GISCARD'S SPEECH HIGHLIGHTS WEAKNESSES
IN POSITION OF TORY EUROSCEPTICS
pdf link: Eurofacts Vol. 13, No. 24 (p.3), published 3 October 2008
Fear of losing a place at the EU top table prevents straight thinking on Europe, argues Anthony Scholefield
Fear of losing a place at the EU top table prevents straight thinking former French President Giscard D’Estaing’s address to the Global Vision/Daily Telegraph Westminster Conference on 8th September highlights problems a Tory government will face in dealing with the EU.
Most EU-realists left the conference with some respect for Giscard’s readiness to listen to and respond to questions thoughtfully. He was courteous and frank, candidly admitting that the Lisbon Treaty was “simply a legal re-packaging of the Constitution, albeit unreadable”.
Giscard’s main and incontrovertible point was that it was the British who decided to join the EU and to sign up to the various integration treaties. No-one forced the British government or Parliament to join, or applied great pressure to make it do so. “Let us note first of all that the UK negotiated and ratified all the EU treaties adopted during the period”, he said.
Giscard’s thesis was that the other EU countries want more economic and political integration while Britain believes that there is enough already or even too much. Accordingly, he believes that Britain should be allowed a ‘special status’ within the European Union. But a close reading of his text reveals that this status would apply only in relation to future integration. He was not proposing a ‘special status’ for Britain in respect of treaties already signed or in respect of the Lisbon Treaty but for measures he anticipates will take place in future years.
“For a majority of member-states, representing a clear majority of the population, the position is that integration must be continued as set out in the Union Treaty and that the EU is not yet ‘complete’. At a time when new powers are emerging … the unification of Europe must be made more effective and understandable …
The building and development of the Common Foreign and Security Policy must be reinforced, gradually being detached from exclusively national impetuses. And the Parliament must conquer the democratic legitimacy which the election of its members confers on it.”
However, as the EU contemplates further integration measures Giscard recognises this will not be popular with Britain and some others and that new negotiations would be exhausting for participants.
Valuable Club
He therefore favours a ‘special status’ for Britain which would enable it to state at the beginning of a round of negotiations whether or not it would participate. While this idea might meet some concerns, it elicited somewhat contradictory reactions from a number of panel members. Lord Howell, Deputy Leader of the Conservatives in the Lords, was robustly critical of the “bloc-ism” of Giscard’s vision of Europe but nevertheless described the EU as “an immensely valuable club” - if too ambitious. Iain Martin, Head of Comment at the Daily Telegraph said he did not wish to leave the EU, but wanted “a different relationship”. Lord Trimble did say that he feared inertia (in the EU or the UK?) would keep the project going and, in any case, even the present status lacked political legitimacy.
A reasoned response to Giscard might be to graciously accept the ‘special status’ in relation to future negotiations while making it clear that the Lisbon treaty must be aborted, the financial costs of EU membership to Britain reduced and the acquis communitare hacked back. The acceptance of these conditions would be made a pre-condition of future negotiations.
UKIP and the Better Off Out MPs have a clear-cut policy position on Europe but the Tory position reflects a jumble of emotions in which distaste for EU integration competes with a fear of being “left out” and “left behind”. Irrespective of whether this accurately reflects public attitudes this is not conducive to coherent policy making or even to straight thinking. Another worrying reaction of some of the Tory panellists was that when pressed by Stuart Wheeler, they displayed an indifference to the economics of British membership.
The EU was designed from the start to form an economic union of German industry and French agriculture. As a result of its world-wide trading Britain was always going to have difficulty in adjusting to this situation. A country which belongs to a customs union but which consistently runs a deficit with the other members inevitably ends up subsidising them.
Additionally there are the increased gross and net budgetary costs. Stuart Wheeler suggested that these amounted to some 15 per cent of the post-tax income of a British family which is in line with estimates made by Ian Milne in 2004. (Publication, “A Cost Too Far?”).
These are colossal deductions from the average UK’s family income and draw many into poverty.
A bit of joined-up thinking by the social justice wing of the Conservatives might pay dividends here, but there is little ground for optimism when even the self-styled eurosceptics within the party talk about the EU as “an immensely valuable club” appear to want to cling to the top table and to be in on all the decisions and agreements. It came as no surprise therefore when Iain Martin reported Cameron recently as saying about the EU, “It sounds to me like one for the second term”.
PRIVATISING PROFITS, SOCIALISING COSTS - LETTER
pdf link: Eurofacts, Vol.13 No.24 (p.6), published 3 October 2008
Dear Sir,
Your article on Spain’s economic problems (19th September) does not surprise. Britain, the USA and Spain have all been testing to destruction the idea that mass immigration is a net benefit. Their policies on immigration have reinforced the slack money policies pursued since 2001. This has led in all three instances to an unsustainable boom and ensured that it will be these three countries that will suffer most in the present crisis. The USA and Spain have gone much further in pursuing a pro-immigration policy than the UK. Spain has consistently regularized the position of illegal immigrants, allowing them, therefore, to move throughout the EU. The latest amnesty in 2005 regularized nearly one million illegal immigrants but, three years later, there are a further one million illegal immigrants. Sarkozy, quite correctly, rebuked the Spanish in 2005 for their amnesty saying, “We see the damage created by the phenomenon of massive regularization. Every country which has conducted an operation of massive regularization finds itself the next month [in a position that] does not allow it to master the situation any more.”
According to the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE), Spain has 5.2 million immigrants and the largest number of immigrants in the world, after the USA, and, as you point out, unemployment is already at 11 per cent.
There is an open dispute in the Spanish government, with some ministers wanting to shut the door, but the ultra-feminist deputy Prime Minister, Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, has stated, “There will be recruitment of foreign workers in their country of origin because we need them”.
It has always been obvious that mass immigration of even those with average skills but without capital must impoverish the receiving country, while benefiting the corporate and private employers of cheap labour. In effect the latter privatize the benefits of immigration and socialise the costs.
This applies to an even greater extent to those with below average skills who also represent a fiscal drain. The reason for this is that the receiving country has to provide an appropriate share of capital and wealth for new residents. This capital is, in the case of the UK, some 65 times the annual contribution of the average worker in capital additions – an enormous sum. In rough figures, each immigrant to the UK with one dependant, requires £150,000 of instant funding but his contribution to the GDP of residents, according to Mr. Byrne, Minister of Immigration, is about £6 per year.
At least the UK government and the Opposition have refused to go down the route of regularizing illegals, despite the urgings of Boris Johnson and numerous ecclesiastics. There have been some under- the-counter regularizations due to breakdown in the immigration control process. In the USA, however, both Obama and McCain strongly advocate the regularization of illegal immigrants and both propose to introduce proposals in Congress to achieve this.
While massive immigration is far from being the only reason why the USA, the UK and Spain find themselves the countries most buffeted by the present crisis their economies have all been characterised by slack money, a construction bubble and massive immigration. By privatizing the benefits of cheap labour and cheap money this has blinded the political class to the costs of the binge. These have been met by the public taxpayer and by low-income workers who have to compete for reduced pay with the immigrants no longer needed by a bubble economy.
ANTHONY SCHOLEFIELD
London
Fear of losing a place at the EU top table prevents straight thinking former French President Giscard D’Estaing’s address to the Global Vision/Daily Telegraph Westminster Conference on 8th September highlights problems a Tory government will face in dealing with the EU.
Most EU-realists left the conference with some respect for Giscard’s readiness to listen to and respond to questions thoughtfully. He was courteous and frank, candidly admitting that the Lisbon Treaty was “simply a legal re-packaging of the Constitution, albeit unreadable”.
Giscard’s main and incontrovertible point was that it was the British who decided to join the EU and to sign up to the various integration treaties. No-one forced the British government or Parliament to join, or applied great pressure to make it do so. “Let us note first of all that the UK negotiated and ratified all the EU treaties adopted during the period”, he said.
Giscard’s thesis was that the other EU countries want more economic and political integration while Britain believes that there is enough already or even too much. Accordingly, he believes that Britain should be allowed a ‘special status’ within the European Union. But a close reading of his text reveals that this status would apply only in relation to future integration. He was not proposing a ‘special status’ for Britain in respect of treaties already signed or in respect of the Lisbon Treaty but for measures he anticipates will take place in future years.
“For a majority of member-states, representing a clear majority of the population, the position is that integration must be continued as set out in the Union Treaty and that the EU is not yet ‘complete’. At a time when new powers are emerging … the unification of Europe must be made more effective and understandable …
The building and development of the Common Foreign and Security Policy must be reinforced, gradually being detached from exclusively national impetuses. And the Parliament must conquer the democratic legitimacy which the election of its members confers on it.”
However, as the EU contemplates further integration measures Giscard recognises this will not be popular with Britain and some others and that new negotiations would be exhausting for participants.
Valuable Club
He therefore favours a ‘special status’ for Britain which would enable it to state at the beginning of a round of negotiations whether or not it would participate. While this idea might meet some concerns, it elicited somewhat contradictory reactions from a number of panel members. Lord Howell, Deputy Leader of the Conservatives in the Lords, was robustly critical of the “bloc-ism” of Giscard’s vision of Europe but nevertheless described the EU as “an immensely valuable club” - if too ambitious. Iain Martin, Head of Comment at the Daily Telegraph said he did not wish to leave the EU, but wanted “a different relationship”. Lord Trimble did say that he feared inertia (in the EU or the UK?) would keep the project going and, in any case, even the present status lacked political legitimacy.
A reasoned response to Giscard might be to graciously accept the ‘special status’ in relation to future negotiations while making it clear that the Lisbon treaty must be aborted, the financial costs of EU membership to Britain reduced and the acquis communitare hacked back. The acceptance of these conditions would be made a pre-condition of future negotiations.
UKIP and the Better Off Out MPs have a clear-cut policy position on Europe but the Tory position reflects a jumble of emotions in which distaste for EU integration competes with a fear of being “left out” and “left behind”. Irrespective of whether this accurately reflects public attitudes this is not conducive to coherent policy making or even to straight thinking. Another worrying reaction of some of the Tory panellists was that when pressed by Stuart Wheeler, they displayed an indifference to the economics of British membership.
The EU was designed from the start to form an economic union of German industry and French agriculture. As a result of its world-wide trading Britain was always going to have difficulty in adjusting to this situation. A country which belongs to a customs union but which consistently runs a deficit with the other members inevitably ends up subsidising them.
Additionally there are the increased gross and net budgetary costs. Stuart Wheeler suggested that these amounted to some 15 per cent of the post-tax income of a British family which is in line with estimates made by Ian Milne in 2004. (Publication, “A Cost Too Far?”).
These are colossal deductions from the average UK’s family income and draw many into poverty.
A bit of joined-up thinking by the social justice wing of the Conservatives might pay dividends here, but there is little ground for optimism when even the self-styled eurosceptics within the party talk about the EU as “an immensely valuable club” appear to want to cling to the top table and to be in on all the decisions and agreements. It came as no surprise therefore when Iain Martin reported Cameron recently as saying about the EU, “It sounds to me like one for the second term”.
PRIVATISING PROFITS, SOCIALISING COSTS - LETTER
pdf link: Eurofacts, Vol.13 No.24 (p.6), published 3 October 2008
Dear Sir,
Your article on Spain’s economic problems (19th September) does not surprise. Britain, the USA and Spain have all been testing to destruction the idea that mass immigration is a net benefit. Their policies on immigration have reinforced the slack money policies pursued since 2001. This has led in all three instances to an unsustainable boom and ensured that it will be these three countries that will suffer most in the present crisis. The USA and Spain have gone much further in pursuing a pro-immigration policy than the UK. Spain has consistently regularized the position of illegal immigrants, allowing them, therefore, to move throughout the EU. The latest amnesty in 2005 regularized nearly one million illegal immigrants but, three years later, there are a further one million illegal immigrants. Sarkozy, quite correctly, rebuked the Spanish in 2005 for their amnesty saying, “We see the damage created by the phenomenon of massive regularization. Every country which has conducted an operation of massive regularization finds itself the next month [in a position that] does not allow it to master the situation any more.”
According to the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE), Spain has 5.2 million immigrants and the largest number of immigrants in the world, after the USA, and, as you point out, unemployment is already at 11 per cent.
There is an open dispute in the Spanish government, with some ministers wanting to shut the door, but the ultra-feminist deputy Prime Minister, Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, has stated, “There will be recruitment of foreign workers in their country of origin because we need them”.
It has always been obvious that mass immigration of even those with average skills but without capital must impoverish the receiving country, while benefiting the corporate and private employers of cheap labour. In effect the latter privatize the benefits of immigration and socialise the costs.
This applies to an even greater extent to those with below average skills who also represent a fiscal drain. The reason for this is that the receiving country has to provide an appropriate share of capital and wealth for new residents. This capital is, in the case of the UK, some 65 times the annual contribution of the average worker in capital additions – an enormous sum. In rough figures, each immigrant to the UK with one dependant, requires £150,000 of instant funding but his contribution to the GDP of residents, according to Mr. Byrne, Minister of Immigration, is about £6 per year.
At least the UK government and the Opposition have refused to go down the route of regularizing illegals, despite the urgings of Boris Johnson and numerous ecclesiastics. There have been some under- the-counter regularizations due to breakdown in the immigration control process. In the USA, however, both Obama and McCain strongly advocate the regularization of illegal immigrants and both propose to introduce proposals in Congress to achieve this.
While massive immigration is far from being the only reason why the USA, the UK and Spain find themselves the countries most buffeted by the present crisis their economies have all been characterised by slack money, a construction bubble and massive immigration. By privatizing the benefits of cheap labour and cheap money this has blinded the political class to the costs of the binge. These have been met by the public taxpayer and by low-income workers who have to compete for reduced pay with the immigrants no longer needed by a bubble economy.
ANTHONY SCHOLEFIELD
London