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stevo · 06-03-2005, 06:44 AM

I'm not sure about those votes themselves, but I do think the EU constitution moves away from freedom and toward a larger government role that supercedes that of individual nation's rights. Why someone in one european country would want to subjugate themself to a power outside their own country is beyond me. I can try and understand the rational behind the EU constitution, but the EU would make more sense to me if it were aimed at being an association of european countries rather than an extra layer of government above nation's freely elected leaders.

The more power the EU is given, the more freedoms of the european people will be degraded along with a worsening economy.

Here's a short blurb I found that provides just one example.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0425/097.html

Quote:

Liberty, European-Style Dan Seligman, 04.25.05

The EU has funny ideas about human rights. For example, the idea that free speech is not among those rights. Viewed from 3,000 miles away, the European Union looks like a kind of parallel United States. On both sides of the Atlantic, living standards are high, government is democratic and educated people speak English.

View it up close and you see striking differences. One of them is that America has the First Amendment and Europe doesn't. You can argue endlessly about whether the Founding Fathers intended the free speech clause--"Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech"--to protect flag-burning and nude dancing. But news stories from assorted Old World democracies make a persuasive case that they badly need a First Amendment over there. Not impeded by one, governments engage in a degree of speech suppression unimaginable in the U.S.

A lot of the suppression takes place via national "speech codes" somewhat similar to those imposed on numerous American campuses in the 1990s but repeatedly struck down by First Amendment rulings. Here, for example, is a news story (broadcast by the BBC) reporting that Croatia, currently a candidate for EU membership, is broadening its laws against "hate speech" so that it would be criminal to engage in "spreading racism and xenophobia." Here is another story reporting that a respected political scientist in Finland--he happens to be the father of the country's prime minister--was being investigated by the "central criminal investigation department" for an interview he gave to a newspaper, in which he expressed the view that Africa's economic problems reflected low intelligence, not the heritage of colonialism. (He was eventually cleared.)

Sweden has a law barring "inflammatory" remarks directed at racial or religious groups, or homosexuals. A pastor who had delivered an anti-gay sermon was sentenced to a 30-day jail term, was then acquitted on appeal and is now awaiting the outcome of a further appeal to the country's Supreme Court. Sweden also has a "minister for gender equality," who has decreed that male-female behavioral differences "are created by upbringing, culture, economic conditions, power structures and political ideology." The gender equality minister's ruling was recently assailed by a columnist for the influential Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet, who said the ruling had prevented publication of a book that included an interview with a neurobiologist discussing male-female brain differences. Many of the speech codes target neo-Nazi sympathizers who deny or minimize the Holocaust, and there have been numerous prosecutions under these laws in France and Germany.

It sounds incredible, or possibly not, but among the greatest threats to free speech in Europe is a document called the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The charter, proclaimed at an EU summit in 2000 and now incorporated into the provisional EU Constitution, comprises a blizzard of rights: rights for children, for women (they have a right to preference in areas wherein they are underrepresented), for asylum-seekers, for workers and employers (both are said to have a right to collective bargaining), for murderers (they have a right not to suffer capital punishment) and for the disabled. There is a right to marry, a right to privacy, a right to a good education and a lot more--including a right to freedom of expression. These rights are enumerated in 53 articles. But the final article is not a right. Headed "Prohibition of abuse of rights," it states: "Nothing in this Charter shall be interpreted as implying any right to engage in any activity … aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms recognized in this Charter or at their limitation."

This seems highly problematic. If someone were to mount a campaign favoring the death penalty, or opposing collective bargaining, or opposing preferences for women, or limiting the options of asylum-seekers, this would plainly constitute an effort to destroy rights recognized in the Charter--an activity characterized as an "abuse of rights" and therefore prohibited. The Bruges Group, a think tank in London, has published an essay arguing this case. The essay was written by Brian Hindley, a British economist, and was endorsed (in a prefatory note) by Oliver Letwin, who is now Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Tory "shadow cabinet."

The threat posed by the final article has thus far received little publicity, and it seems safe to say that very few Brits are aware of an EU threat to freedom of speech on their island. It also appears that very few members of the EU bureaucracy are aware of Hindley's argument. It was certainly news to the bureaucrat I discussed it with--a European Commission spokesman on cultural issues--who immediately pronounced it nonsense.

But who never properly accounted for the plain wording of the Charter, or his continent's ragged record on free speech.