DICK HUMPHREYS,
Madam, - Paul Gillespie (December 31st has done us a favour by spelling out the nature of the EU federal super-state that is being planned in Brussels right now.
He claims that "80 per cent of the Europeans want the EU to become a superpower like the US". Since European countries have not conducted their referendums on this issue, it is not right to quote such speculative figures when alternative EU scenarios have not yet been presented to the European electorate for their vote.
Without pressure from Brussels or Berlin, each European country should be given the chance to debate and to vote on whether ït wants the EU to radically change from being an alliance of independent sovereign nations into becoming a super-state in its own right.
It is not being "anti-European" to wish to see the EU enlarging and developing further as the former.
Mr Gillespie is already giving superpower status to the EU when he points up the difficulties facing the EU, and says "as the European Union enlarges...and as it integrates more to govern such a vast number of people..." The EU has no mandate to "govern" people in Europe as Mr Gillespie suggests. Europeans should be governed by their own governments! If the EU can help these governments, that is well and good. . The EU has enough on its plate in integrating the new entrants into the European common market without also trying to govern the peoples of Europe.
The EU should also leave questions of human rights to the excellent Council of Europe's Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and European military affairs to NATO and other well-established multinational alliances, instead of barging into both of these areas, presumably as part of an anti-American empire-building plan. Co-operation not confrontation is what is needed in future at inter-governmental level.
In mid-2004 we will be frog-marched at high speed into yet another EU referendum. This time on a proposed EU constitution for which there is absolutely no urgent requirement from any practical viewpoint.
The existing EU treaties could be consolidated into one easily understood document without the need for a referendum, but, while the proposed EU constitution purports to do this, its real aim is to establish the constitutional structures of a super-state, and to render each member country's own constitution irrelevant.
As one can see from Mr Gillespie's article, the spin on this issue has already begun. It will be claimed that the only future for the EU is as a super-state and that there is no alternative.
I hope that equal funding will be provided to both sides of this argument, but I doubt it. - Yours, etc.,
DICK HUMPHREYS, Sycamore Road, Mount Merrion, Co Dublin.