The 3 Amigos & the deficit

While  Clegg, Darling & Osborne spent time on UK TV last night arguing the toss on how to divide up the booty like a gang of Mexican bandits, not one of the 3 Amigo’s addressed the issues that are important to ordinary voters, the reduction of the deficit, and I’m not just referring to the budget deficit which they failed to tackle but also the democratic deficit.

You may consider that in matters fiscal there is no democratic deficit, but you would be wrong. As taxation is essentially legal robbery, under pain of imprisonment or forfeiture, there needs to be a greater say from those whom the money is taken extorted raised on how it is spent, rather than merely listening to the Bandits telling us how they are going to divide it up and waste it.

But whilst these provincial robbers argue on National TV trying to convince the voters that how bandit A is going to spend your money is really more honest than bandit B, our real Government, who have assumed power in Brussels have decided to address this issue. Well, they promise to address it, but as usual in their own dictatorial way.

The European Commission, that unelected body that has already imposed, without debate or reference to our parliament, 120,000 regulations into your everyday lives is now talking of Citizens Initiatives.

Fantastic you say, Brilliant you may think, Citizens calling the tune, until you look at the fine print.

This is how they are selling it to you:

The Treaty of Lisbon introduced the European citizens’ initiative, a major innovation to strengthen the democratic fabric of the European Union.

According to Article 11 of the treaty, “not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of member states may take the initiative of inviting the [European] Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the treaties”.

The European citizens’ initiative would therefore enable European citizens and civil society organisations to directly influence the political agenda of the EU for the first time in history.

Now lets look at some of the detail.

The principle of the new citizens’ initiative is that “whilst it does not affect the Commission’s right of initiative, it will, however, oblige the Commission, as a college, to give serious consideration to the requests made by citizens,” reads the draft regulation, which the EU executive will make public on Wednesday.

Except…..

• Any citizens’ legislative initiative has to be supported by at least one million signatories.
• The one million signatories must come from at least one third of EU nations – i.e. nine countries.
• Each citizens’ initiative should be first registered and then subject to an admissibility check by the Commission, once the organisers have collected at least 300,000 statements of support.
• The EU executive will have to assess the admissibility of the proposal within two months.
• It must concern “a matter where a legal act of the Union can be adopted for the purpose of implementing the Treaties” and it has to fall “within the framework of the powers of the Commission to make a proposal,”
• Each signatory of a statement of support will have to provide a variety of personal data, including name, street address, email address, date and place of birth, nationality and personal identification numbers (passport; ID card; and social security).
• They must be gathered “within a period that shall not exceed 12 months,” after which the process should start again.
• If a citizens’ initiative is presented according to the rules, the Commission will have to issue a communication within four months of submitting the initiative.

Now the kicker.

• The EU executive is not legally obliged to trigger any legislative action in response to the collection of signatures.

So if this unelected body don’t like what the public are saying, they can just tell you to piss off.

That is not addressing the democratic deficit, it is making it impossible to use democracy in a system that does not want democratic principles to surface whilst giving the impression of doing so.

So, just like the 3 Amigos carving up your money, unless you use your vote wisely at home, the unelected government abroad is going to screw your arse a little bit more.

If you keep voting the same, you will keep getting the same – shafted.

So get to your candidate and make them promise to rebalance that democratic deficit BEFORE they are elected. Make use of the Albion Alliance today.

UPDATE: 31/3/10

The Guardian is pushing the European Commission line on this. Maros Sefcovic an EC functionary writes today, and from the number and tone of the comments, I am certainly not the only one to see through the faux democracy of this proposal.