No nation, no electorate, no democracy can be bound by treaties signed by treasonous leaders. John Major and Theresa May both signed treaties with the European Union which overturned critical pillars of the British Constitution and put the British people and economy in peril. Even after they were thrown out by the true British sovereigns (the voters) they continue today to defend those treaties and their treasonous contents, putting Brexit itself at risk. Treason is not a political swear word it is a specifically defined term in statutes, common law and convention going back 800 years. What the EU is demanding after the UK leaves (in the Withdrawal Agreement) is even more constitutionally aggressive than the rights we surrendered while a member state.
Even worse than contraventions of UK law are terms and behaviour which contradict international treaty law – in particular the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
THE VIENNA CONVENTION
Article 26 “Pacta sunt servanda”
Every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith.
From the outset the negotiations of withdrawal and a free trade agreement were arbitrarily separated by the EU negotiators -. “No discussion of free trade until you sign up to paying a large exit fee and allow continued jurisdiction of the European Court” – that was the EU’s stance. As several judges pointed out there was no precedence for such arbitrary behaviour – but the spineless Remainer Prime Minister Theresa May consented.
The British constitution had been shot through by all European Treaties since 1972 – the 1992 Maastricht Treaty being the worst of many appalling constitutional surrenders. (see the book Treason at Maastricht https://www.amazon.co.uk/Treason-at-Maastricht-Rodney-Atkinson-ebook/dp/B0067NP9D2/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&qid=1601885350&refinements=p_27%3ARodney+Atkinson&s=books&sr=1-2). But to continue such surrenders even after the UK had ostensibly left the EU to trade and make its own laws as a sovereign nation makes “treason” too mild an expression. For instance under the Withdrawal Agreement the UK will be paying into EU coffers up to 2064!
The EU has continued its deceitful and manipulative behaviour towards the UK by continuing to insist in the present trade negotiations on ‘sequencing’ – that it gets its way on fishing and ‘level playing fields’ – IN OTHER WORDS TAKING OUR TERRITORY AND IMPOSING THEIR LAWS – before discussing anything of trading interest to the UK.
If that is not bad faith then words have no meaning!
Article 46
Provisions of internal law regarding competence to conclude treaties
1.A State may not invoke the fact that its consent to be bound by a treaty has been expressed in violation of a provision of its internal law regarding competence to conclude treaties as invalidating its consent unless that violation was manifest and concerned a rule of its internal law of fundamental importance.
If the violation of a country’s internal borders and free trade (even in food) between different parts of its territory is not such a violation then words have no meaning! But that is precisely the case with the EU’s proposals on Northern Ireland, made far worse by an open threat to block trade between Northern Ireland and the UK. This is a blatant attack on the Belfast Agreement which states inter alia:
“If the application of this Protocol leads to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist (NB which they would do if no FTA with the EU) or to the distortion of trade the Union or the UK may take unilateral safeguard measures”
We all recall the many occasions when the German Constitutional Court flagrantly contradicted EU law on the grounds that it was not consistent with German constitutional law. And that the German Parliament should have the final say.
Theresa May’s disgraceful pathetic surrender in the Withdrawal Agreement (only partly corrected by Boris Johnson’s negotiations) allowed wide ranging long term jurisdiction over the UK by the European Court after we had left the EU. Imagine what in the same situation the German BundesVerfassungsGericht (constitutional court) would have said to that!
And of course it is a basic principle of international treaty law that no country can be forced to surrender any part of its sovereign territory (as the Withdrawal Agreement meant for Northern Ireland)
The Northern Ireland MLA, Steve Aiken MLA rightly attacked the hypocritical President of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen, saying:
“The irony of the President of the EU talking in her speech last week about EU member states that ‘can always count on Europe’s full solidarity on protecting their legitimate sovereignty rights’ at the same time as ignoring the legitimate rights of the people of Northern Ireland to have unfettered access to the rest of our own country is extraordinary.
As with the, at best, ambiguous “neutrality” of the Irish Republic during the Second World War (see And into the Fire page 98 to 114 – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Into-Fire-Fascist-Elements-Development-ebook/dp/B00E68O9SG/ref=sr_1_14?dchild=1&qid=1601885350&refinements=p_27%3ARodney+Atkinson&s=books&sr=1-14) there are elements in the Irish political class (and the Irish Americans in the US Democratic Party who were so devoted to European Fascism in the 1930s) who have continued to side with German expansionism today. In turn German Europe turns a blind eye to breaches of the Belfast Agreement by the EU and the Republic but studiously ignore their obligations in that Agreement towards Northern Ireland. But as Steve Aitken asserts:
“President von der Leyen would be well advised to read the Belfast Agreement especially this part: ‘…the present wish of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland, freely exercised and legitimate, is to maintain the Union and, accordingly, that Northern Ireland’s status as part of the United Kingdom reflects and relies upon that wish; and that it would be wrong to make any change in the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of a majority of its people…’”
Let us return to the Vienna Convention.
Article 48 Error
1.A State may invoke an error in a treaty as invalidating its consent to be bound by the treaty if the error relates to a fact or situation which was assumed by that State to exist at the time when the treaty was concluded and formed an essential basis of its consent to be bound by the treaty.
Prior to the Agreement the EU (Barnier) had specifically listed as one of the trade options a Canada style free trade agreement. But when post Agreement trade negotiations began the EU said that because Canada did far less trade with the EU than the UK then such an option was no longer possible. In other words a country which does a lot of trade with the EU should get WORSE terms than a country which does little! More proof if it were needed that the EU is engaged in political imperialism not free trade.
EU BREAKING THE LAW
As Bill Cash pointed out in an article in the Telegraph:
In 2010 the EU broke the Lisbon Treaty, with Lagarde admitting “We violated all the rules” over the Greek and Irish bailouts. The EU are now unilaterally changing the bilateral Channel Tunnel Treaty”
In the 1970s Chancellor Schmidt stated: “we breached applicable international treaty law, the IMF treaty, in multiple ways. We have neither complied with all the rules, the procedural rules of the treaty, nor have we complied with the substantive provisions.”
Chancellor Merkel suspended the Dublin Regulation unilaterally in August 2015, letting in up to 600,000 Syrians. In 2020, Germany’s highest court ruled on the ECB’s public sector purchase programme, subordinating EU law to German law. The EU took no action.
By reneging on the promise in the Withdrawal Agreement of light touch trade cooperation between North and South and threatening trade between NI and the UK itself the EU has challenged the territorial integrity of the UK.
By rejecting the prospect of a Canada style trade agreement with the UK which it had previously offered the EU even attacks its own Constitution – the Treaty on European Union Title 1 Common provisions, Article 3 which says:
In its relations with the wider world, the Union shall uphold and promote its values and interests and contribute to the protection of its citizens. It shall contribute to peace, security,…… free and fair trade…….including respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter (which of course includes the self determination of nations – RA).
But this is par for the course in the EU. International Treaties mean nothing to them – unless they mean those which bind in supranational slavery the members of the European Union itself!
When it comes to international trade the worst transgressor is the EU with more indictments at the World Trade Organisation than any other entity.
STATE AID RULES
Two of the principal areas of conflict with the EU on Brexit are Fisheries (the EU claims our territorial waters after Brexit!) and State aid policies (the EU refuses to trade freely with the UK unless we sign up to their State aid rules – with the European Court deciding what is fair! So what are those rules? In fact they have been totally undermined by EU member states’ massive subsidies during the COVID crisis. But even before that those rules could be bypassed. While the UK Government has denied State subsidies to Britishvolt which plans a giant electric car battery factory, rival projects in the EU have received State aid. The battery manufacturer Northvolt in Sweden has been allowed to bypass EU State aid rules!
THE INTERNAL MARKET BILL
The bullying aggression of the EU is so blatant in the present negotiations that the UK has been obliged to introduce its Internal Market Bill to ensure that if there is no trade agreement (and the EU is, as we have seen, refusing one) one part of the UK will not be cut off from another. As the UK’s negotiator David Frost has said:
“On third country listings: the EU knows perfectly well all the details of our food standards rules because we are operating EU rules. Any changes in future would be notified to the WTO and EU in the usual way with plenty of lead time. The EU lists dozens of countries globally on precisely this basis, without any sort of commitment about the future,”
“Yet it has been made clear to us in the current talks that there is no guarantee of listing us. I am afraid it has also been said to us explicitly in these talks that if we are not listed we will not be able to move food to Northern Ireland.”
As the Prime Minster told his MPs before the Parliamentary vote:
“We are being told that the EU will not only impose tariffs on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, but that they might actually stop the transport of food products from GB to NI.
“I have to say that we never seriously believed that the EU would be willing to use a treaty, negotiated in good faith, to blockade one part of the UK, to cut it off, or that they would actually threaten to destroy the economic and territorial integrity of the UK. This was for the very good reason that any such barrier, any such tariffs or division, would be completely contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement.”
Here we have the ultimate attack on international law which states that no trade agreement can put in jeopardy a signatory’s internal law and trade between different parts of its sovereign territory.
Lower than this the European Union could scarcely go. Needless to say this behaviour has the full support of the buffoonish and dangerous former Prime Ministers John “Maastricht” Major and Theresa “Chequers Agreement” May. How these buffoons can still be acceptable in the British parliament, never mind the Tory Party is just one of the unbelievably grave errors of the Johnson administration.
