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Does the EU's Reform Treaty Erode the UK's Sovereignty?

This post is in response to an opinion expressed by Ruth Lea, Director of the Global Vision think tank in the UK, on the BBC's "For and against the new EU treaty" (available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6914468.stm). Lea argues that the EU reform treaty is good for EU integration, which inevitably makes it bad for the UK. Her view is representative of a many people in the UK with whom I've spoken to about the European Union. One of her statements that summarizes this view and that provokes my reaction is when Lea states:

"Once enforced, there will quite simply be no more significant powers left solely with the governments of the member states, and outside the orbit of the EU's formal institutions. Of course, member states may still pursue their individual foreign and defence policies, for example, but their activities will be increasingly circumscribed by the EU and their national sovereignty diminished."

If one tIhinks of sovereignty as the power to redistribute wealth and the power to use force, then Lea's opinion is misguided and unhelpful as it feeds the sensationalized news depicting the EU as something like "The Blob," which is slowly taking over the competencies of member states.

Her argument takes things like an EU Foreign Minister for its superficial face value and ignores the fact that any powers (of negotiation, mandate, etc) given to the EU Foreign Minister will require unanimity of the member states. Every EU member state must endorse the powers given to the EU Foreign Minister and their ability to veto policies that go against their national interest means that they retain complete sovereignty over foreign and defense policies, despite the creation of a new job title for someone at the EU.

At best, the EU Foreign Minister might have the power to persuade EU member states to soften hard lines, but in areas of member states' core interests this influence is unlikely to make a difference. For example, changes to the French line on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has been more the result of structural changes to the domestic agricultural sector within France than persuasion by other countries. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that an EU Foreign Minister might soften Estonia's stance to condemn Russia for criticizing Estonia's removal of Russian statues, but I would be doubtful of an EU Foreign Minister's ability to persuade the UK to remove troops from Iraq, renegotiate military cooperation with the U.S., or to lift the EU's arms embargo on China. These issues remain within the core interest of the UK, and the UK's continued ability to veto anything that touches on these issues means that it has not lost its sovereignty, nor has the EU reform treaty changed that ability in any way.

The reform treaty does not make any significant changes to other core competencies of member states, like taxation and redistribution. These remain the sole competencies of the member states. I acknowledge that the single market and the Eurozone (which doesn't apply to the UK) puts constraints on the redistributive policy choices that states can pursue within the EU because of the free movement of goods, services, capital, and labor (i.e. high corporate taxes in one member state can lead to businesses fleeing to other member states with lower corporate taxes), but this occurs regardless of the reform treaty and is a consequence of EU membership in general. Aside from the minimum and maximum limits on value-added tax (VAT) that EU member states agreed to impose on themselves to prevent a race-to-the-bottom and race-to-the-top, the supranational EU institutions have no say over who gets taxed how much and where that money goes. This power remains in the hands of member states and remains a key source of member state sovereignty.

Where the EU is perhaps stepping on areas you would expect to remain the sole competency of member states in education (the attempt to put for an EU History book) and health policy, the reform treaty does not add or take away from this in any way. The most shocking creeping on the part of the EU, to me, is the rulings by the Commission regarding health policy and the free movement of goods, services, and people.

Two activities come to mind: 1) patients can seek treatment in any EU member state and their home national insurance must pay the cost and 2) the Commission is trying to harmonize standards the pharmaceutical market, because I'm not entirely sure that mutual recognition applies 100% here.

The implications of these activities on European welfare states could be enormous. But the EU reform treaty does not address this at all, because it changes voting weights and does not make any significant changes to enhance the Commission's competency over EU competition policy or member states' ability to appeal these policies. If anything, one could argue that French President Nicholas Sarkozy insisting that competition be taken out of the EU's objectives, may weaken the EU's ability to make rulings that would increase competition in the medical sector, although such weakening of the EU's competency over competition policy because of Sarkozy's stance is disputed by the Financial Times.

The EU reform treaty does not erode the UK's sovereignty any more than being a member of the EU single market already has done. If one takes sovereignty to mean the ability to use force either against one's own population or another's and the ability to redistribute wealth, then the UK has preserved it sovereignty entirely, with the caveat that the single market has limited some policy choices. Whether or not these choices are limited, the ability to take decisions in these areas remain in the hands of member states and "outside the orbit of the EU's formal institutions." The EU reform treaty has not transferred these competencies to the EU's institutions, nor is it likely that any future treaty will.

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on 26-07-2007 By Nina - Politics and Europe - Permalink - Share

Comments

Martin Cole | 1. Thursday, July 26 2007, 17:47

Democracy is the power to periodically remove those who govern us without bloodshed according to Karl Popper.

We cannot hand sovereignty ie 'the power to rule' to a non- democratic power that we cannot remove or we will have the opposite of Popper's democracy definition - what he describes as a 'tyranny'.

Nina | 2. Friday, July 27 2007, 08:38

I see your point. You are saying, essentially, that because you cannot remove members of the European Commission or the European Central Bank from power, the EU is undemocratic. The Commission is main competencies are regulatory policy and competition policy. The ECB handles monetary policy.

Tell me, before these competencies were given to the Commission and the ECB, were elected officials ever in charge of these areas? What I'm trying to get at is that even in a democracy, there are some policies, particularly those that try to achieve efficiency rather than redistribution and where the average voter does not have enough knowledge to make an informed decision on who to elect or sack, that are better handled by less democratic standards.

You can in fact remove the Commission from power without bloodshed. Think of the Santer Commission in 1999. The ECB, however, is another story, and should be a separate post all of its own.

Martin Cole | 3. Friday, July 27 2007, 10:34

Nina,

If you consider what happened after the Santer Commission resigned it is difficult to discern what if anything changed.

The Marin Commission was exactly the same as the Santer Commission and Edith Cresson who the Parliament felt should step down actually survived. The Commission resigned to protect one of their own who was demonstraby corrupt and all retained their jobs and huge perks. Hardly an advertisement for either democratic accountability or the imaginery powers of the EU Parliament. (Which actuallt solely exists to re-cycle taxpayers funds back to the political parties in the member states as rewards for selling off their citizens sovereignty).

Note especially that when later found guilty of this fraud Mme Cresson did not even suffer the loss of her EU pension:

http://www.businessupdated.com/show...

Regarding the competencies not necessarily handled by elected officials, in most democratic countries such officials are normally answerable to elected ministers. The division of power between ministers and their civil service is however a murky area especially as it went before 1997. I think the Blair Governments affected that balance and that Brown could go even further in reducing civil service powers but that remains to be seen.

The greatest danger I see in the new Reform Treaty is that it conflicts with one of the most important powers namely that no Parliament can bind its successors.

I think of sovereignty in Britain as having been taken from our various monarchs from Magna Carta and the Civil War down to the Glorious Revolution and that it rests with the people. The Constitutional Monarch then lends that sovereignty or power of the people to Parliaments for their fixed terms. That power is periodically renewed or withdrawn at General Elections and the monarch is required to bestow those powers on the peoples choice of elected representatives.

All this has been eroded by the various EU Treaties to the point where it is now proposed that Parliament will almost solely exist to support the European Union, which will have its own identity and powers to amend its working procedures without even a hint of ever being required to obtain periodic consent from the governed.

I hope the EU Reform Treaty will be rejected by one or more of the 27 parliaments involved to witness so much democracy being destroyed almost by sleight of hand would be a tragedy for the entire Continent and the outside world. I fear that further rejections in referenda will now be ignored and overcome.

Jock | 4. Monday, September 21 2009, 02:37

Are the Government and/or Parliament sovereign? Have they not given their sovereignty away when they signed the Treaty of Rome and all the other Treaties? Did they not violate their solemn Oath of Allegiance to the British Crown when they ratified the Treaty of Rome, especially when one Edward Heath admitted he had told lies to the people when he said "there would be no loss of essential Sovereignty". When a Country cannot close its own borders, I guess it has lost sovereignty. When foreign Troops, fully armed can be sent into this Country by and the British government cannot stop them, Yup! I guess it has lost sovereignty.

Or, is it really the people that are sovereign? Now let us see, they contribute financially to the Government don't they, through their taxes. They even pay Council taxes? They pay tax on Gas, electric bills etc, so what if they decided to activate their rights under their own Constitution through Magna Carta Clause 61 and with-hold their taxes from those Bills? The last time that Clause 61 was used was through the Treaty of Nice. Perhaps it is time it is used once more. Should Lisbon come into force without the people having had a say on the future of this their Country it is their bound duty to protect the British Crown and through the Crown, their country. The people have no option. It is their bound duty. The Government should never have put the people in this position, they should never have ignored them. The people are indeed sovereign and without their full support and money, Lisbon will fail. Lord Rees-Mogg on September 14th 2009 ended an article with "Britain will not be bound by Treaties to which the British have not given assent".

Some think that, "In truth, however, these laws have not been foisted upon us. British ministers have invariably been party to the discussions that have brought them about, British government officials have negotiated their provisions, British MPs and peers have discussed and debated them (though often only in the most desultory fashion) and legislation to enact many of them has gone through the British parliament". I follow many of the debates in Parliament and as the EU Treaties thus far have been ratified, EU Directives and Regulation HAVE to go through. The debates therefore have to end by acceptance of what is proposed. In other words, the whole is a charade. Play acting. The one sticking point at one time was the Hereditary Peers and we all know what happened to them even though there should have remained at least 16 Hereditary Peers as required by Article XX11 in the Treaty and Act of Union between Scotland and England as it was them-which included Wales-.There were only Hereditary Peers at the time of the Treaty of Union

To continue. Mr Brown obviously wants to finish the job the Conservatives started. The Conservatives proudly made Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II a citizen of the European Union and the Treaty of Lisbon will complete the job, for this time the Treaty makes EU Citizenship "additional" to, with RIGHTS set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights which of course would be made legally binding for the very first time and of course, underline the duties of citizenship. This Government has ratified a Treaty that gives the European Union as a whole, for the very first time, Legal Personality allegedly for treaty making powers, (there is no suggestion in Article 47 that giving of Legal Personality may NOT do-in other words, in having Legal Personality the EU may do what it wants). What about War making powers? The only way ANY Government of this Country could ratify any Treaty or new legislation was through the Royal Prerogative Ministers used on behalf of the Crown. It is that Honour of using the Royal Prerogative on behalf of the British Crown for ratifying Treaties and laws they have given away. All this at a time when all our MP's swear allegiance to the British Crown and while our forces have lost their lives in Iraq sent to war by the previous occupant of Number 10. Almost daily now we read of our forces lives lost in Afghanistan.

All three major political Parties still want to remain in the European Union which is gradually draining this Country dry financially with its ''fines' and billions of pound in contributions, on top of that are the vast expenses of the building of the EU Regions, 12 of them all extra expenses of running them, plus wages and expenses of those allegedly working there, which we could well do without. Most of our essential services are controlled or owned by foreigners and our manufacturing is almost none existent through EU Competition laws which only seems to work on the downwards slope of that level playing all the way down to the Continent.

The UK is the first country to be deliberately de-industrialised!
I question the legality of the Treaty from another point of view for the Treaty of Lisbon was deliberately muddled so that very few would be able to understand it, I question whether it was in keeping with the standards as required and set out in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Most certainly it throws doubt on any organization that would stoop to such low depths rather than allow the people a say on their future and for the future generations to come.

Sadly there may well be wars or civil unrest, if not in 'today's' world but in the years to come and when other leaders come on the scene.

Violation of the Oath of Allegiance to the Crown is the greatest betrayal of all. It is indeed the very essence of treason.
There is no point in having the best Constitution in the world, copied by other Countries if it is not used by the people now to save this THEIR country for they are the ones that go to war and sometimes pay the ultimate price in so doing. Our own Constitution, upon which all other laws should be built, makes quite clear here, "That no foreign Prince, person prelate, state, or potentate hath, or ought to have any jurisdiction, power superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm, So help me God." Yet cowardly MP's have had to lie to the British people about what the EU is really all about. The Government should withdraw the Treaty of Lisbon NOW and put it to the people in a referendum. The choice is theirs, the Government have not given the people any choice at all, but the people will do their duty, for it is to the British Crown they owe their allegiance and no one has the right to transfer the people's allegiance to others, be they friend or foe.

destin | 5. Tuesday, December 14 2010, 10:37