| Topic: | For Guy: "...Moving forward our common European agenda..." | |
| Posted by: | Fraser Pearce | |
| Date/Time: | 13/03/08 20:10:00 |
| Guy wrote: "...Moving forward our common European agenda where every country agrees a Europe wide initiative is appropriate." - Absolutely wrong. Unanimity is now out the door, replaced by qualified majority voting, i.e. Post-Lisbon, key measures won't need agreement from every country. From a security perspective, one of the most critical examples of this is access to energy supplies (itself the biggest external threat facing the EU). THIS IS VITAL TO NATIONAL INTERESTS. As such, Articles 194 (176a) and 122 (100) of the Lisbon Treaty propose qualified majority voting over measures to ensure security of energy supply. In effect, the EU could assume control of emergency oil and gas reserves “if severe difficulties arise in the supply of certain products, notably in the area of energy”. This measure was requested by Poland. This in itself speaks volumes and takes us back to the fact that the likes of Germany and Poland are dangerously reliant on Russian oil and gas. So, on the one hand, this part of the Lisbon Treaty may be viewed as an extremely noble gesture - Member States circling the wagons to help others. Given the UK is the EU’s only significant oil player, however, such an emergency would likely mean Britain saying sayonara to control over its own oil reserves. Ceding control over the richest fishing waters on Earth was bad enough, doing it with oil would be disastrous. The UK blocked such a move in 2002 when saying 'no' to the EU Oil Stocks Directive. Crucially, the 2002 law needed unanimity - after Lisbon, it won't. [One last point. The "European agenda" isn't necessarily the same as the "EU agenda". Europe is a continent, the EU a political construct that doesn't even govern every country in Europe. Switzerland has a higher proportion of its trade with the EU than the UK does, while the Swiss Parliament has kept the right to make the majority of its own laws, something the UK, Germany, France et al lost years ago] |