Sunday, November 16, 2008

Thoughts of an EU reformist


A detailed and disturbing account at Orwell's Picnic of Kathy Sinnot's recent lecture given at the MaterCare conference. She describes the essentially anti-democratic nature of the European Union and the promotion of the culture of death with devastating clarity.

Describing the way the European Court of Justice works, she stated:

Judges slip very easily into law-making and judicial activism and this is particularly true in the European Court of Justice for a particularly interesting reason. Most of our High Courts or Supreme Courts or whatever you call them in your own countries – the job of most of those courts is to uphold your constitutions. But the actual stated job of the European Court of Justice – the EU’s court is to promote the European project. So, it takes whatever document or whatever treatise, and it decides what interpretation at this point in time will best promote the European project; not what do those words truly mean and what do case law tell us about them. And this is a particularly worrying thing in terms, again, of the Lisbon Treaty because for the first time, we had a Charter of Rights included – called the Fundamental Charter of Rights and those rights had very interesting things like ‘Everyone has a right to life.’ But, of course, the only country fighting that statement was Ireland because we wanted to retain our Right to Life – and we knew that a statement like “Everyone has a right to life” – actually did not apply to such things as abortion and euthanasia. It actually meant the opposite and it would mean the opposite because it was the European Court in Luxemburg that would decide what it meant and that was why countries that are very invested in things like abortion – even countries that are invested in policies of euthanasia – had no problem ratifying the Lisbon Treaty and even welcoming this fundamental charter because, in fact, it would reinforce their policy not counter-act it.


Reading this post made me all too aware of the vital work MEPs like Kathy are doing in the European Parliament, against appalling odds. It should be noted that Kathy describes herself as an EU-reformist, not a Eurosceptic. This is, I think, an important clarification to make, as it is quite common for people to assume that anyone who dares question the functioning of the EU is against it per se. Just as a true patriot should regard it as a duty to stand up to unjust laws in his own country, a good European should regard it as a duty to stand up to the injustices currently being carried out in the name of the European project.