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Here at Helsinki Times we are clearly way too busy to write any articles at the moment, so we are asking you, our readers, to help us out with the following case (you may also submit your own article by e-mail to editorial@helsinkitimes.net):
John Sturges, a Dutch columnist whom rarely writes in English, sent us a long and passionate e-mail from Holland this morning concerning the state of affairs regarding the EU constitution.
Do you agree with John? And how does Finland make it's decision about the EU constitution? We would love to hear other opinions. Yours?
Europe’s constitution will divide its nations
By John Sturges
In the coming months several nations form the European Union will ask their citizens through a referendum how they feel about the European Constitution.
Several members of the union have already accepted it, without consulting their peoples first. For countries like Spain, Lithuania, and Hungary this is not a surprise, as these countries benefit big time from all kinds of subsidiaries from Europe’s capital, Brussels.
Citizens from countries like France however, and at the moment especially Holland, are more and more reluctant to hand over more power to the European ‘government’, as more and more becomes clear that one nations independency gets on the brink of distinction.
France will ask her voters and citizens on the 29th may in a referendum, to vote in favor of the new constitution and Holland will do the very same thing on June 1st.
In France both those in favor and those against keep each other in a tight balance, there is no way of telling at this moment if they will accept their ‘new leaders’ in Brussels and Strasbourg.
In the Netherlands however, the people will most likely not accept the constitution. The reasons for this are very simple and quite numerous:
Minister of Justice (department) Piet Hein Donner stated recently that if the Dutch wouldn’t accept the constitution, a war in time in Europe is inevitable.
He referred to the war at the Balkans in the early nineties, as the former Yugoslavian republic fell apart and raged in to a war because of ethical conflicts, that erupted after the iron curtain was brought down and communism collapsed.
The Dutch were amazed when they heard this and so was the rest of Europe.
Why rage in to a war because of a piece of paper that people just don’t want?
Is this the new European Democracy, threatening your own people if they don’t support your ideas?
Liberals, social-democrats and Christian-democrats try to convince the voters that with this European constitution, the European parliament will become even more democratic and will actually have some sort of a vote when it comes to new proposals and rule and lawmaking within the union.
So what has really been said is, that the parliament in Brussels had no influence whatsoever towards the European Committee and always had to say ‘amen’ to whatever they had decided what was oppositely ‘good’ for all citizens of Europe.
The Dutch however, are getting more and more superstitious about the Union, especially since this last weekend, when the news came out that the Dutch had been cheated by their own government when it comes to the new currency, the euro.
Finance minister Gerrit Zalm and Wouter Bos, leader of the social-democrats and prominent secretary of finance under Gerrit Zalm in the first ‘purple’ government from 1994 till 1998, simply waved out warnings from economic experts that the Dutch guilder would be undervalued when the euro was set at 2 guilders 20.
The euro was worth at his best at 2 guilders and not a cent more. But to stay in line with the German-French policy concerning the euro, Gerrit Zalm said nothing and kept this information outside the parliament.
The effect of this was, that as soon as the euro got introduced, prizes in Holland rose sky-high in no time. Prizes in bars, restaurants and hotels almost doubled, companies that delivered energy to all households raised their prizes between 30 and 70 % and at this moment almost everything that once was calculated in guilders, is now been paid in euros.
In return however, the Dutch got less value for their euros as taxes rose, and their paychecks were worth less more then 10%.
All in all the euro brought the Dutch no advantage what so ever. Life got more expensive and therefore, for hundreds of thousands of citizens, their economics standards dropped as they can no longer afford simple things like going an evening out to a bar or restaurant.
Take in to account that prizes for gas are about 15% higher at the moment then what the gas station announces at their billboards, and people just no longer accept that they are being fooled by the politicians in The Hague.
Other reasons why the Dutch will not approve is the coming membership of Turkey.
One can argue about if Turkey is a part of Europe, but one can not argue over the fact that Turkey has an Islamic government.
And knowing that this government is putting more fundamentalists in key civilian positions these days, and one really should ask himself how long it will take when the Turkish government has its army in full control, and nothing stands in their way to become a fundamentalist country.
We should not forget that in the late nineties Prime Minister Erdogan was arrested because he felt that only the sharia was the best way of governing Turkey, where he stated that “the Turkish people were his soldiers, the mosques were his army barracks and the minarets of the mosques were the knifes to kill the enemies (or non-believers, as he put it).
History points out that, if too many peoples, cultures and societies are being ‘equaled’, people will rise up against their oppressors, because they have their own identities, their own way of life and their own cultures.
And the oppressor in this case will be Brussels. Brussels want the same rules and laws for every nation.
And creating more rules and laws for producers of consumer goods, will make producing these goods more expensive and thus makes it more and more difficult, if not impossible, for consumers to buy these goods.
Therefore it can be said that the present way that Europe is being ‘governed’, is damaging for all nations and its inhabitants.
It is almost a sort of ‘neo-communism’ that we are dealing with at the moment and if it is not now, it will be in the near future.
Other reasons why we should be in favor of this constitution can not be taken seriously.
Brussels wants to become the economic power in the world, or at least become an effective competitor of the US and Asia. Making rules and laws, which only creates more costs for the peoples of Europe, will never accomplish this.
As long as countries like India and China are keeping up their speed of economic growth, Europe will fall further behind if the present economic policy doesn’t change.
But beside an economic powerful might, Europe also wants to become a militaristic powerful institution. A theme of the European governments is that a united Europe with a constitution, will guarantee peace on this continent.
Of course this is baloney. It has not been the European Union that kept the peace on this continent for the past sixty years, but NATO. And knowing that all countries have cut their budgets for defense drastically in the past decades, becoming a military might is out of the question. Europe will always be depending on the US if it should come to war.
The best example for this was in former Yugoslavia, as the British were in favor of acting in the war there and put up a fight, and the French and Germans were against it as well as the rest of all United Nations members.
It took more then three years, until the US intervened with military actions when the end of the war on the Balkans came in sight. Seen from a military point of view, Europe is too much divided and not willing to fight for peace and freedom where ever, let alone for their individual nations.
Only diplomacy works, according to most governments, even when whole populations are being exterminated because of their ethnicity. Another good example of the ‘might’ of Brussels is seen in Teheran, where European diplomats try to persuade the Iranians not to enrich Uranium.
Most likely the Iranians will give in, but at a very high prize for Europe and possibly the US. Basically this is blackmail, because Teheran knows very well that Europe is willing to pay dearly and if not, most likely Israel will take care of Iran’s Nuclear reactors.
Iran’s prime policy of its government is the termination of the state of Israel and one can doubt if Israel will wait with taking action until Iran fires their first (nuclear) missile towards Tel Aviv.
Left wing politicians in the Netherlands are already speaking out loud about giving up the army and step out of NATO, thinking that war will never hit their country again.
But the recent terrorists acts and plans of Muslims in this country tells it clear to everyone that peace and freedom is not a certainty, not here or anywhere else in the world.
All in all: Not voting against the European constitution will bring war on this continent, but voting in favor will most likely do in due time. Europe can not handle a European foreign minister, as it hardly ever speaks with one voice.
The war in Iraq has proven this very clearly. This constitution does more evil then good for all European’s. The Dutch are seeing this more clearly every day.
With kind regards,
John Sturges,
Dutch columnist opinion website
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