamber in Europe.”), or to leave and recover our identity and ancient freedoms.

At worst we have a choice between being a rich slave or a poor free man. For myself I can only echo the words of the American Patriot Patrick Henry:

"An appeal to arms and the God of Hosts is all that is left us. But we shall not fight our battle alone. There is a just God that presides over the destinies of nations. The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone. Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death." (http://home.comcast.net/~shiloh77/OurRoots.html).

Since when has the FT been known for good its judgement when it comes to the EU?

The Brussels bureaucrats are as determined to create a United States of Europe as ever, just look at how they are protectionist vs China, still seeking to harmonise direct and indirect taxes, and get an EU Constitution by stealth. And there's still no meaningful reform of CAP.

The EU hasn't fundamentally changed, and isn't going to. Let's get out.

Hi Chad; in answer to your question at 10.03: "What war has the EU itself prevented David?" I would say that, after WW2, the nation states of Europe determined that never again would they allow Germany and her allies to wage wars against other European states. Even Churchill, at the very height of the war, had the same thought when he foresaw our role as being "in Europe but not of it".
I would claim that the existence of the EU has curbed Germany's lust for war thus far.
I agree that ideally there should be a world grouping, rather than regional, but in fact there is one already and it appears largely ineffectual every time there is a big problem somewhere - as now in the Middle East.

I am prepared to write more in this vein for The Platform if all you closet UKIPers want to get your blood pressure up

I look forward to it, and I hope that the Editor keeps you to your word. I would like to see your reasoning for that position. After all nothing that you have posted comes close to making an argument as to why we can't leave.

People with much more expertise than I have calculated the cost of membership to be £40 billion per year. Even if they have inflated the numbers, by anyone's measure its a serious amount of cash. In exchange we need some objective gain, not a bunch of clichés.

"Union , however in reality everyone knows that cornwall wouldn't be able to survive economically outside the Union. So they don't do it."

There's no reason why Cornwall couldn't survive providing it pursued the right policies - just look at Hong Kong!

Even if the EU is taking a rightward turn in economic matters it is still going in the wrong direction overall. There is an incipient EU diplomatic service, EU wide attacks on civil liberties (take the new EU evidence warrent), just last year the ECJ ruled that it could force countires to create new criminal offences to enforce environmental laws... The EU project has always been about political union and we have to look beyond the economics.

Furthermore, even if we agreed with all the policy outcomes the EU remains as undemocratoc and corrupt as when it takes positions we happen to disagree with. QMV and government voting without parliamentary control do not become acceptable just because the votes are more in line with our preferences.

Havent we been told before that the EU is going our way and that if we only hang in there we can turn it round? After thirty years we ought to be beginning to see the penny drop! BETTER OFF OUT!!!

Good grief, Cornwall is hardly in a comparable situation to HongKong. Think of all the ties that link it to the UK, army ,business ,local govt etc. Its hardly analogous to the only area of China to be fully colonized and to have had a very different history from mainland china.

My guess is the vast majority of people in Cornwall feel British (and English) before they feel European, if they feel European at all. That will be why they are in the United Kingdom. It is said that the only people who claim to be European before their own nation state are Argentinains, and that is because it is more chic to be European that the citizen of a faining economy ruled all too often by populists.

I would say that, after WW2, the nation states of Europe determined that never again would they allow Germany and her allies to wage wars against other European states.

That's very interesting. Germany lost 11% population killed in WWII, and had the whole of the country partitioned into four zones; with one zone under Soviet control until 1990. There were 300.000 US troops in the Western Sector.

Yet had it not been for the Iron & Steel Federation and the price of cereals being set on the basis of production costs in Essen; you think Germany would have been off for a re-matched against the USA, USSR and Britain ?

So what stopped the Japanese ?

David Banks writes "This idea we can just get out of the EU and get a position like Switzerlands is as much a utopian fantasy as socialism and just as disastrous economically.
-----
But I think you get my drift. In short, Grow. Up."

Clearly David Banks is the one that should grow up. He clearly doesn't know the deal that Switzerland HAS got. Unlike Norway EACH piece of EU legislation is only adopted by the Swiss if their parliament decides to adopt it. They are associates without being ruled in any way by Brussels. From time to time the Swiss government tries to get closer to the EU and their parliament refuses. An admirable arrangement. I would also give our MPs something useful to do.

So instead of being sneeringly supercilious, David Banks, please learn the facts before pontificating.

Lessons from the Suez Crisis anniversary, collapse of the Doha trade round and events in South Lebanon will be defining items for the EU IMO.

My posting on one of my blogs today somewhat expands these thoughts.

True Conservatives should be more concerned with the lack of any integrity in their leadership!

Didn't David Davis do well in the House today?

The problem is that just like a viral infection the EU keeps on taking over whether we agree with it or not. I am helping with a village flower festival that has got involved with the European Heritage Open Days Scheme. This turns out to be funded by the Council of Europe.

On checking into this you find that:

1) It is part of the deal that admission to everything must be free - "So that no one is excluded" - as nothing is really free, this means that the taxpayer picks up the bill.

2)The declared aim of the Heritage open Day Scheme is to "raise the public awareness of the importance of heritage and to AWAKEN THE INTEREST OF YOUNG EUROPEANS IN THEIR COMMON HERITAGE"

So not only is the taxpayer being fleeced - he is paying for EU propaganda.

That picture is brilliant! We should really be making the moral case for EU/CAP reform much more forcefully.

When they make some serious effort to roll back the billion and one niggling regulations, tear down the socialist "entitlements", privatize agriculture and fishing, and open the EU border to world trade, then they'll get the benefit of the doubt from me. Even a solid beginning would suffice. But as for now, I watch their hands not their mouths, because nothing they merely say has my trust.


Hi TomTom @ 17.43: "I would say that, after WW2, the nation states of Europe determined that never again would they allow Germany and her allies to wage wars against other European states".
I was alluding to the statement in the government produced leaflet on the EU.
Although I am not greatly in favour of it because it seems to me it has grown into a vast socialist miasma, I agree wholeheartedly with this basic aim - and also the common market. I have little time for most of the rest, especially how it intrudes into our lives.

I have only just noticed Christina's post at 17.49: "Unlike Norway EACH piece of EU legislation is only adopted by the Swiss if their parliament decides to adopt it. They are associates without being ruled in any way by Brussels."
What an admirable situation; this is what I have been advocating for years (without actually knowing whether it was possible or not).
What about adopting that as tory policy? The ultimate compromise that might keep both Eurosceptics and Europhiles happy.

No!

The fact is that the Human Rights Act and indeed liberal legislation passed by various governments over decades is interfering with the ability to fight terrorism and all forms of crime.

So far as border controls go I don't see it as a matter of numbers, but obviously there have to be controls to attempt to stop the spread of infectious diseases and to refuse the right of entry to people who might cause problems in this country, it seems bizarre that every single member of the EU can decide who becomes a citizen of their countries and once they have been granted such citizenship they can then go anywhere in the EU apparently with no right of refusal either by the countries they are going to or by the EU, this is akin to County Councils having the right to decide on granting citizenship with the UK having no overall citizenship system, it's frankly amazing that such a system could ever be introduced.

I would say that, after WW2, the nation states of Europe determined that never again would they allow Germany and her allies to wage wars against other European states.
This doesn't have anything to do with the EU though, the EU has no forces and never has and Germany has conventional forces, if Germany was to invade Belgium or Luxembourg it would be NATO or member states such as France and the UK who would intervene directly and whether there was the EU or EFTA or not would be irrelevant, the notion that somehow the EEC or the EU stopped wars is one of the most ridiculous I have ever heard.

"..the notion that somehow the EEC or the EU stopped wars is one of the most ridiculous I have ever heard."
Posted by: Yet Another Anon | July 25, 2006 at 23:03
It is ..but I didn't claim that. What I said
was that this was a founding principle of the EEC and I stated that I was alluding to a government produced leaflet (unfortunately I don't have a copy to be able to quote verbatim)that stated this. No doubt the intention was to prevent wars by establishing a federal Europe but I fully agree with YAA that if any war had to be stopped the EU would no doubt look to NATO to do it.

Anyone who actually believes that the EU is moving in the "right direction" is either naive beyond belief or belives that federalisation IS the "right" direction. All that is happening is that the self same federalisation agenda so resounding rejected by the citizens of France and Holland is being moved forward again under a different smoke screen.

I wonder whether the spat at BP over the retirement of Lord Browne has an EU dimension as a large takeover/merger was allegedly thwarted by the Chairman,ex EU Commissioner Peter Sutherland?

"Is Europe moving in the right direction?"

No.

Next question, please.

Living in Brussels, I could have endless discussions about reform 24/7. The Conservatives who still believe (against all the evidence) in the reformability of the EU make common purpose with those to whom reform means something entirely different.

'sneeringly supercillious'

Christina , alliteration - how charming!

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