July 6, 2009 - By BNP News

The European Union has been hit by a renewed crisis of confidence as the full implications of last week’s German Constitutional Court ruling on the Lisbon Treaty have hit home.

In their initial rush to portray the court ruling as favourable towards the Lisbon Treaty, most of the media pretended that all the German government had to do was make a few amendments and all would be well.

Now, however, the full text of the ruling has been analysed and its implications have dawned upon the pro-EU parties – and they are not pleased.

The court ruling – made after a case against the Lisbon Treaty brought by the leader of the CSU party in Bavaria, Peter Gauweiler – contains the following far-reaching statements:

- The initial ratification by the German parliament of the Lisbon Treaty was “negligent”;

- By passing the so-called ‘accompanying law’ to the Lisbon Treaty, which determines the rights of German parliament to participate in European legislation, the German parliament representatives had “relinquished significant monitoring rights to Brussels”;

- This “unconstitutionally subjects the people that they represent to the whims of a bureaucracy that lacks sufficient democratic legitimacy,” the court ruled.

- Germany’s future lies not in “a united Europe but in Germany”;

- The EU is described as an “association of sovereign national states” and not as an integrated state, which is the purpose of the Lisbon Treaty.

- The EU is not a “representative body of a sovereign European people.”

The court ruled that EU members of parliament “are not elected according to the principle of electoral equality” but according to “national contingents” which are in contradiction to EU law itself which prohibits discrimination based on nationality.

In this way, the court said, it is inherently unfair that an MEP from Malta represents only 67,000 Maltese residents, while an MEP from Sweden represents 455,000 Swedes and a single German MEP represents 857,000 people.

This state of affairs, the court said, “can only be explained by the fact that the EU is not a state but an association of sovereign states.” Constitutionally, this means that there is no ’sovereign citizens’ union’ in the European Parliament, and therefore, the court ruled, the German parliament must receive substantially more rights in lawmaking than the EU parliament.

In particular, the court has ruled, Germany must remain sovereign in the areas of “political decisions that particularly depend on a previous understanding of culture, history and language . . . (comprising) the citizenship, the civil and military monopoly on the use of force, revenue and expenditure, including external financing and all elements of encroachment that are decisive for the realisation of fundamental rights, above all as regards intensive encroachments on fundamental rights such as the deprivation of liberty in the administration of criminal law or the placement in an institution.”

In addition, the court ruled, the German state has the right to decide for itself on “cultural issues such as speaking a language, shaping the circumstances concerning family and education, ensuring freedom of opinion, of the press and of association, and accommodating professions of faith or ideology.”

All of these go directly against many of the provisions and intent of the Lisbon Treaty.

Finally, the court has requested the German parliament to pass a new law which would allow every citizen the opportunity to file a suit with the German Constitutional Court against any or all EU regulations.

The court’s ruling is so far-reaching that it may jeopardise the German government’s schedule for the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and even European integration.

Mr Gauweiler is not letting his success rest. His party – a partner in the government coalition – has now submitted a new set of demands over and above the constitutional changes demanded by the court.

Unless these conditions are met, the CSU will not lend its support to the ratification process, and the whole treaty may stall in what was the EU’s biggest supporting nation.

Amongst other demands, the CSU will only ratify the Lisbon Treaty if it is constitutionally enshrined that the German parliament has “maximum” influence over future EU policy and that a referendum be held on the issue.

Any delays in ratifying the treaty will have a negative knock-on effect for other European countries who have yet to ratify the treaty, including Ireland, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Recommended reading:  Should We Stay or Should We Go? Two Views on Britain and the EU  by Lord Pearson and Stephen Pollard.

In this book, two authors, both critical of the current EU, put the case for and against withdrawal.

For Stephen Pollard, the constitution represents the last gasp of the ‘Old Europe’, written by ‘the archetypal Old Europe politician, Giscard D’Estaing’, centralised, federalist and inefficient. A ‘No’ vote in the promised referendum would send a shock to the heart of the EU, forcing it to become ‘more market-flexible, politically loose and sovereignty-respecting.’

For Lord Pearson, the whole project has already gone too far for that. With or without the constitution, so much of our sovereignty has been ceded that the only way forward, for both political and economic reasons, is to get out. ‘Leaving the EU would be a liberating, refreshing, positive, modern thing to do.’ Both of the essays printed here are in the best tradition of political polemic. The authors argue their opposing positions with passion and conviction, enabling readers to compare and evaluate the two sides of this most topical debate. Softcover, 33 pp. £4.90  Click here to order.