I've read with sorrow reports of rioting in the Ukraine.
That sorrow has been tinged with respect for the fact that people will still come out onto the streets at risk to themselves to demand freedom.
Whilst I believe the EU a flawed institution in need of reform I am pleased it can offer people hope - hope enough to take risk for.
And in that case I saddened to even greater degree by those in the UK who treat it with contempt.
Whatever else the EU has done - and I stress, it is not all good - it has upheld a great many freedoms, many of which are important. And the result is that it has also upheld peace. We turn our back on that at our peril.
What we have to do is make it work.
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Not sure it is so straightforward Richard -the EU, in this respect will simply rip of the Ukrainians with their oligarchic corporations as happened in Poland and the US might well be posturing behind all of this for a further slice of control. On theother hand, Russian Oligarchs are no better! Devil/deep Blue
RT has it’s own agenda, of course, but it’s worth listening to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8cQT1Tz2D4
Too late, I think. I used to support the EU for the very reasons you give. The social and political ideals were extremely attractive. The aim of free movement and closer integration and peaceful coexistence allied with the prospect of finding out more about other countries and cultures were all very exciting.
But the institutions have been captured by global plutocrats. The EU no longer makes war less likely: it makes it more likely, IMO
I no longer support the EU: not as it actually is.
How I agree with you, Richard, about the EU, and its role for the good, even if that has mainly been in the area of social legislation. Anyone who derides and decries the EU needs to know that almost all our current anti-discrimination law is EU prompted, acting to strengthen and extend Harold Wilson’s Race Relations Act of 1974, and his Sex Discrimination Act of 1975.
Even Barbara Castle’s Equal Pay Act of 1970 has been strengthened by EU law, joining other EU motivated law and provisions, such as the Working Time Directive, Parental Leave provisions.
The only area where the UK was ahead of the EU (so no wonder Tories have tried to weaken it ever since, and would gladly repeal it, in toto) was via the ground-breaking Health and Safety at Work Act of 1974, since re-affirmed by EU law)
This was the first major part of a raft of social reform legislation planned by Wilson’s Government (of which the Race and Sex Discrimination Laws were the first follow-up) that was unfortunately ambushed by “stagflation” and industrial unrest – but an amazingly ambitious objective for a Minority Government, showing that Harold Wilson had far more vision and courage than the Iron Lady – as regards vision, Harold Wilson gave us the Open University and the beginnings of a real social revolution in the legislation outlined above, most on a knife-edge majority or less; Thatcher, by contrast, on the basis of secure, and even huge, majorities, left us an industrial and social wasteland, and an economy run by, and for, “greed is good” Gordon Gekkos.
And that, alas, highlights the REAL flaw in the EU’s DNA – one that bids fair to nullify, and even destroy, its powerful role as a guarantor for, even an enabler and creator of, peace. For despite being set up in an era of Social Democracy (as evidenced by its social pillar, and the right for free movement of people), its founding rationale and modus operandi (as evidenced in its obsession with competition and the free movement of capital), allowed it to be captured by neo-liberal “head-bangers”, bent of engendering a society in direct opposition to the Social Democratic milieu of its foundation, whose Founding Fathers never imagined there woul be a world in which capital could be moved around the world in nano-seconds, so making a mockery of their vision of the free movement of capital, which meant no more than that Italy could invest in the Netherlands, no questions asked, and NOT casino gambling at electronic roulette.
If ONLY there had been a European FDR! If only we in the UK had been in at the beginning. If only ….. But the fact remaons – the EU is a vital, and worthwhile institution, which could be vastly improved, if it could be captured, and its economic rationale be root and branch reformed in a social-democratic direction. Jaques Delors tried – but Thatcher and Kohl scuppered him.
BUT it’s policy can be changed if enough of Europe’s governments decide to do so.
The MEPs are directly elected by the people of Europe. It is just about possible that they could reverse the trend of a world ‘made safe for corporations’.
Alas, Ian.n probably not.
Another flaw in the design was to give us an EU semi-Parliament, without full legislative powers, which really reside with the Council of Ministers – a product of the fear of a U.S.E. (United States of Europe), the fiction being that democratic accountability is preserved via the domestic electoral process of each constituent state.
The European Parliament is effectively more like our House of Lords -scrutinizing and ratifying legislature rather than an implementing one.
That must change, but to do so requires REAL union, more like REAL federation, which I would happily support PROVIDING the Parliament became a REAL Parliament, with REAL powers to initiate legislation based on a REAL democratic mandate.
“Even Barbara Castle’s Equal Pay Act of 1970 has been strengthened by EU law, joining other EU motivated law and provisions, such as the Working Time Directive, Parental Leave provisions.”
Is that why we have one of the biggest wage gaps in Western Europe then?
The Ukraine will only become cheap labour for the west. The coming EU trade agreement is only going to make this worse.
The EU is starting to abandon any pretence of a “social Europe”.
The euro project is just not worth defending. It certainly has not succeeded in promoting peace,prosperity or democracy.
If we have not gone to war in the last 70 years, that is because it has been impossible to convince the populations to do so. (Inhabitants of what was Yugoslavia might well disagree). Social democracy, by and large, has been such a success that its benefits and strengths are being used to dismantle it.
The eurozone is moribund economically,has been for 5 years and without any meaningful response from this body. The callous disregard for the victims of this situation suggest that, while they have no desire to share this hardship, they seem to approve of it.
For the undemocratically installed vom rumpoy to fly,verbally, to the aide of the ukranian protestors while ignoring the protests and consequent head cracking inside europe is a salient example of the supple principles the EU acts on.
The transatlantic trade partnership is the endgame, a rentier superstate, with the european bureacracy acting as beaters and gamekeepers for their masters.
Mariano Rajoy’s threats over Scottish independence only made it all the more attractive.