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		Brok's Constitution: Welcome to the People's Republic of Europe September 16 2002 Unknown to the public, almost unnoticed by the media, a couple of hundred national and European parliamentarians and government representatives are getting together in Brussels. Under the chairmanship of French octogenarian Valery Giscard D'Estaing, they are working on a seminal task: writing a constitution for the EU. It sounds tedious and bureaucratic, but it could have a profound effect on our future. A first draft on behalf of one of the major political groups has been written and published by German MEP Elmar Brok, who leads the EPP group on the "Convention", as it is called. This document has no particular authority, and may be changed. But a great deal of work has gone into its 80 pages of small print, and the smart money says that the eventual outcome may be rather like Mr. Brok's draft. It repays study, so that we know what the federalists are thinking and what goodies they have in store for us. Fortunately you don't need to read the 80 pages: I've read it and I can pull out some plums. First, there's no way out. At the moment, we could in theory leave the EU if we wanted. But the new Constitution speaks of "a permanently united Europe". Article 198 says "This constitution is for an unlimited period". I hear the sound of the prison door slamming. There's no opt-out from the euro, either. Monetary union becomes an obligation for all member states -- including the UK. There is a new EU-wide tax to finance the union. Here Mr. Brok has missed a trick. Not many voters on the doorstep or in the pub will be enthusiastic about new taxes. The badly mis-named "Charter of Fundamental Rights" becomes a protocol of the Constitution, and therefore binding on our courts. Don't be taken in by the friendly title: this Charter gives you no new rights, and jeopardises some rights you have already. And it provides a basis for the notoriously federalist and activist European Court of Justice to drive forward the process of integration. It gives the EU a "legal personality". That sounds like a tedious technicality. But in reality it is another giant step to statehood, to the People's Republic of Europe. It also eases the way to a long-held ambition of the Commission: to see the EU replace Britain and France on the UN Security Council. It calls several times over for harmonisation of members-states' economic policies. With European unemployment double the British level, and with the UK's per capita GDP ahead of Germany, it's difficult to see why we should want to harmonise with less successful countries. The draft sets in stone the EU's powers in foreign affairs, where it has been singularly ineffective, and in justice, where they have a system that works for them but just won't mix with our common law system. And they want pan-European political parties, so we'd be voting for an alphabet-soup of parties we'd never heard of, all funded by you, the taxpayer. I could go on -- there's a lot of stuff in eighty pages -- but you get the idea. I shall vote against the Constitution in Brussels, but the federalist majority will vote it through anyway. What can we do to head off this new threat to self-government and democracy in Britain? Write to your MP. Tell him you will never vote for him again unless he opposes the ratification of this appalling document when it comes to Westminster.