Reinfeldt skämmer ut Sverige

Som många vet genomfördes en reform i Lissabonfördraget om att se till att kommissionspresidenten utses efter att ta hänsyn till parlamentsvalet (lite som att talmannen bör ta hänsyn till valresultatet när han utser någon till att bilda regering, fast det kanske inte finns något juridiskt krav på att talmannen måste göra det, bara en defacto regel eftersom riksdagen inte hade godtagit något annat).

Flera år sedan deklarerade EU parlamentet att man ansåg att kommissionspresidenten skulle väljas ifrån en lista av toppkandidater som de europeiska partigrupperna utsett.

Detta var välkänt sedan år tillbaka, samtidigt valde de stora partigrupperna att utse toppkandidaterna med början förra året.

För EPP som M och KD är med i valde man Juncker. I smyg bojkottade dock Moderaterna omröstningen under EPP-konventet (Reinfeldt har tidigar uttalat sig vara mot europeisk parlamentarism).

I vilket fall drevs valrörelsen med klar deklaration om att kommissionspresidenten skulle bli en av partigruppernas kandidater, inklusive uppmärksammade artiklar i Svenska tidningar.

Moderaterna var iofs mot parlamentarismen sedan länge, men då de inte deklarerat sitt motstånd mot den nya ordningen med kandidater till kommissionspresidentsposten tydligt under valdebatten till EU-parlamentet, gick samtliga väljare som röstade EPP och röstade på Juncker (lite som en röst på Moderaterna i riksdagsvalet är en röst på Reinfeldt som statsminister).

Nu velar Reinfeldt tillsammans med Cameron och Orban om att stödja Juncker, trots att det varit tydligt att i parlamentsvalet var en röst på M eller KD en röst på Juncker. Renfeldt bör skämmas över det uppenbart antidemokratiska i detta.

Hur hade det sett ut om talmannen inte tog hänsyn till valresultatet när han utser statsministern och tog någon utomstående, eller om den brittiska drottningen inte tog hänsyn till resultatet till det brittiska parlamentsvalet och valde en annan än partiledarna som kämpat om posten?

Reinfeld skämmer ut Sverige i Europa och visar sitt ansikte som antidemokrat.

Stupid decisions from the EP

Renate Sommer and Peter Liese, MEPs, has just introduced new regulation (see here for a summary in swedish), which strangely passed, where food package markings in joule will be removed, the only marking left will be the kcal (a completely arbitrary unit).

The definition of calories also varies between:

• Kilogram calorie, also written Calorie or Cal (with a capital C). The energy needed to warm up one kg of water by one degree C.
• Gram calorie, cal with small c. The energy needed to warm up one gram of water by one degree C. One thousand of these are written as kcal.
• Pound calorie, which is the energy to warm up one pound of water by one degree C.

So, by forcing away the joule, they are adding confusion to the food labelling (which calorie are they referring to?) and they are assuming that the Unions citizens are stupid and do not understand what a joule is.

Further, why is it difficult to know that a man needs 10 MJ of energy and a woman 8 MJ (as compared to 2500/2000 kcal (or should we say Cal to add to the confusion?))?

What is next? Will Renate Sommer want to dismantle the metre and revert to national foot and inches?

It would be better if they just decided to ban the use of kcal, Cal and cal on the packaging completely. People are not stupid and will adapt, especially if you consider that most people managed to switch to the Euro without to many problems.

Peter Liese also writes [en] that the regulation will not patronise the citizens, but that is exactly what they do when they remove the branding in joules. I and the rest of the citizens are apparently to stupid to understand what a joule is according to Peter. Thank you for not patronising us!

Time to Rethink the EP Elections

In June we will have new elections for the European Parliament, the only directly elected institution of the Union. As usual, we can expect that the participation will be low.

This year I will vote in the Netherlands, though I am not sure which party yet, but I have some rough ideas at least. This is a fundamental issue, a citizen has the right to vote in the state where he is registered as resident.

In the interest of further integrations, I believe that it is the duty of every citizen that lives outside their home-state to vote in the local elections.

The problem that I can see now, is that the parties in the European Parliament are not very clearly laid out to the citizens. For most Dutch voters, they will go and vote on the same party that they voted for in their national elections. This in terms mean that the questions that will be brought up in the elections will be very specific to the state itself, that is certain questions will be debated in Sweden, some others in Netherlands, but there is no uniform election platform.

I believe that it is time for change, we should ban all national parties from participating and enforce that any party that signs up to the elections must be represented under the same name in at least several of member states. This would prevent voters from thinking nationally wen they cast their vote and start thinking European.

Ryssland

Nästan ingenting i media om Unionens gemensamma agerande mot Ryssland. En liten artikel på DNs huvudsida som snabbt blev ersatt med utländska nyheter om det USAianska presidentvalet.

I England fick the Telegraph in rubriken: "Brown fails to make EU punish Russia" . Ganska intressant eftersom Storbritannien aldrig ville ha några direkta sanktioner och att EU faktiskt bestraffade Ryssland med att avbryta samtalen och att skicka 200 observatörer till Georgien (de 200 observatörerna är en bestraffning i den meningen att det bör få Ryssland att skämmas en hel del).

Med andra ord, när Unionen visar sin enighet (och i min åsikt är detta en milsten i den gemensamma Europeiska utrikespolitiken) skiter media I det, för det är inte intressant att rapportera om när Unionen fungerar väldigt bra. Om USA hade gjort samma sak (avbrutit samtal inriktade på ett avtal med Ryssland) så hade förmodligen rubrikerna i både Engelsk och Svensk press varit i stil med "Bush bestraffar Ryssland hårt" eller något I den stilen.

Det som EU har gjort är ju en sak som kan leda till bättre folkligt stöd för Unionen, så det känns som en ganska viktig sak att rapportera om, och medan jag hade förväntat mig att Aftonbladet och The Sun inte hade brytt sig (Anna-Lisas nya silikon-pattar är nog mycket viktigare för att sälja lösnummer) eller att de hade vänt det hela uppochner (som the telegraph, men mer extremt), så hade jag förväntat mig mer av DN och SvD. BBC har dock faktiskt rapporterat ganska nyanserat om det hela.

Unity in the Union

I must say that the EU reaction and display of unity against imperial Russia and the support of Georgia is more than I hoped for. Although I would have wanted to have seen harder measures being taken by the Union; I did not expect the Union to show as much unity as they did.

The unity is far more worth than harder measures, so this is very good news indeed. I would like to thank the council for the best action taken in several years.

I wonder what this will do for the Unions approval rating?

ITER Agreement Signed

Finally after so many years the EU, US, China, Russia and South-Korea have signed an agreement to build ITER, an international experimental tokamak fusion reactor.

The reactor will be the first step to working fusion power, and it will be succeeded by the DEMO reactor in about 30 years.

The fusion fuels available on the earth and in the rest of the solar system will basically last longer than the sun itself. This is a great leap forward for mankind and will in the end give us clean, safe and cheap energy.

Happy 9th of May!

The heading really say it all. Happy Europe Day!

Swedish Consulate Grants Visas to Members of Terror Organisations

The Swedish consulate in Jerusalem just granted high ranking minister in the Palestinian government, and member of the terror organisation Hamas, a visa to the Schengen area; this while the French government denied giving visas to Palestinian MPs from Hamas.

The Swedish government will not meet with the terrorist who is invited to attend a meting with Palestinian groups in Malmö, but the event has put further strains on the Swedo-Israeli relations that was severely damaged after the Swedish foreign ministry pulled out the Swedish Air Force from a multi-national exercise in Italy. The exercise had been planned for months and was canceled when the ministry came to know that the Israeli Air Force had been invited to attend.

Of-course, this post is not really here to complain about Hamas, but rather the sloppines of the Swedish government in handeling visas. Interesting in this event is that a Schengen visa gives access to all of Schengen, including France; which by the way should have been asked about any objections to the issuing of visas. It is time to rethink how visas are issued to the EU, and centralise the procedure to the Union.

Bibliography
Dn.se

Stop Moving Around!!!

Although, while the heading could refer to me since I am moving to much it seem, what I am talking about is the European Parliament that is forced to move back and forth between Brussels and Strasbourg.

ELDR MEP Cecilia Malmström (who by the way fought against both software patents and the fascist data retention directive and is one of my favourite MEPs), has started a petition with the goal of making the commission take up the question. All that is needed is a mere one million signatures. Please sign her petition and help end the nonsense.

The petition is available on http://www.oneseat.eu/

Council member fired

The Swedish member of the Foreign Affairs Council, Laila Freivalds has been sacked as of today (although she claim that the decision was hers, more likely she was sacked by Swedish prime minister Göran Persson). The reason for this is her involvement in shutting down the Swedish nationalist party Sverigedemokraterna's web page.

After the page was shut down, she denied any involvement in the affair and placed the blame on one of her employees who allegedly acted on his own accord. However, after an investigation was started on the unconstitutional behaviour of the ministry of foreign affairs, documents surfaced that made it clear that the minister was informed about the issue before it happened.

This is a great day for friends of liberty and Europe.

Legitimacy and Federalism

First, I'd like to apologise in advance for my spelling and grammar. But I am home, sick with the Chicken pox(!), and have a numb head. Complain in the comments section if you'd like.

Now to the issue. Today I will rant about legitimacy and federalism.

The problem with a lot of politicians, is that they do not understand. They do not understand that the legitimacy problems with the Union really are constitutional problems. The problems is the Council and the fact that the Union is still an international organisation in to many aspects; and that the Union is very complicated. The legitimacy is also a matter of how democratic and transparent the law making organisations are. These problems could be solved with a clear federal constitution, but seeing this is difficult for a person not interested in politics, which is the majority in my understanding.

The word federalism used in the previous paragraph, has been known as the f-word in some circles (the one who introduced this was actually no other than Marget Thatcher) and can be very sensitive. I've met several who just went pale in the skin when one mentioned the word "federation", but when asking them about the issues they had with the Union, and the solutions for these, a lot of the anti-federalists came up with very federal solutions for a lot of the problems, e.g. shift power from the Council to the Parliament. And this when not realising that the solutions was just what the federalists want.

I am not afraid to call my self a federalist (which should be clear for those reading this blog on a regular basis) and of course, being a federalist does not mean that you believe that everything from Brussels is good (a lot of the anti-federalists seem to believe that this is the definition of federalism). I am a federalist, but still, if you read this blog, you can find some substantial critique of the Union's architecture and it's policies, so how does this mix?

Federalism is belief in a form of government where the decisions are taken on the lowest level possible, preferably by the individual. A federalist accepts that there are questions that cannot be answered solely by an individual, a family, a municipality or even a state. Thus with a federal system we have a level of government above the states. In order to clarify, all decisions should be taken in a democratic form, and laws should NEVER be made by assemblies that are unelected.

Thus, a federalist typically want the Union to handle foreign policy, defence and internal trade, but the rest is typically supposed to be up to the states or at lover levels. More importantly, since the Council is unelected, we do not want the Council to exist in it's present form. It should either be abolished and hand over all their power to the elected parliament or transform themselves into an elected senate.

Federalism is not blind obedience to the federal government, it is the belief in a federal and democratic constitution, where decisions are taken on the lovest level possible and law is made by elected representatives and not indirectly appointed officials.

EP Approves Data Retention

The EP approved the data retention directive, with amendments laid down by EPP and PES. This is a dark day for the Union and the liberty of Europeans. I suggest that all those who voted for these parties will think both once and twice when the next parliamentary election is held.

The directive will call for retention of data under a period between six moths and two years. A monitoring organisation such as this has not been seen since the fall of the Berlin wall.

What is life without liberty I ask. What is the next step in this horrifying spiral? When will people wake up from their dream and finally realise that liberties that we take for granted are being eliminated one by one?

I for one am extremelly displeased with the ongoing development, a sad day indeed.

The Fate of Europe is Decided Today

Today within a few minutes, the parliament will vote about the draconian dataretention directive. Bodström (the Swedish minister of justice) who is one of the brains behind the proposal has whith his accociates in the council made the groupleaders for EPP and PES position them for the proposal. There is a clear oposition against the proposal in the EPP, among others have Charlotte Cedersköld clearly shown her oposition.

It is wrong when the state regulates what data and for how long it is to be stored. Perhaps it is reasonable that the police can query for existing data, but this is not the question treated in this proposal.

The directive that Bodström say that in order to query for the information, the suspected crime has to be valid for an European arrest warrant. Which does not only include serious crimes such as terrorism, murder and trafficing, but also filesharing and other minor offences.

If the parliament opposes the directive, it will be an important point made against the council's undemocratic methods. And if Bodström & co would choose to bypass our elected parliament by screaming out "third pillar", it will be made even more clear that the council lacks in democratic legitimacy and how much the Union's constitution would have been.

In Sweden, the disposal of Bodström must be priorotised, everything else come on second place and I would have made a deal with the devil himself in order to get Bodström, the greatest enemy against liberty in Europe, fired.

Massive Support for the United States of Europe

A poll conducted by this blog have just shown that there is a massive support among the European population for the creation of a federal Europe.

The poll showed that 71.3 % of the European citizens supported the idea of a federal Europe. Only 28.7 % opposed the idea. Among the aliens, i.e. non EU citizens, the support was virtually non existant. 100 % of the non EU-population rejected the idea. While the reason for this is out of the scope of the poll, it is my guess that these people have not seen Europe in its true glory.

Though, it is expected that even these people will change their views on the topic in due time.