That 'NO' Vote

Just Looked on the BBC website & it's look like the Dutch have rejected it by @ much as 63%.

When wil Fony Blair stop ramming Europe down our throats.

IMHO - I think that the only people that would benifit from a united Europe are the Leaders of each country & the countries who contibute less than the UK. Pretty much all of them, save one or two.

A round of applause goes to both the Dutch & the french I feel.

 

Blair is ramming it cos he's pure ego and wants to be president of europe.
I get fed up with him going on foreign trips trying to dictate how the world should behave when this country is going to pot due to him not doing what needs to be done, sadly that is politics, leave everything unless its totally a crisis.

time for us to say shove it, its not for our elected leaders to decide for us what we the people want. hell, we tell them what to do, not the other way around.

 

Personally I like the French model more - I was never that convinced by the Thatcherite "trickle down" theory, the idea being that the more wealthy the fat cats were, then wealth would trickle down to the lower income stratas.
All it sounded like to me was a justification for lining one's own nest..

But it still seems that some countries want to continue with ratification despite the setbacks - bizarrely the vote in Holland is "advisory" rather than binding!

 

I like the idea of a Europe of regions, rather than nation states. I live in Basel, famous for its chemical and pharma companies. No matter what national borders say (and they start in the suburbs of Basel), Basel is the heart of the whole region, including southern Alsace in France and southern Baden-Württemburg in Germany, and everything revolves around it.

I really don't like the modern idea of a nation-state, which, it has to be remembered, is really quite a recent one (the modern form had its genesis in the Thirty Years' War (1616-48)). You get a funny-coloured bit of cloth to salute and some atrocious song to sing, allegedly espousing the ideals of your bit of cloth. You also get not only to die for them, but also to go and kill other folk who are just the same as you, being distinguished only by different bits of cloth and atrocious songs. Never understood it, doubt if I ever will.

 

Thanks. Final results were 61.6% vs 38.4%.
Dutch motives (as a percentage) to reject sonstition were:
- Holland paid to much contributions to the EU (62)
- loss of self-determination (56)
- not having any significant influenc in Europe (55)
- loss of indentity (53
- to much dependent on Europe (46)
- lacking information as to consequences of the constitution (44)

Also important were the EUR rate we got for our Dutch Guilders (2.20 where it should have been 2 according most economists), different remarks from different politicians (from different parties) aiming on possible wars, Auschwitz, advise to stay home in case one would vote against, or proposol to organize a second referendum in case the outcome would be no.

 

Switzerland is no part of the EU, any idea why that is?

In Yougaslavia raised a war because different people wanted to have their own nation-state.

 

I'm with Tones - we need an equivalent of the Hanseatic League!
Without the silly hats of course..

 

ErikfH
I seem to remember that the Swiss have a dislike of joining in with their neighbours generally

Bob

 

Is that something to do with their neighbours' Generals?

 

700-odd years of minding their own business. Anyway, the point of view is mine, not Switzerland's (I'm not Swiss).

More that they couldn't stand the other ethnic group

 

See response above. Neighbours generally haven't been nice and the Swiss had to fight hard for the independence to totally ignore them.

 

It seems to me that the big problem with Europe us that nobody knows what they want Europe to be. On the one hand, nobody appears to want a loose association of sovereign states (like the original Common Market). On the other hand, Constitution or not, nobody appears to want a federal European State along the lines of the USA, with a strong Federal government. As soon as the EU starts to encroach on national sovereignty, cries of "Enough!/Assez!/Genüg!/etc., etc." are heard. Ultimately the pollies, no matter how pro-European (whatever that means), are voted into office by voters on a national basis with national concerns, and they can't ignore that (well, not all the time). As a result, we have this eternal fudge, major-league (and extremely well paid!) bureaucracy and complete confusion. Until they decide exactly what sort of Europe they want, and put that in clear terms to the national voters, they go nowhere. Can you imagine the board of a major company putting something like the EU Constitution to the shareholders at the AGM, unless the getaway car was round the back with the motor running?

Perhaps Switzerland is a good model. The country actually didn't become a Federal state until the late 1800s. Before that, it was a loose confederation of independent cantons. When a new canton joined, it signed an agreement with all the rest and then continued doing its own thing. The Sonderbund War in the 1840s (Switzerland's last war), when the Catholic cantons tried to secede and form a separate confederation, was a wake-up call to the fact that this old arrangement, which had endured nearly 600 years, was no longer appropriate. So the Swiss Confederation (still its official name) acquired a Federal constitution, with Bern as "Federal city" (some Swiss don't like the word "capital").

The individual cantons still retain a considerable degree of autonomy, more so than US states. For example, tax collection is done on a cantonal basis, and the canton then decides how much the Federal government deserves to get. The cantons and the Gemeinden (local councils) split the lion's share - 75%-80% - between them. My tax goes to the canton of Basel-Land, not Bern.

Similarly citizenship. My elder daughter is now a Swiss citizen. Who decides? Not Bern, not even the canton, it's the Gemeinde - they vote to see whether the applicant is worthy of becoming a citizen of the Gemeinde. If the vote is yes, the cantonal and federal authority rubber-stamp it. If the Gemeinde says no, only in exceptional circumstances can the other two step in. In the end, a Swiss is, first and foremost, a citizen of his or her Gemeinde, secondly a citizen of the canton and only thirdly a citizen of the political entity called the Swiss Confederation.

Switzerland is governed by a Bundesrat (Federal Council) of seven members ("the seven dwarves"). Bundesrat membership is allocated not only to the political parties in relation to their share of the vote, but also such that all the linguistic regions are fairly represented. This sort of consensus politics can mean that things can move pretty slowly, but it also makes sure that everyone gets a fair crack of the whip. And all issues of importance are put to a referendum.

A perfect system it is not, but it is an example of a system that works for a multilingual, multicultural entity. Perhaps it or a version of it, could work for Europe.