Are EU deaf or what?

Archived Articles | 12 Dec 2008 | EWR

Josie Appleton, Spiked.

(The author of a new EU Phrasebook, launched in Brussels today, analyses European leaders’ utter inability to understand the word ‘No’.)

Four times, European voters have said ‘No’ to European Union documents: in Ireland on 7 June 2001 (Nice Treaty); in France and Holland on 29 May and 1 June 2005 (European Constitution); and most recently in Ireland on 12 June 2008 (Lisbon Treaty). And all four times, European leaders responded by effectively saying: ‘No doesn’t really mean no.’

For most people, a vote is a question asked, and an answer received. Yet European and national politicians treated the ‘No’ votes not as answers, but as obstacles to be negotiated around. They deployed a variety of creative phrasing and reasoning to indicate why these votes did not really count, and how they could be avoided.

Read on at Spiked,
http://www.spiked-online.com/i...

Archived Articles

The reverberations of Soviet totalitarianism in Finland: Sympathies and contradictions (II) (1)
Translated from Imbi Paju’s article in “Maailma Vaade” (View of the World).

This year 70 years have passed since the signing of the ...

How to Liberate an Economy
Entrepreneurs understand the importance of freedom in the workplace

Guy Sorman, TCS Daily

Brian Carney and Isaac Getz's Freedom, Inc. is a ...

Lessons from Estonia: Protecting the West from a computer attack
Väino Reinart, National Post, October 22, 2009

The cyber attacks carried out against Estonia in the spring of 2007 served as a wake-up call about ...

Opening statement by Mark Carney Governor of the Bank of Canada Press conference following the release of the Monetary Policy Report 22 October 2009
Good morning. Paul and I are pleased to be here with you today to discuss the October Monetary Policy Report, which we published this morning.

...

Welcome home
It is high time to abolish the concept of ethnic minorities
Europe.view column, Oct 22nd 2009, from Economist.com

Should the Polish ethnic ...

Moscow Patriarchate’s efforts to subordinate ‘alternative Orthodox’ undercut Russia’s future, Regelson says (2)
VIENNA, October 22 – The Moscow Patriarchate’s drive to subordinate all independent Orthodox bishops and believers to its own power vertical, an ...