It Could Have Been Us
Austria is one of the countries that ratified the Lazarus Treaty:
On 25th of May (2005) the upper chamber of the Austrian Parliament, the so called “Bundesrat”, ratified the EU Constitutional Treaty with 59 out of 62 representatives in favour. This step followed the preceding ratification in the lower chamber, the “Nationalrat”, on 11th of May (2005) with only one member against.
Contrast those numbers with the following ones:
According to latest Eurobarometer polls, Austrians are, after the Brits (of course), the most Euro-sceptic Nation among all Member states.And:
46% of Austrians did not consider a European Constitution as ‘necessary’, against 35% who did.So in a strongly Eurosceptic country, both houses of parliament overwhelmingly ratify a treaty that the majority of citizens do not want. Note that the person writing this report is happy about the way in which it was passed:
As most other EU countries, Austria lacked a genuinely broad and well informed open discussion on the EU constitution carried by the mass media.The people were uninformed so they would have made the wrong choice. This all basically reinforces my prejudices that politicians are self serving gits who ignore the electorate’s wishes. Unfortunately, nowhere is this more so than over the subject of the EU.
2 comments:
Unbelievable.
Do we think our professional politicos were always so detached from we peasants as they seem to be today? It's not just Europe, but virtually anything you can think of...taxes, justice, immigration, party funding...you name it.
How can we get some control?
It is wrong to write about Labour, Conservative, and Lib-Dem policies. We are governed by a solid ruling political class. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the whole people either supported socialism or capitalism, but as capitalism slowly became universally demonised we had Socialism or socialism, and we still do. Politicos want secure jobs, big pensions, and all expenses paid, nothing less. Please explain why there are no significant differences between the policies of any of the mainstream parties. We all want to leave the EU. We all want crime treated seriously. We all want real education. No party offers any of these things, only smoke, mirrors and illusion.
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