Friday, June 03

World

What It Isn't

Mark Steyn echoes one of my points on the European constitution:
One of the most unattractive features of European politics is the way it insists certain subjects are out of bounds, and beyond politics. That's the most obvious flaw in Giscard's flaccid treaty: it's not a constitution, it's a perfectly fine party platform for a rather stodgy semi-obsolescent social democratic party. Its constitutional "rights" - the right to housing assistance, the right to preventive action on the environment - are not constitutional at all, but the sort of things parties ought to be arguing about at election time.
Exactly.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:23 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1 Hey, every country has already taken care of the big important things in their own constitution, so EU-constitution is making the decisions on the small things. They don't dare touch the fundamentals of the countries' law systems, unless they give everyone a good impression from small changes first. EU-constitution is just the beginning of a larger reform of the European legal systems, but now that it died, the reform is delayed 10 years or more, and forming one country out of the Union will also be delayed, because of this trivial guestion of minor law changes.

Posted by: A Finn at Saturday, June 04 2005 08:46 AM (lGolT)

2 The EU constitution strkes me as dangerously elitist and anti-democratic. Without direct elections of EU leaders (something the EUlites will NEVER contemplate), there is no accountability.

Posted by: TallDave at Saturday, June 04 2005 10:58 AM (9XE6n)

3 Finns have EU-election every four years, so we directly select the ones who go represent us in EU. Dunno if the others already let their parliaments pick theirs, since those guys don't really matter, the voting percentages in EU-elections are usually under 30% anyway. That's why leader selection is going to the parliaments: no one simply cares about who is representing them in Brussels. And if EU would ever need to get a president to be governmentchooser, that's imbossible because there is no common law, and the starting of the common law has recently died when the Dutch and French said 'nee' and 'non'.

Posted by: A Finn at Saturday, June 04 2005 01:07 PM (lGolT)

4 And why should the 30%, the old people who have nothing else to do and always vote for socialists, be any better at choosing representatives than the parliament whole nation picked.

Posted by: A Finn at Saturday, June 04 2005 01:12 PM (lGolT)

5 Finn, you say:Hey, every country has already taken care of the big important things in their own constitution, so EU-constitution is making the decisions on the small things. They don't dare touch the fundamentals of the countries' law systems, unless they give everyone a good impression from small changes first. EU-constitution is just the beginning of a larger reform of the European legal systems, but now that it died, the reform is delayed 10 years or more, and forming one country out of the Union will also be delayed, because of this trivial guestion of minor law changes.The problem is, if you ever want to form a single country, your will have to tackle the big things. The smaller things are a matter for the government of the day, not for the constitution. The constitution is for setting the structure of and limits on the government. The branches of government, the houses of parliament, voting procedures (popular and legislative), that sort of thing. Not fishing rights in the Baltic Sea. The constitution has to change the fundamentals of the law systems of the individual states. Otherwise it's just a trade agreement with delusions of grandeur.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, June 04 2005 03:45 PM (+S1Ft)

6 The point was small things first, look good when doing those, and then change the bigger things, so no one leaves the Union because of the huge changes for worse they expect to come from sudden massive changes on their whole system of law. It's like going to the lake for a swim at early summer: If everyone just jumps in right away, the ones who didn't like the temperature will just run into the sauna right away. If you are patient and let them poke their toes in the shallow end first, they get used to the water and don't mind taking a deeper plunge.

Posted by: A Finn at Saturday, June 04 2005 04:31 PM (lGolT)

7 The constitution right now won't be the final constitution, trust me. It's just the flat dirt layer below the foundation. They'll make it grow until covers everything important and they have the unified law they were planning.

Posted by: A Finn at Saturday, June 04 2005 04:36 PM (lGolT)

8 No, that's backwards. A constitution, a real constitution, deals with the most important and fundamental rules of government, and nothing else. Read the U.S. constitution, or the Australian one. Both were designed to join a number of independent states into a single nation. This is what I'm saying, what Mark Steyn is saying: This document is not a consitution. You seem to be proposing a constituion by stealth, the boiled-frog approach. That's not what they're doing either. Have you read the blasted thing?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, June 04 2005 10:00 PM (+S1Ft)

9 Yeah, it's bullshit. That kinda justifies making big changes to it. Constitution has to look useless and trivial to get accepted. After it's done, they can do whatever they want with it and not care about public opinion. Also, constitution of Finland was once just a decision about sharing the fishing areas and determining who gets whos stuff when some guy with no relatives dies, so things can start with crap and advance to an acceptably good level.

Posted by: A Finn at Sunday, June 05 2005 04:54 PM (lGolT)

10 Oh perhaps I need to read it in English, it might have different interpretations that way.

Posted by: A Finn at Sunday, June 05 2005 05:19 PM (lGolT)

11 Oh well, not gonna, since the one in English is 325 Adobe pages. The one in Finnish in bookform was 220 paper ones and included comparisons of the laws into Finnish law, so I think I know enough. I found only about 10 parts that weren't almost exactly the same thing as the Finnish law and jokamiehenoikeus-parts they were compared to. They must've just gone through our law and picked the parts they found interresting and refreshing, creating a mess that people living in crowded places can't understand.

Posted by: A Finn at Sunday, June 05 2005 05:41 PM (lGolT)

12 Maybe so. However it came to be, that's exactly the problem. It's not a constitution.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, June 07 2005 07:55 AM (+S1Ft)

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Posted by: ya pidoras at Wednesday, July 26 2006 11:27 AM (8M7ix)

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