Rodney Atkinson
Dateline 12th February 2007
The French newspaper Le Monde of the 9th February 2007 reports a judgement by the Conseil d’Etat – France’s supreme court for administrative justice – which granted European law an effective “constitutional immunity”.
This of course means no more than what we British democrats (ie those who believe in the sovereignty of the voter) have known for decades – but which most of the peoples of Europe only instinctively FEEL to be wrong. The official realisation by the French “Etat” (the French concept of the State has a power and credibility in French politics which contrasts with the views of the average truculent libertarian Brit!) that European Union Directives and regulations, once transposed into French law have legal supremacy.
Even the French may now realise that (as nationists in Britain did in 1972) that the French Constitution de factono longer exists. And what de facto (in effect) no longer exists is not long for this world de jure (in law)! We are used to profound constitutional losses being confirmed by courts in relatively minor political matters and this French case involved greenhouse gas emissions in the steel industry. Since this was recognised as a matter of EU “competence” the Conseil has given over the power of decision to the European Court of Justice.
It is even more remarkable that a French Law Professor, Dominique Rousseau, interviewed in Le Monde, has so tardily woken up to the fact that “this decision seals the primacy of Community law over the collection of national law. European law, whether it be direct or derived, from now on will enjoy constitutional immunity.” Where has he been for the last 40 years?
Where have the French people been as their political class drove the “European project”? Well, where they always are in continental European politics – nowhere. The corporatist political classes rule, the only function for the people is to vote in such a way (various forms of proportional representation which prevent real change) that they can be marginalised. The State and its political class carry on regardless.
But then, unfortunately (and the Germans were hopping mad at the decision to bring democracy into the Franco German EU stitch-up) the French made a mistake and asked their people to actually take a decision – should France accept the European Constitution? They said, resoundingly, NON! Now they have their respected Constitutional Court letting the cat out of the bag – the French Constitution no longer exists and with it France! Will the nationalistic French tolerate that? I doubt it. The EU’s days are numbered. No wonder the German Bundesbank held on to its Deutschmarks!
The whole EU project was based on the Franco German embrace but it was an embrace based on mutual suspicion and contempt. They had to cling to each other in a desperate attempt to control each other. France occupied German territory under the Napoleonic conquests and the Germans occupied France in two World Wars. The Franco German border is one of the least crossed borders in Europe. Each saw in the EU an opportunity to out-do the other.
The French supported the EU so long as they ran the Brussels administration – they no longer do. The French supported the EU when there were pleased to see “two Germanies” – now there is one with 20million more Germans than French! They supported it so long as Germany was bound up through the Euro and majority voting – but Germany has gone its own way in Eastern Europe, South East Asia, parts of Africa and Latin America, exploiting the EU’s closed market to bargain for new industrial and political conquests. Germany is increasingly dominant and the new member states have little sympathy with France. The Germans are suffering from the Euro, so are the French. The Germans are fed up of being patronised by the French and the French see their dominant subsidised agriculture being eroded by the EU Commission and the World Trade organisation. 70% of both the Germans and the French reject the Euro, the great hope of integrationists.
It is wake up time in Paris – and Berlin!
