FOLLOWING THE EUROPEAN UNION

You can go shopping with Euros on airports, and most shops in all amjor cities and town (especially with tourist sites) accept them.

But as nimh already said, the UK is no member of the Eurozone Countries (which consists of 12 countries: Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain - France including the overseas department; Andorra, Monaco, San Marino use them as well due to bi-lateral treaties; Montenegro uses the EURO, because they had before the DeutscheMark as currency.)

Thanks for the comprehensive commentary Hinteler

A 500 page "constitution" sounds more like a novel than the basic principles and limits of a new federal government. What elements of basic law could possibly take so much space to lay out? (Ours is just a few pages, and it has worked well for a long time.)

Moreover submitting such a document to a referendum seems an invitation to either neglect of essentail detail or non-participation by the electorate.

Actually, it is a "Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe", commonly referred to as the European Constitution. And because the main aims of this treaty are to replace the overlapping set of existing treaties that comprise the Union's current constitution, and to streamline decision-making in what is now a 25-member organisation, it really can't be done on one or two pages.

I am skeptical of the transcendent unity that can be achieved over a document of 500 pages.

From what I understand from the link I previously posted, it appears that the "new" EU constitution is to replace and harmonize, into one treaty, the present individual treaties between the EU and each country of the EU.

There should not be fundamental changes, although probably more power will be given to the EU on questions of defence, foreign policy, taxation etc. Also, the balance of power of the countries will change since the decisions will be based on the voting % set in the constitution, to give a better voice to the new and weaker countries (other than the UK, Germany and France which are the dominating powers). I think the UK said (in another article I read, or in that link, I don't remember) that it will keep its veto on those issues that the UE constitution is meant to deal with (i.e. defence, foreign policy, taxation, etc.).

My personal opinion is that it is good to have a unified treaty, instead of 25 treaties, especially in matters that deal with international and foreign issues (outside of the EU), although I can foresee a lot of difficulties when a unanimous decision must be obtained. For matters dealing within the EU itself, i.e. between the members of the EU, there may also be difficulties since the "new" members do not have full member status yet (I think it takes them something like 10 years). And as the EU seeks to enlarge itself with "newer" members, there would be even more discrepancies.

In Canada (one country), despite so many years of federal and provincial government system, we still have many problems to deal with: duplication of bureaucracy (government services), inter-provinces power struggles, etc. It is just hard for me to envision how 25 countries can agree with each other, let alone unanimously.

Nothing was more rational and free of duplication - at least in principle - than the central planning apparatus of the former Soviet Union. It produced only tyranny, corruption, and inefficiency. Be careful what you wish for up there in Canada. The present system may well be better than its "more rational" alternatives.

I just assured that it's 'only' 349 pages in the English version :wink:

There's something you need to know George: For a complex, refined breed as we Europeans are, one needs those 349 pages just to cover the basics. You Americans, by contrast, are rugged and primitive, and want no government anyway. So a few pages is more than enough. Surely you understand.

Thomas,

You have put your finger on it.

In our case we already had state governments, each with its own basic law, legislature and criminal code. The approach was merely to establish a Federal Government, its constituent parts and the limits of each, reserving any unspecified powers to the states and the people. Later we added a Bill of Rights. This was our second attempt - the earlier Articles of Confederation yielded a powerless and ineffectual Federal government. Still, even after this, it took us about eight years to put together and approve the Constitution.

It appears to me that our starting points and the passage through the looser preliminary union are rather similar. Why not a similar second stage?

I suspect the difference is just as you said. We traditionally are suspicious of government and want only as much of it as necessary, while Europeans look for the perfection of society, in part, through it. Our Constitution was a relatively brief enumeration of the powers of government, leaving everything not specified to the states and the people. The EU evidently has produced a longer, more affirmative document describing, I assume, how the government will operate in dealing with more or less whatever it chooses

American liberals are more European on their outlook than their wiser conservative brethren, and usually seek government-directed solutions for whatever worries them. Sometimes they are even able to make it sound good, however, government "solutions" almost never solve anything -- they just create more government. Freedom is much better.

Actually, so did Germany, when our Parlamentarischer Rat wrote our constitution, the Grundgesetz. The Grundgesetz is considerably longer than the American constitution. (34 pages compared to 13, when printed with a similar font.) So my guess is that of the factor 30 between the European constitution and the American, a factor 3 is owing to the fact that the Roman Law dominates our jurisprudence. Every judge here is a strict constructionist by American standards, so the verbosity of our statutes buys us a very desirable boringness in constitutional interpretation. In America for example, everybody knows what Roe v. Wade stands for. In Germany, nobody even knows the names of the two cases in which our Supreme Court struck down legalized abortion as unconstitutional. The language of our constitution is so clear on this that even pro-choicers like myself see no use in bickering over its interpretation. "Article 1: The dignity of life is untouchable. To respect it and protect it is the duty of all government power." Much stronger language than in your 5th and 14th amendments, no explicit exclusion of life that isn't born yet. There is much to be said for clear language like this -- even if you don't like its content, and even if it takes a few more pages to say it. The American constitution isn't short after you've appended to it all the Supreme Court decisions you need to predict how courts will decide.

Unfortunately, the remaining factor 10 is devoted to put all the obfuscation back into the law. It looks to me that the authors were desperately trying to found something, but couldn't agree on what it was.


I used to agree with that, but recently I've lost my confidence in this comparison. I agree they have similar political goals, but the European left's approach to institutions is very 'conservative' by American standards. They try to encode the institutions they want in statutes, rather than interpret them out of them. That's 'Republican'. For another example, there is a tradeoff in monetary policy between giving the central bank much discretionary power to deal with recessions and making the central bank provide stable money. In this tradeoff, the Euro, the gold standard, and monetarism represent similar choices. But the Euro is defended by European leftists and moderates against European conservatives, while the gold standard and monetarism are advocated by the American right against American moderates and leftists. Oscar Lafontaines Keynesian position as minister of finance discredited him even on the left. (Lots of other things discredited him too, and I'm sure Walter can tell you all about them )

Anyway, the European left is much more conservative than you seem to give them credit for.

Hmm - he was educated by Jesuits

Honestly? I didn't know that! (I did know he's a physicist, so that's another big minus)

His study was financed by the "Studienförderung der Deutschen Bischöfe" (Cusanus Werk) [Study foundation of the German Roman Catholic bishops.] :wink:

(He finished the [grammar school] Regino-Gymnasium in Prüm/Eifel, as an extern in the episcopal convict.)

Wow. I knew he was evil, but not that evil. Jesuits ... <reaches for the garlic and a pale>

George?

Thomas knows that I too am a product of the Jesuits. He is merely attempting to distract us from the odd political ideas that inhabit an otherwise clear and impressive mind (also his ugly avatar.).

Don't take the bait, Walter.

George also knows I'm a physicist like Lafontaine. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if Walter did. (I'm also not sure if it belongs to the "odd" part or the "clear and impressive" part. Could easily be either.)

He did. Walter is illiterate, you know, although not educated by Jesuits and not having studied "provable" sciences. :wink:

Walter is both literate and well informed - or at least able to find facts and links about nearly everything in record time.

Interesting comments about the length of constitutional documents and the different constructs applied to government organs and bureaucracies in the laws of European states and the U.S.

I agree our constitution, particularly the commerce and equal treatment before the law clauses, has spawned a host of Congressional enactments that go well beyond what any of the founding signatories had in mind. Along with that has come a flood of Supreme Court decisions modifying them and many other issues. Worse our Supreme Court seems increasingly willing to use what it perceives as international legal norms in deciding cases here. Such entropy inevitably accumulates, and it may be appropriate to sweep it out in a major rewrite one day - if we can avoid screwing things up in the process.

Even more interesting observations about the European left - things I didn't know, and still don't understand. Normally I focus on the (in my view) over-regulated labor and capital markets and the rest of the obvious stuff. I agree that is by no means the only or most important aspect of European left wing policies.