Well to start off the problems the EU is having now are complex. There is a European summit coming up and Chirac is looking for an excuse to divert the agenda away from his humiliating constitution referendum defeat. SO he has brought up the issue of the UK's 3billion pound rebate, every country pays money into the EU account and then recieves it back for whatever purposes. the UK pays way more than we recieved where nations like spain recieve much more. The rebate was won by Margaret Thatcher in the 80s because we felt it was unfair we pay so much while the French and Germans do not sign up to the common agricultural policy and therefore are allowed more EU money to subsidise their farmers.
Chirac, to divert attention away from his failures and lay the blame on the UK has demanded we give back our rebate as a sign of 'solidarity'. Blair said that we would not give it up and would perhaps negotiate if France signed up to the Common agricultural polciy....to which they said.....'NON!'. So the rebate wss fair back then and is fair now and is part of Chirac's scheme to lay the blame of Europes failures on us.
He is as corrupt as Berlusconi and wants to die in office as he has massive fraud claims against him which cannot be brought to trial while he is in office.
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jsut a question..esp for riskbreaker if he sees this...is europe better of being a confederation or a union? which will work out better?
The EU, if Europhiles get their way will become a federal system, this is a scary thought, being in the UK i see we get little benefit from being in the EU, we are a good trading partner and as such are unlikely to face large tariffs anyway, we pay more money into the EU than we get out of it, and EU law has seen the collapse of our coal industry and recently a large car manufactorer went bust because EU law says we cannot subsidise them in the interests of fairness.....while the hypocritical French and Germans subsidise their industries (such as the german coal industry) despite EU law.
Previous systems allowed us to travel freely in the EU, so the only benefits we recieve on face value is that we can now visit East Europe without needing Visas....wow.
Sudha, Europe is better as a confederacy rather than a Union, how can luxembourg yield as many votes as the UK? stupid. The EU must keep individual national soveriengty at it's heart and not be a forum of critisism. the UK was critisied heavily by the European human rights minister for 'having a racist immigration policy'....he said that, to us! one of the most multi-cultural societies in the world and who give generous welfare to anybody who lives on our Islands. he also slammed our ASBOs (anti social behaviour orders) which allow judges to give unusual and flexible punishments for people who cause a public nuisance. So were being told how we deal with immigration, how we deal with crime, and hell how we deal with measurements (metric vs imperial). These are British issues, not European ones.
I like the idea of the EU to facilitate strength, be a force for integration and definitly look to expand, but states need to remain fully autonomous and have the final say over any EU act. And someone needs to tell the French and Germans we will not toleratre their crap, their lies and their corruption and plain to see hypocracy.
I'm also glad the EU constitution is dead in the water. And as for the future, I hope membership talks for Turkey begin and I hope we see a step away from federalism and a move towards individualism, integration is key, but so is autonomy. Nobody here wants to be told what to do by a slimy Frenchman sitting in his big office in Brussels.
'it's better to have your ministers inside the tent pissing out than outside, pissing in'
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