The Conservative Move - Avramov.com

The European union will take more powers from any of its 27 national states in 2014 if the new treaty agreed last night in Brussels find final approval within forthcoming months. Of course the conservatives, the liverals and the socialist groups in Europe have different views about what’s has been achived in the EU summit.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the President of the Europeam Commission José Barroso have succeeded to pass through the outlines of the new EU treaty.

British conservatives for example says that outgoing Labour PM tony Blair has surrendered Britain’s right to veto EU decisions in 52 key policy areas. Blair has said he succeeded to secure Britain’s interests in the new European treaty. He won a legal exemption for UK from the new Charter of Fundamental Rights. This was one of the 4 “Red lines” UK wanted to keep.

But according to UK’s conservative party officials Blair transfered authority to Brussels in 52 other areas of policy like energy, tourism, transport, civil protection and migration.

The EU member states however achieved a certain understanding that the integration of the continent has to move forward within the next decade. The new EU treaty includes the following points:

• Post of a full-time president of the European Council
• Regular gatherings of prime ministers and presidents
• New chief of EU’s foreign affairs, with the profile and the budget
• Fewer national veto powers
• More powers for the European Parliament
• Slimmed-down European Commission from 2014

Free Competition or Social Market Economy

One very important thing - at least from my point of view - that EU is set to keep is its commitment to free and undistorted competition. At the beginnig of the EU meeting the French president Nicolas Sarkozy succeeded to pass amendment in the draft for the new treaty that would drop EU’s 50-year commitment to free competition. If approved it would undermine the European Commission’s efforts to break up monopolies and to work on the field of consumer protection.

The truth is that the new elected French President Mr Sarkozy wanted to keep French political tradition to provide state support for the French corporations the government defines important for its economy. Although the EU leaders took French proposal into consideration the summit adopted an additional protocol that said an existing competition law must be protected. British PM Tony Blair even said that “EU’s level playing field for business would remain unaffected”.

Poland to Keep its Voting Power Until 2017

Poland should contented of the EU meeting’s outcome  because it finaly accepted the German offer to delay entry of the bloc’s new voting system until 2017. That means Poles will continue until 2017 to vote in the EU council of ministers on the basis of the current system, agreed at Nice in 2000.

My general conclusion after the meeting is that European nationa lstates will continue to transfer their sovereignty to EU bodies. The new voting system owever guarantees that big nations like Germany and France will lead the decision making process and will even get more powers after 2014. The smaller EU contries would not bee able to put veto on EU policies after under the new voting system.

A surprising motion came from so called conservative French president Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy on the EU Summit in Bursseles held on June 21-22. The French that was expected to pass market reforms in his own country proposed “undistorted competition” to be replaced in the new EU treaty with phrases such as “social market economy” and “full employment”.

The move has created a mess and it is not clear now if the new terminology which France wants to slide into the EU constitution would affect on European competition policy. The previous project for EU constitution was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.

The new European treaty has to be approved by the EU’s heads of governments. It will be treated by the European Court of Justice as an ultimate guide to what is legal in the 27 states which are members of the union.

The European Union’s competition policy has been very aggressive at breaking up monopolies within the lst few years. That resulted in stronger market competition and airlines, phone service providers, energy companies and many others have been forced to allow their customers to buy the services they offer from their competitors.

The business groups have already criticised the changes that would lessen the market competition and would allow the governments of the EU countries to support companies they define as important for their economies.