A moderate anti-Lisbon view

What is it with Lisbon? The Declaration there that the EU was to become the world's leading economy in this, that and the other dribbled away into the sand, and now the Lisbon Treaty is deceased.

Or is it? Some journalists suggest that the job of the French presidency will be to smuggle through as many changes as possible and incorporate the rest in protocols to a Croatian accession treaty in a form that avoids the need for a repeat Irish referendum.

They're probably wise not to go for a re-referendum. Brian Cowan may be another Gordon Brown, a plodder in the footsteps of his former leader. So there's no guarantee he could turn the result around in a rerun, especially as the Irish economy continues to decline, and Brussels doesn't feel able to hold back indefinitely all those goodies it had kept under wraps until the Irish fulfilled their destiny.

This Eusceptic admits to enjoying his feelings of glee yesterday at the Irish result. But what now?

Philip Stott in his always interesting blog on global warming politics hails the Irish result even though "I am a strong pro-European", and that's what makes his position interesting. Like so many others, he says, he is heartily sick of

• The EU gravy train;
  

• The financial unaccountability and the failure to audit properly;
  

• The lack of transparency and democratic accountability;
  

• The nonsense of two parliaments and administration in three countries;
  

• The constant dribble of imposed economic costs;
  

• The agricultural subsidies which undermine free trade;
  

• The constant undermining of European industry;
  

• The blatant hypocrisies over its ‘global warming’ rhetoric; and,
  

• The intrusive non-democratic legislation.

So perhaps these are the things to focus on. Opponents will say opposition to Lisbon is code for wanting to leave the EU. It doesn't have to be. We are against all those things Philip Stott dislikes.

Maybe we think the EU would implode under its own contradictions if it tried to eliminate even some of these disfigurements. Maybe we watch with bated breath as Spain continues its ever-harder high-wire act of trying to contain damage to its economy without being able to set its own interest rates - a problem also facing Ireland.

The British wouldn't describe themselves as "anti-Europe" and probably wouldn't say they were "anti-EU". But they dislike these aspects of the EU. Under the guise of "streamlining decision-making in the EU", the Labour party wants to make it easier for the EU to do more of those bad things. But sadly (because he favours a referendum) it seems Kelvin MacKenzie's unlikely to stand against David Davis.

The Lisbon Treaty may not be deceased quite yet. In a democracy it would be.

Scratching my head over the EU

This blog doesn't post much about the EU. Between Richard North's scholarly mini-essays and Open Europe's blogs of media coverage there is very little for the ordinary blogger to add.

This doesn't mean I acquiesce in the EU. But government carefully denies us the chance to vote against the Lisbon treaty, merely because Herr Brownmeister is sure we will reject it. Nor will the country will ever vote in numbers for the inadequate clowns who have a stranglehold on UKIP. But that doesn't mean voters want more integration with the EU and the government knows it.

Armageddon Ambrose-Pritchard has another of his excoriating pieces in the Telegraph today. It includes numbers, so it's in the business section, and on the inside pages at that. He is stressing the undemocratic nature of the Lisbon process, explaining that Ireland is sleep-walking into economic trouble it will be helpless to prevent, and most importantly explaining the fundamental changes to which we are being exposed -

Our shared Anglo-Celtic culture has long been a well-spring of free enterprise (with Dutch, Swedish, and Hanseatic help in fighting European absolutism along the way), and that is what is so threatened by the Lisbon Treaty, the treaty to end all EU treaties.

The text strikes the words "free and undistorted competition" from the core objectives of the Union. Corporatist aims will enjoy a higher legal status at the European Court (ECJ) and must prevail if the two clash. The Rhineland Model has locked in a permanent advantage.

Euro-creep is already eviscerating the Common Law that underpins the British and Irish way of doing business. Lisbon quickens the pace. It upgrades the ECJ to a de facto supreme court, with broader jurisdiction. It will have the last say on a raft of new economic and social rights. Who can stop them imposing a Colbertist agenda by court rulings, if they so choose? The ECJ is beyond appeal.

Euro-judges will decide how and when to enforce the Charter of Fundamental Rights, now made legally-binding. Article 52 allows the "limitation" of all liberties in the "general interest" of the Union. This is the old Reich clause. Such justifications for state coercion have been illegal in Europe for 60 years. Now they return, by the back door.

For instance, German leaders are to propose a worldwide ban on oil trading by speculators. And the perpetual Jean-Claude Juncker, leader of Luxembourg since 1995 with a population of 467,000, wants an upper limit on salaries.

And he concludes that "a British prime minister slinks away to a private room to commit Britain to an arrangement that alienates the powers of Parliament - in perpetuity and perhaps illegally - knowing that his people would vote 'no' by crushing margins if given a chance".

Now, we know that most politicians give no sign of understanding anything about economics at all, here or in the rest of the EU. I am no flag-waving Jerusalem singer harking back to the grand old days of the British Empire. I just don't get why the political class wants to give our freedom away - and indeed their freedom too - and condemn us to the likelihood of gradually pauperising foreign rule.

Silence is not consent.

Stresses in the EU

In his Telegraph blog Bruno Waterfield reports on a press conference given by Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament.

Asked why the Parliament did not clean up its act, the institution’s President claimed that in the EU one man’s expense scam could be another man’s legitimate claim on allowances. It’s a cultural thing, don't you know?

Mr Pöttering explained that MEPs come from various cultures.

“If I was to employ someone from my own family, and this person was one of my sons and he got money from me. I could say goodbye to politics. I would lose my job. Obviously it is different in the UK. This is a crude example of how different our cultures are.”

But, says Waterfield, he didn't explain why the rules that have been agreed, "notwithstanding the EU’s 27 different cultures", are not properly applied. Stern claims that between 2004 and 2005 receipts for expenditure on MEP allowances worth over £58 million are missing.

He also failed to properly tell us why the Parliament has refused, despite rulings from its own Ombudsman, to give details of allowance payments.

Mr Pöttering’s own evasiveness and secrecy is indeed the product of a unique culture: the euro-culture of “not in front of the children” that tends to universally prevail in the EU institutions.

Stricter rules generally apply in the north of the EU than in the south. If MEPs' expenses were set out in detail, northern voters might start asking why they should tolerate the lax standards of the southern members. That would never do.

Out in the currency markets, some money is moving from the US dollar into the euro as a safer haven. This is naturally leading economists to point out that the euro is not risk free. They particularly highlight the growing gulf between the economic performance of the northern and southern eurozone countries.

Publication of southern MEPs' expenses might add a little political strain to the growing economic strains. That would never do either.

P.S. Open Europe relays a Finnish daily Vasabladet report that Finns are becoming increasingly sceptical about their country's EU membership. "A new poll shows that 35% are against membership altogether - the highest figure ever - versus 36% in favour. 66% think the membership costs too much and 79% that the EU imposes too many rules on Finland".

All the hot news that's fit to print

Plenty about in the blogosphere about cold hard facts which increase the question marks over "Global Warming". Richard North contributed here. And read Melanie Phillips' summary of the latest cold data.

This is picked up by Philip Stott, who asks about the role of our supposedly impartial news media. The media's near silence on this, he says, "betrays so much about our failing journalism under the exclusive dominance of hegemonic myths. We joke about 1984, but I sometimes wonder."

Yet, thank goodness for the web. As it was with the invention of printing, this is the new liberator, helping us to break the dangerous hegemonies that seek to enslave our minds and lives. But now, alternative voices can no longer be suppressed by a weakened and often compliant media, trendy editors, or media magnates.

And he concludes that

Melanie Phillips, and all writers and bloggers like her, are a brave voice for freedom in a world where too many who should know much, much better are seeking to exclude inconvenient truths and facts, but, above all, to shut down the voice of reason.

Inconvenient truths, indeed!

There is also a media agenda about the EU. Shh is the order of the day here too. Not all of this is a conspiracy. Some presenters who strive for impartiality seem to be genuinely ignorant about the scale of EU power. Ability to get the rational case across hasn't been helped by the wild-eyed, flag waving tendency. Richard North comments today on the blind spot at the BBC. I'd like to see a volunteer group of media monitors who would pick up errors and omissions and bring them to the attention of the programmes, as well as reporting them on a blog. It could start small and grow.

Any takers?

The noose closes round British government

Open Europe has released the Presidency's list of unfinished business to be dealt with once the Constitution has been smuggled through.

As well as terms and conditions for the President and the Foreign Minister, it includes the structure, operation and field of action of Europol, the new powers and operation of Eurojust ("We could compel the British police to make a prosecution"), the rules governing the European Public Prosecutor and its functions, and the powers of the new sinister-sounding "Operational Committee on Internal Security", or COSI. (The portentous apparatus for common defence and foreign policies will probably prove an expensive farce.)

The final blueprint for COSI's extensive powers has yet to be finalised, however. Negotiations on the issue will take place in the second half of this year - after the planned ratification of the Treaty in the House of Commons, meaning MPs will not know what they have signed up to. Talks on COSI will be held in secret. Waterfield cites leaked internal EU documents, circulated almost three years ago which admitted that "the exact nature of the committee cannot be discerned by reading" the relevant clause of the Treaty - and no new work to clarify the issue has been carried out since.

Tony Bunyan, of the Statewatch civil liberties group, has warned that if the Government "gets its way we will see an EU Interior Ministry without any democratic control. It is quite outrageous that the role of the new EU internal security committee is being decided in secret. If COSI becomes a high-level legislative body, as well being in charge of operational matters, a whole swathe of decision-making and practice will be removed from democratic debate and discussion."

Open Europe also picks up a Handelsblatt report that "the Commission is holding back plans for controversial legislation until after the revived Constitutional Treaty has been ratified. Plans to harmonise Europe's corporate tax base are also being held back.

"The controversial Health Directive will be reintroduced only once ratification is complete, as both the UK and Ireland are opposed." And we already know a group of cancer specialists have for some reason called for EU involvement in cancer care in Europe ... as if we were to be ruled by all-wise philosopher kings.

But they were only ever a doctrinaire philosophers' ignorant fantasy. Our new politburo believe in "Global Warming", Kyoto and biofuels. Nothing seems to attract their regulatory zeal like obsolete or half-understood science.

And there will be nothing we can do about it. Just pay the ever increasing - and largely pointless - bills, as our freedom drains away.

You're in the EU now

Today the MSM started to give a clearer idea of what it is going to mean to be in the EU. A long piece on Radio 4's 6 o'clock news reported the decision over vehicle emissions, with the gloss that the German commissioner, seeking to defend Germany's car industry, had been overcome by the Greek environment commissioner. Car prices might rise by £1,000. There seemed to be no trace of the British government at all.

Meanwhile, Labour MPs who support Blair and Brown in giving away sovereignty to the EU - probably partly because they haven't troubled themselves to understand it - are now complaining at the possibility that the Commission's hastily hidden health directive may undermine our second rate Nationalised Health Service - this on a day when it's reported that "scores of premature babies may be dying unnecessarily across England because the NHS mismanaged a reform of neonatal units in 2003". Richard North explains the background to the EU proposal.

Countries' ability to opt out would be in the commission's gift, reports The Times.

Brussels will allow countries to refuse to fund such operations abroad if they can argue that domestic services will suffer as a result. Such opt-outs would be negotiated procedure by procedure.

Yes, that'll work in a streamlined fashion.

Comment has focused on the appalling prospect that Britons may be able to get faster treatment elsewhere in the EU and charge the government. If the UK government is concerned, imagine how Bucharest or Sofia or Budapest views the prospect that numbers of their citizens may go to other EU countries to get treated more promptly than they can at home, and at considerably greater expense - again chargeable to their government.

How long will it be before it becomes illegal under EU law for a hospital to give priority to those in the waiting list from their own country? The pressure would be felt first by national centres of excellence, such as Great Ormond Street. There will be others in other EU countries.

Of course at the outset this would be a boon to those countries with over-capacity in healthcare (did anyone mention France?), but in the medium term it would tend to lead to a levelling of healthcare provision across the EU.

As usual in EU matters, the UK government is in belated reaction mode. Our government's policy is that NICE and the NHS's unaccountable satraps should retain their dictatorial powers of life and death over the taxpaying serfs:

We are committed to ensuring that the right legislative framework is developed which ensures that, where patients choose to travel abroad, the NHS retains the ability to decide what care it will fund to meet the clinical needs of people it looks after.

Meanwhile, Keith Pollard from Treatment Abroad said on the Today programme that 10,000 Britons have gone abroad this year to receive treatment that would be available on the NHS, and it is not surprising to read that

I run Piestany Dental Clinic & Spa in Slovakia for over 2 years now and have met countless clients fed up with the UK dental situation and coming over to us for implants, veneers and crowns abroad. Dental treatment abroad is a fast growing phenomenon and with the level of expertise and care given by companies such as http://www.dentalholiday.co.uk it's hard for the NHS to compete.

One can understand the government's fear of having to sign more blank cheques (Northern Rock is scary enough). And a Health Department which can't run one over-large nationalised industry is hardly likely to be effective in supplicating to Brussels for exemptions on a treatment by treatment basis, or in budgeting effectively for the resulting extra demand.

A treaty to make bad EU regulation easier

This blog has long argued that people favouring a referendum on the EU constitutional treaty should stop dancing with David Miliband on the head of a pin swapping chants claiming the treaty is or is not a constitution.

This battlefield suits him well. People may say they would like a referendum on an EU document, but whether it is or it isn't a constitution won't rank very high in their concerns, and they would be hard pressed to explain exactly what the distinction was.

Miliband has yet to face simple but much harder questions - such as

• What is the treaty for?
  
  
• How does it benefit Britain?

Let's keep this broadbrush. One aim of the treaty is to make it easier for the EU to make rules. So it's reasonable to ask, Do our foreign rulemakers make a good job of regulating our lives?

For instance, there are the Directives on the Restriction on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) which Booker demolished over a year ago and Richard North has returned to today. Appliances are failing because they are now banned from using lead - which wasn't dangerous in the first place anyway.

And it seems the rule banning standby mode in appliances may be aimed at the wrong target, as this blog mentioned the other day.

How do EU rules like this get made? Blair seems to have been casually bounced into the rule phasing out conventional lightbulbs, an execrable example of his sofa government lite. Booker reminds us today that

The supposed "low energy" bulbs the EU wants to make compulsory simply cannot work in many enclosed light fittings without overheating, and to replace those fittings would in Britain alone cost billions of pounds.

And a Telegraph reader writes that "the cost and energy required to make low energy bulbs are higher than any that might be saved by their use".

They do things differently in the States. A global warming bill sponsored by two US senators has been analysed by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Its proposals would cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion in its first 10 years. The EPA estimates that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will be 718 parts per million by 2095 - and if the bill is passed, CO2 levels would be 695 ppm, a reduction of 23 ppm. This is out in the public domain for people to consider, and they can calculate that this expenditure of trillions of dollars might reduce average global temperature by as much as 0.18 degrees Celsius.

But what are the costs and benefits of the EU lightbulb policy?

In terms of the referendum campaign and the constitutional treaty, it's important to keep in mind that the argument isn't that we need to leave the EU. That's what opponents of a referendum claim the argument is.

The case against the treaty is different. It would make it easier for the EU to bring in new rules. Even if they were all good rules, there would be implications for civil liberties and democracy. But in fact some of the regulation is spectacularly bad. So the onus is on supporters of the treaty to explain why it would be good for the UK to make EU regulation easier.

One more example of EU regulation. Last year I blogged an EU proposal that drivers in the EU should have to keep their headlights on in daytime, and asked, "should this be an issue for the EU in the first place? Whatever happened to subsidiarity?"

Matthew Engel has picked up the issue in the Financial Times, under the heading "Brussels' glaring stupidity". He concentrates on how such rules come about.

There has been discussion of this issue for some years now, but this is discussion of a very EU-ish kind, ie hardly anyone has heard about it. There has been consultation involving (Gawd, how I hate this word) “stakeholders”, usually meaning groups that can afford lobbyists. And there was a two-month period in 2006 when individuals could respond. Population of the EU: 495 million. Number of respondents: 117.

He questions the projected reduction in accident figures: fatalities are falling anyway, and the law will increase dazzle and glare. Oh, and cars’ carbon dioxide usage will go up by between 0.3% and 1.5%.

The main concern, he says, is democracy. "Yes, there is debate, but it is so removed from the ordinary voter that 99 per cent of the population are likely to hear nothing until the law is passed – and maybe not even then." The 117 respondents were overwhelmingly against the change. The British government opposes the headlights plan, he says, but "is fatalistic about being forced to agree.

"Even the European Commission admits the idea is far less appropriate in the south than the north – so why pass a blanket law?"

He concludes that -

Britain may be wrong. This much is certain: as inappropriate, barely debated new regulations cover the continent, so alienation from the European project increases.

In such little ways, Europe sows the seeds of its own eventual collapse.

And this is the process which the constitutional treaty would make easier.

Don't stand by your regulations

The Financial Times reports that the need for consumers to turn appliances off rather than leave them in standby mode may be rendered obsolete by technology.

Scientists have calculated the differences in energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions between leaving the most advanced computer monitors and television sets on standby and turning them off - and found only marginal savings.

Oops. The team say that concentrating on standby mode is diverting attention from the real objective: improving the overall efficiency of electronic devices.

They argue that a EU directive aimed at outlawing standby mode is wrong-headed and could stop manufacturers improving the energy efficiency of products.

In their view, the important issue is to phase out old, energy-intensive components.

An old cathode ray tube computer monitor uses 75W, compared with 25W for a modern TFT screen. The difference between standby and off mode for a TFT screen, however, is only 1W.

Attempting to regulate the off mode is the most expensive option, they say, which saves the least amount of energy when it comes to producing more environmentally friendly electrical devices.

States run by a detailed central bureaucracy had a greater chance of prospering in the 18th and 19th centuries than now: science and society were changing more slowly; and back then most other ways of governing were less efficient.

But now a regulation can quickly become outdated - even if based on sound science when it is made (unlike the RoHS directive and the fashion for green nonsense).

Central planners like Macstalin make a similar mistake. No longer are the toiling masses powerless peasants in an unchanging society who will respond like automata to what they are told. People learn to think for themselves. Even in Stalin mk 1's command structure people falsified the numbers. And nowadays sanctions for non-compliance scarcely exist. Senior officials hardly ever get sacked (though whole departments can find themselves banished to internal exile in Wales or north-east England). And what other deterrence is there? Civil servants' bonuses are usually fudged, and this government can't even manage to run a cut down version of the Gulag.

Society changes, science changes. Changing science changes society. Advances in medical science may make it sensible to have fewer hospitals and push more medical procedures out to first level treatment centres. But the bills for PFI hospitals - entered into on the assumption that big changes in the infrastructure of medical care were unlikely - will still have to be met.

Generals may fight the last war, but at least some of them understood it. Ministers supposedly learn during their (usually brief) time on the job - and sometimes they're not up to learning very much.

Detailed central regulation is likely to prove flat-footed. When governments must regulate, they should regulate for ends, not means. Especially as the process of keeping the regulations updated can be so cumbersome and expensive.

The standby regulations could cost us money and energy. Like PFI hospitals.

Belgium's plight resurrects EU tosh

As Belgium passes 100 days without a national government, the mainstream media are starting to look at it. The Financial Times reports that "with a new budget needed and parliament due to return from recess next month, pressure is mounting for a coalition-building deal". But relations between the politicians leading the two main communities are worse than they used to be.

Robin Shepherd concedes that if Belgium splits, "it will amount to the biggest embarrassment for believers in a deeply integrated European Union since the Treaty of Rome first called for an "ever closer union" half a century ago". He claims that

If Belgium does go down it will provide only the latest and starkest reminder of the endurance of ethnic nationalism in modern Europe and the corresponding failure of elitist supra-nationalists to forge larger identities holding any real meaning for ordinary people.

Leaving Yugoslavia aside as a special case, this overstates the importance of ethnic nationalism. The Czechs and the Slovaks might not have split apart if their rulers had agreed on economic policies. Similarly, if the Flemish weren't subsidising the Walloons, Belgium probably wouldn't be under strain.

Shepherd therefore is right to suggest that

In a too deeply integrated EU, countries that have taken their reformist responsibilities seriously - especially looking a decade or two hence when demographic decline and reductions in the working age population begin to bite - may start to ask serious questions about the value of an EU in which they have to bail out the laggards.

The problem is that many of the southern bloc are in the EU for the money. Portugal's police and Greece's fires suggest how big the gap is between the south and the north. Germany has famously taken on economic reforms, while France notoriously has not. Spain's economy may be the next big sign of the north-south divergence.

Shepherd oddly concludes that "democratic pragmatists, who support European integration as a means to enhancing national interests rather than as an end in itself, can plausibly argue that their vision of the EU has never been more relevant". How can everyone's national interests be enhanced?

If the Flemish and Walloons do unhook from each other, he says, "they can quickly hook back into the EU as separate entities bound by common European values". Though it's not immediately obvious what these common values are when the two parts of the country have such a strained relationship. And what is the word "European" doing here? Why not just say "common values"?

Finally we get the implausible call of the EU fanatic -

The very existence of the EU allows us to contemplate a resurgence in national sentiment without fear of violence or confrontation. In the context of Europe's past, that is no small achievement.

This is rubbish. Trade, television, cars, football and the Eurovision Song Contest have made it harder for leaders to demonise other European nationalities. And better educated populations are hardly likely to allow themselves be whipped up into dying for their country.

The EU has facilitated European trade a bit. But an important force for peace in Europe?

Tosh.

Is that the best case to be made for the EU?

Turkey in the EU? No thanks

Geoffrey Wheatcroft criticises David Miliband for claiming that Turkish EU membership would build a bridge between Europe and western Asia. Wheatcroft lays out some differences in Turkish political culture, and the economic issues that would arise from "adding a country with a per capita income not much more than one-tenth that of the UK's - and which will, moreover, soon be more populous than Germany". It would, he says, threaten the very being of the EU.

Now there are other threats to the "very being" of the EU. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, for instance, writes that

On the break-up of the euro -- as the Latin and Germanic blocs pull further apart -- I stand by my position. These fissures take a long time to do their damage. The Spanish property bubble has begun to deflate, and Italy’s growth was just 0.1pc in the second quarter, not far off recession. I imagine it will take another two to three years for this to unfold.

But regarding Turkey, Wheatcroft does not see the greatest difficulty as economic, religious, cultural or geographic. It is political. "That means not the politics of Turkey but of Europe."

For all its very great achievements, the besetting weakness of the EU has always been its undemocratic character, with political and administrative elites dragging a recalcitrant populace behind them. Deals agreed by the elites are regularly rejected by the mere voters (Maastricht by the Danes, Nice by the Irish, the constitution by the French and Dutch) until they are told to go back to vote again until they get it right.

And this applies to the question of Turkish accession.

Contrast the zeal for accession expressed by the foreign secretary, Mr Blair and various German and Spanish politicians with polls in which barely one-fifth of ordinary Europeans say that they want Turkey to join. It might be an idea to start by building another bridge - within Europe, between rulers and ruled.

Let's take Mr Wheatcroft's argument further. David Miliband is emerging as outstandingly silly, even for a Foreign Secretary. Not only does he claim to favour Turkish accession. He maintains that the new constitutional treaty is nothing like the rejected constitutional treaty (which conveniently means we needn't have a referendum). Well, let's be charitable and allow that he knows this for the lie it is. But he does believe that the EU should re-invent itself as a combatant against global warming - upon which he claims there is a scientific consensus.

Just maybe these EU politicians know Turkey does not have a hope in hell of joining the EU, and therefore making supportive noises is a cost-free way of getting some goodwill. Maybe they themselves don't even favour Turkish accession.

On the other hand, such a daft notion as Turkish accession does seem well within the compass of Mr Miliband.

How the EU governs us

Booker again, highlighting recent "government" policies which were in fact laid down by Brussels.

- Boris Johnson can't re-introduce Routemaster buses in London because of the EU's Bus and Coach Directive, 2001/85.

- EU directive 2001/37 lays down which shocking pictures we must place on our cigarette packets.

- Abolishing Home Information Packs would put the UK government in breach of directive 2002/01 on the "energy performance of buildings" - issued by the EU to combat global warming (see next post).

- When the Food Standards Agency was asked to introduce a ban on food additives, to stop our children behaving badly, "it had to admit that it no longer has the power to make laws on food safety, because this has been handed over to head office, the European Food Safety Authority".

One can understand MPs not noticing these erosions of sovereignty, because most backbenchers have minimal influence on anything that happens.

Why does the government continue to underplay the role of the EU?

What other areas of policy will be subject to the EU when we give up 62 more vetoes under the constitutional treaty?

If any of the specialist campaigners would tell us, calls for a referendum would probably get stronger.

European arrest warrant

One issue the McCann case is brining to the fore is the different standards of police forces in different EU countries.

Yet British citizens could now be subject to a European arrest warrant, allowing them to be extradited to another EU country on the say so of the authorities there.

Bearing gifts to the Greeks

Back in the 1990s Greece was given some €100m to compile a land registry. However, a few years later, in 2001, Brussels demanded the money back because of various delays and irregularities in the way the project was being carried out. Or not.

There are around 2 million illegal land holdings in Greece. Without a full land registry, it is easier to have burnt land reclassified as farmland and start building on it. That's part of the reason for the recent forest fires, which have killed over 60 people. MEPs have criticised Greece for infrastructure deficiencies in managing forests and property development. They also condemned the practice of allowing construction on protected and non-authorised areas, including burnt-down forests, which experts believe motivated arsonists as a way of obtaining new land.

So what's the best thing to do now? Let's see. It's partly the government's fault, they had plenty of time to address the causes, but they didn't do it. They were even given money to help them get it right, but they made such a hash of it that even the EU was appalled and demanded its money back.

I know ... I know ... let's give them some money.

In a resolution adopted on Tuesday (4 September), the European Parliament urged the European Commission to provide financial aid to the regions most affected by forest fires this summer with the cost of the damage assessed at some €1.2 to €4 billion.

If MEPs want to throw more money at the Greeks, let them have a whipround.

Another EU threat to UK earnings

Jeff Randall waxes lyrical about the worldwide earning power of football's premier league.

Good

But what about EU proposals to take over regulation of football and curb the number of overseas players? Which the government seems to support....

Financial costs of EU membership

In state spending everything should have its price.

This is not about being "a little Englander" on the one hand, or being "part of Europe" on the other.

According to the Bruges Group:

• The Common Agricultural Policy costs Britain at least £15.6 billion a year.
  
  
• The Common Fisheries Policy costs Britain at least £2.5 billion a year.
  
  
• Over-regulation costs Britain at least £26 billion a year. Membership of the European Union costs Britain £60.1 billion per annum gross or £50.6 billion net.

That is the equivalent for every man, women and child in Britain of £1,002 per annum gross or £843 net.

Or the equivalent for every tax-payer in Britain of £1,939 per annum gross or £1,632 net.

These are huge amounts, so before the debate heats up with political preconceptions it's reasonable to ask coolly whether we are getting value for money.

Telegraph distorts reporting to shield Cameron

Discussion continues about the rights of murdering thug Learco Chindamo, killer of Philip Lawrence. Let us ignore the wholly valueless piece by Jan Moir and concentrate on the substance.

This is of course an EU issue, as James Naughtie pointed out in his Today interview yesterday with a highly confused Mrs Lawrence (who failed to pick it up). Those who want chapter and verse about the EU rules can find them here, in an item posted at 7.55pm yesterday - evidently too late for Telegraph reporters Christopher Hope and Caroline Gammell to take account of it in their front page lead today.

With its heading Cameron: Scrap the Human Rights Act, the paper concentrates on Cameron's mis-targeting of the (undoubtedly flawed) HRA rather than the EU legislation.

A passing reference to the EU rules does appear on the front page, where David Davis is allowed to say ambiguously

"The Government are trying to blame the courts but they signed up to the EU law in question and continue to cede the powers to deal with dangerous individuals like this to Brussels."

This was probably the clearest reference Davis could make to the EU without exposing the fact that his leader had got it badly wrong twice in one day (after the mistakes over hospitals).

Turn to the Telegraph's inside page and we do start to see some reference to the EU from Jack Straw, who is pathetically reduced to claiming he was misled about the effect of the laws his government signed up to. Straw says that

What I have been able to glean is that it is very probable that most of this issue arises not from the Human Rights Act but from European Union law.

He added that "I think we were misled by the system"(!), commenting that the Human Rights Act was a "subsidiary" factor in the tribunal's decision and he doubted whether it made "any difference at all".

Mr Straw is saying that we have his and his government's incompetence to thank for the legislative framework, while Mr Cameron had two legislative targets to choose from and picked the wrong one.

Cameron should have been saying, "This is an example of the power the EU has over us already. It should be for the UK to decide which criminals the UK will deport, not up to the EU. Yet the government now wants to sign a treaty giving the EU more power in forty areas of our lives. What we are saying is, ask the people whether they want cases like this to be governed by EU rules or British law".

Despite attempts by his outriders like Matthew d'Ancona to portray Cameron as a heavyweight policy-oriented politician, he remains superficial and focused on PR opportunities without being interested in digging below the surface of what he is being told.

The Telegraph may try to play down his mistakes, but no newspaper promoting itself as serious can cover for him indefinitely.

"These dollars belong to the people of our state"

Accountable transparency is the new democracy. This is the heading to a very important piece in the Financial Times. Grover Norquist, of Americans for Tax Reform, discusses what he calls "accountable transparency" - making state budgets, contracts and individual expenditures available to the public on the internet.

For example (more details here) -

• The governor of Texas has put his own governor's office expenses on the web in a searchable form.
  
  
• Also in Texas, any school district that cannot prove that it is spending at least 65% of its education budget in the classroom must publish its payments - every single expenditure item - online for citizens to inspect.
  
  
• Indiana's governor put his state's contracts on the internet on the day he took office.
  
  
• Five states have passed laws mandating various levels of transparency. Legislation was introduced or debated in a dozen others and, says Norquist, is set to pass next spring.

Governor Matt Blunt of Missouri has put up the Missouri Accountability Portal ("Map Your Taxes") website, which posts a wide range of government expenditures.

As Norquist explains, you can look up the actual expense records of your favourite politician and bureaucrat. A linked website provides access to the actual contracts let by the state. There are other plans, including the posting of state employee salaries.

The Governor says:

One of my goals has been to transform state government by using technology to improve efficiency and enhance transparency. The old-way bureaucrats like the paper-based system, which empowers them and is less accountable to taxpayers. Few Missourians can take the time to root through mounds of paperwork in some department to find out where their taxes are going. Missourians deserve openness in state spending.

And - in words which everyone paid by the state should have visible to them all day - he adds:

These dollars belong to the people of our state

The Map Your Taxes website has received more than 600,000 hits in its first few weeks.

Norquist points out that accountable transparency is working up from the more local levels to the national level, and that it is popular with the media. Most of the information in most states is already legally public information. And it needn't be expensive. Governor Blunt "put the entire state finances online without a single additional appropriation - just using existing staff and resources".

Here we have something extremely unusual - a simple idea which is powerful enough to bring about a huge increase in democracy at minimal cost.

Its time seems to be coming in the USA. How long will it be before it starts to cross the Atlantic?

One can foresee determined rearguard actions being fought by politicians and officials in the UK. (To take a trivial example, MPs' expenses, anyone?) But "these pounds belong to the people of our country".

One of the jobs of the Taxpayers' Alliance is to unfurl this banner and bring the issue into our political discourse.

Will an MP make a start by introducing accountable transparency for his own office?

And what of the EU? Who will take up the long fight to make accountable transparency mandatory for all EU expenditure?

"These euros belong to the peoples of the EU."

Problems in ratifying the EU constitution treaty

Euobserver reports a Brussels think tank's conclusion that ratification of the text may prove less easy than has been assumed so far.

The report discusses the process of parliamentary approval in France and other countries and then looks at possible referenda.

So far, only Ireland has officially announced that it will call a referendum, but other member states are facing pressure to do the same, including the UK, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Denmark, Spain and Luxembourg.

"Much could depend on which country is first to ratify the new treaty - and whether any other member state apart from Ireland decides to call a referendum at an early stage in the process," according to the report.

"If that happens it will be increasingly difficult for those governments which find themselves in the 'grey area' to avoid having one."

The Portuguese government will surely be particularly resistant to calls for a referendum as it currently holds the EU presidency. Spain approved the Constitution last time around, so their government can argue that the deed is already done.

On the other hand, the Netherlands voted No. Would their politicians really dare overrule their electorate by approving in Parliament a treaty almost the same as one the voters had rejected?

In the UK, even if the fight for a referendum can be won, it seems to me that a No vote would be far from a foregone conclusion. Though The Sun probably would vote No.

Bureaucrats' centralised control of farming doesn't work

As we know, the EU is now instructing that set-aside can be set aside because of a shortfall in cereal crops.

Now the NFU is suggesting that much of the flooding could have been prevented if farmers had been allowed to build dykes and ditches as they saw fit, rather than having to devote land to conservation instead.

Just maybe the people on the ground, whose livelihoods are at stake, know better than Margaret Beckett, David Miliband, Hilary Benn, or the bureaucrat in Whitehall or Brussels. They will certainly be quicker to adapt to changing circumstances.

Let's see if this heretical line of thought features among the "lessons to be learned". Even if it does, it won't be a lesson that can be applied unless the anonymous bureaucrats in Brussels allow it.

What's going on at The Sun?

The Sun calls for a referendum on the EU constitutional treaty.

FRANK Field often talks sense.

His radical ideas on pensions ten years ago were spot on. He got the boot as a minister because the Government couldn’t handle them.

But he’s hit the nail on the head again over the EU treaty.

Field rightly lambasts Gordon Brown for refusing to give us the referendum Labour promised.

And he correctly points out that it’s the one area where David Cameron can gain ground.

A relentless campaign for a referendum, and a pledge that a Conservative Government would grant one, will work wonders for Tory fortunes.

And show Cameron is in touch with voters.

That's four times in five days. Rupert Murdoch must at least condone this concentration on one unsexy political issue. Not convinced? Well lookee here, as Richard North points out, there's a long opinion piece in The Times.

The paper writes that "in terms of the sovereign powers transferred to Brussels, of expanded roles for the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament, of the potentially intrusive and legally binding Charter of Fundamental Rights, and of expanded majority voting in the EU Council, the “reform treaty” is indeed the old constitution revisited".

The details of the 277-page text on which officials are working (in French) follow the rejected constitutional treaty so closely that it is, to put it mildly, odd that neither Brussels nor the Government can produce an official English translation until deep into the parliamentary recess.

The paper says the biggest difference will be that, whereas the constitution had the (limited) clarity of a text, the end result of this exercise will be an impenetrable legalistic impasto.

So as Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the initial constitution’s architect, puts it: “Public opinion will be led to adopt, without knowing it, the proposals that we dare not present to them directly.” Welcome to democracy, as defined by self-serving grandees and bureaucrats.

What's astonishing is that they're prepared to say so quite openly.

The Times goes on:

What, for example, will MPs, let alone mere mortals, learn about the real powers of the new EU foreign minister (now the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy) when they read in Article 19 that “the words ‘without prejudice to paragraph 1 and article 14 (3)’ are replaced by ‘in conformity with article [1-16, paragraph 2]’”? Will they read on to the telling third sub-paragraph, which states that when the Union has defined its position on an issue before the UN Security Council, Britain and France “shall” request that the High Representative speak for them? What does the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, really think about that? Or is he so weak that his opinion will not be sought by the Prime Minister?

The important constitutional innovations, it says, are intact -

• The President of the Commission will be elected by the European Parliament, not appointed by EU governments.
  
  
• EU foreign affairs councils will be chaired by a “minister” who is a vice-president of the Commission and runs his own diplomatic service.
  
  
• In justice and home affairs, as well as economic coordination and the environment, majority voting and co-decision with the European Parliament will become the general rule rather than the specified exception.
  
  
• The Union will acquire its own “legal personality”.

The paper points out the original claim was that the new clauses would clarify where power lay. "Insofar as this is so, it is in the EU’s favour. In the broad areas where responsibility is shared, governments will be able to act only “to the extent that the Union has not exercised, or decides to cease exercising, its own competence”. That turns subsidiarity on its head. What is not exclusively in the Union’s domain becomes so, if the Union so decides."

Why have the drafters have been instructed to produce a text in time for the European Council on October 18? "Such speed effectively cuts parliaments out of the loop. There is no pressing need for alacrity, given that the “urgent” treaty changes to make the EU work better, a new voting system will not now come into force until 2014. Democracy demands that the treaty be given detailed and thorough scrutiny."

The Prime Minister’s assertion that no new powers are being transferred to Brussels is difficult to reconcile with the mandate, or the draft text, or the firm belief in Germany, Spain and Italy that they have secured the constitution in all but name. He relies on a number of opt-ins and “emergency brakes”, and on a “declaration” that the Charter of Fundamental Rights will not “create justiciable rights applicable to the United Kingdom, except in so far as the United Kingdom has provided for such rights in its national law”. These safeguards may not hold. They are open to interpretation by the European Court of Justice. Even if they do, the Commission’s involvement in judicial and home affairs falls foul, on its own, of the “transfer of powers” test. Mr Brown will incur displeasure in Europe if he reopens the debate. But if he does not, the case for a referendum on this document will be compelling.