Expelluranus!

That should have you toiling (soiling?) in the loo for a fair bit...

If 53.4% voted No and 46.6% voted Yes, only 6.8% made the whole treaty fall. It's against all democratic rules that only 6.8% of the voters can have such power.

Anyhow, it's funny how the discussion starts after the voting. That's another problem with democracy. If there's going to be voting, everyone should accept it in advance. And the voter is never wrong. It's very simple. And don't say Ireland is the only country which doesn't want the new constitution. Ireland is the only country that we know what they want.

It's a good thing these things were all impossible or impractical before the EU!

It's a mistake to think that the mistakes or wrongs of past governments can be corrected by an even larger government body.

It's a good thing these things were all impossible or impractical before the EU!

It's a mistake to think that the mistakes or wrongs of past governments can be corrected by an even larger government body.
</quote>
You don't think that 27 nations each individually negotiating with 26 other nations to achieve free movement of people and goods and free establishment of businesses is "impractical"? Even when compared to having one body that the nations freely join so as to declare their agreement with the system?

EDIT: and, of course, you conveniently ignore that I was responding to "And given the EU's law-making history, I'm getting more and more convinced that a continually deadlocked union is the best one could hope for. More vetoes to the people!" So the discussion is explicitly about the EU's law-making history.

trade embargo's, stopping trade to only the countries the government wants?

Socially, Niunio makes a good point. The sort of European integration that most people seem to want is one that recognises human similarities and needs but doesn't try to undermine national differences. I think a lot of people feel that what was formed as an economic union has strayed too far into social matters, and that generates a lot of resentment. Of course many real world problems come from where the two areas overlap, equal payment regardless of gender being the classic example. It was originally implemented because some nations already had that sort of legislation in effect, so would be at a significant economic disadvantage to others that didn't, creating trade barriers. However, banning differential pay has obviously had a massive social effect.

Politically the main charge against the EU is beurocracy but part of the anti-constitution movement was because many people no longer see 'constitution' in the un-inflected sense of "a document that defines how an organisation will operate" but immediately think of the US constitution and conjure images of paraphrases of the Magna Carta and other declarations of universal social rights that impliedly effect universal limits on state legislatures.

In terms of gut anti-US sentiment, though many of us find the national requirement that children swear allegiance to a flag and Hollywood's need to shoe-horn it into as many dumb action films as possible (typical scenario: world crumbles, brave people save the USA) quite funny, others find it quite offensive.

I have just remembererd that I added article 347 alinea B which claim that "You must all give me your money"

Good sheep we are, good sheep we keep being.

"Meeeeh , Meeeeh, quoi mais ? Tu te tais et tu payes !"

If the trade agreement exceeds a paragraph of text, it's not free trade; it's managed trade. If you want managed trade, that's something else entirely. But then, what's the point? Managed trade requires special conditions for trades across multiple countries anyway, so you gain very little (or anything) from having a supra-national body.

Arguing for larger governments from an economics point of view is bunk. There is no supporting data, and the position is logically inconsistent to boot (see the successes (or lack thereof) of the World Trade Organization for example).

Article 90 of the EC Treaty:

No Member State shall impose, directly or indirectly, on the products of other member states any internal taxation of any kind in excess of that imposed directly or indirectly on similar domestic products.

Furthermore, no Member State shall impose on the products of other member states any internal taxation of such a nature as to afford indirect protection to other products.

Interesting as that discussion would be, where do you stand on what we were discussing after your last change in conversation, i.e. whether the freet trade that exists between European nations, however you want to classify it would have been "impractical" without a single body overseeing it?

To engage in your new conversational direction, I don't follow your talk of "larger governments". The bodies that govern the EU now cover a greater number of people that the US government, but have much lesser areas of competence. They are therefore both larger and smaller. If you mean, which I think you do, that "arguing for governments that cover more people with power to affect trade from an economics point of view is bunk" then I think you're being too black and white about it. I'd say that the correct approach is a hierarchy of bodies, with powers sent no further up the hierarchy than is absolutely necessary. To follow your absolute rule would be, for example, to return to a time when all European nations were completely subject to the US monopolies and whims of the US government.

On the first point, I'd consider it sufficiently obvious that national governments have to move in concert in order to protect consumers from anti-competitive monopolies as to not need any reasoning. I would hope that lessons from history, such as Rockerfeller, justify the argument that consumers benefit from intervention where anti-competitive monopolies form. I would further argue that co-ordination and agreement of smaller governments is unlikely to be effective, or even possible, especially versus a single large monopolistic body.

On the second, I realise that I'm essentially arguing that "if there is one big government in one part of the world then it can do bad things to other parts of the world if they don't unite", which isn't really contrary to your argument against big governments overall. But I think its relevant in the wider discussion of the EU, given that we live in a world where the US government does already exist.

EDIT:
Now that I'm home, I can read Gnolam's links and give his post the attention it deserves. So...

I think it's unfair to blame the EU for agreeing to adopt a measure that was tabled by nine of its member states, which at least one other member state tried to extend and which only four member states opposed. One of the bodies explicit aims is free movement of people within Europe, which includes a peripheral open borders agreement that many states have signed up to. While sitting around in the EU buildings, nine member states suggest an idea. Everyone talks about it and 24/27 (89%) are okay with the idea, so the EU as a body agrees to it.

That's really very different to saying that the EU is forcing measures on anybody. Just focussing on the EU in isolation, I'd much rather that when a large number of countries go along with an idea, and the vast majority of countries agree with it, the idea gets implemented than that everyone just sits around talking all day. Even if you or I think the idea is abhorrent.

At the very least, it's not fair to say that the EU mandated this change.

For the purposes of allowing others to follow the discussion and so as to be open about any flaws in my understanding, I'll briefly recap what I think the data retention directive does — it's compels states to retain communications data about who contacted who and when (though notably not what they communicated) for at least six months and at most two years, so that the data is available should it be needed for the purpose of investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime.

From a pedantic point of view, that isn't technically surveillance since the information is, and always was, unavoidably collected by the phone/internet/etc companies. It's just retained.

Regardless of that, I — like you — would prefer that companies weren't doing this, and indeed weren't even allowed to do it. I agree that this is a black mark against the EU.

All I can find about the EU's stance on hate speech is that five members of the EU Parliament (i.e. five people, not five states) submitted a draft declaration over a year ago which, as far as I can find, was never implemented. Perhaps you have confused the Council of Europe with an EU body?

I used this source. I found that Article II-63(d) ("Right to the integrity of the person") would have prohibited "the reproductive cloning of human beings". That means it bans the creation of two genetically identical people, considering that to be contrary to the integrity of individuals. So it's a lot less than a prohibition of cloning, e.g. having no effect on stem cell research.

That entire section looks like an updated revision of the old ECHR text. I'd imagine it found its way into the constitution because all member states have signed the ECHR already, and it was a convenient opportunity to restate some of the principles versus modern science.

Presumably changes like that felt acceptable because the constitution was always going to be the subject of quite a few referendums. That text does not appear in the Treaty of Lisbon.

Quick clicking and searching doesn't show up anything for terrorism so far and Google doesn't seem to have indexed the PDFs, so I'll write more when I find it. I note that "you know, it's because of terrorism" has already been long established as a reason to deviate from ECHR obligations.

There is no proposed constitution, and there hasn't been since 2005.

Digressing slightly but nicely linked to this statement, one thing I do hope the EU does do, is ban phorm as that is surveillance. But given there are vast amounts of money involved, I doubt it somehow...

What can I say? Personally, I'd hate to see the development of a "United States of Europe" or a "Federal Republic of Europe". On the other hand, I think more cooperation among European nations in the future is inevitable (it'll happen anyway, whether people like it or not) and coordinating it is probably a good thing. Personally, I hated the idea of switching to one common currency. On the other hand, it's done more good than harm and it was probably the smart thing to do, again something that had to happen eventually.

So while I understand people voting "no" on things like the former constitution and the treaty of Lissabon, I don't think that's a very realistic position in the long run. Change is inevitable in the long run.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/28/washington/28privacy.html?hp

[EDIT]
Also, http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9611/ISPs+to+Ban+P2P+with+New+European+Telecom+Package%3F
So yeah. The EU can go fuck themselves.