Originally Posted by Akria:
Although I was actually asking for examples of those rights and customs which have been removed...
Why would Brown want a highly repressive society?
I think today's editorial in the Telegraph more eloquently explains the arrogance of the EU leaders than I can.
If EU will not listen, it risks popular revolt
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 15/06/2008
Democratic legitimacy has never been the European Union's strong point. Perhaps it was never meant to be: 50 years ago, when the organisation first came into being, it was the creation of officials, rather than of voters.
The EU was constructed around a deep suspicion of "populism" and what it was thought to have led to in Europe: Nazism in Germany, Fascism in Italy, and feeble and ineffective government in France.
Central to the founding ideology of the European Union was the conviction that officials alone can solve the difficult technical questions of statecraft, for they have the expertise that ordinary people, caught up in day-to-day cares, and too easily influenced by irrational emotions, do not.
That view of the nature of rational government goes back to Plato - and as Plato pointed out, it is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. The extent of that incompatibility was demonstrated again by last week's vote in Ireland.
The Irish decisively rejected the new EU constitution, which they were asked to endorse. Of course, Gordon Brown, in common with many other European leaders, insists that the new document is not a constitution, merely a treaty - but that is simply a device to ensure that heads of goverment do not need to give their own electorates the chance to decide whether or not to accept it. Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the man who wrote most of it, insists that it is a constitution.
The people of Ireland are the only voters in Europe who have been given the opportunity to vote on whether they wish to be governed according to the latest version of the new constitution. No other electorate has been allowed to vote on it, for the simple reason that their leaders know they would reject it as decisively as the Irish have done.
The conclusion that they draw from that fact is not that the new constitution should be abandoned; it is that the people are simply wrong, and their views must be ignored.
A more profoundly undemocratic political outlook is difficult to imagine. But the pronouncements from leaders of the European Union's various countries to the effect that they will continue ratifying the new constitution, regardless of the Irish vote, demonstrate clearly how little respect they have for the views of the people of Europe.
In many ways, that undemocratic attitude is built in to the European Union. But institutions today need democratic endorsement if they are to be legitimate: it is now accepted by almost everyone that people cannot be ruled against their collective will, as expressed in elections or referendums.
The EU's leaders now appear to have given up trying to achieve democratic endorsement for the EU. There are obvious dangers in their decision to go ahead with the new constitution in defiance of the people's judgment against it. One of them is that it risks dramatically increasing the size of the rift between the Eurocrats and the people they claim the authority to rule.
That could, ultimately, lead to a popular revolt against the whole European project. The people of France and Holland had already shown their discontent with the European project's direction of travel when they voted against the original proposal for a constitution in 2005.
Yesterday Vaclav Klaus, the Czech President, explicitly stated that the Irish vote has killed off the new constitution: his country only recently emerged from Soviet rule, and he, and his people, are clearly eager to avoid moving from Communist dictatorship into another form of undemocratic government.
The EU brings many benefits to its members, and properly organised and run, it could bring many more. But it is vital that its rules and institutions are endorsed democratically, rather than simply being imposed from above.
The limits of what the EU can do should be set, not by Brussels bureaucrats but by the people in its member countries. We believe that the vote in Ireland has decisively defeated the idea of a "super-state" Europe, one that has (for example) an unelected president who can sign treaties binding under international law on all member states.
We look forward to the re-shaping of the EU on democratic lines: we think that a stronger, more efficient, if much less ambitious, EU will be the result.
In short - Brown and the EU leaders believe the future of the EU cannot be trusted to the people - democracy is of the past, a very dangerous path which justifies an increasing degree of repression. History does not judge such a course with favour.
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