Centralizing power in the EU.

Two years after both French and Dutch voters turned down a constitution for the European Union in national referenda, the EU is moving to implement a revised constitution, this time bypassing the referenda process. According to William Rees-Mogg, the former editor of the London Times, "The advocates of a constitutional treaty believe that they would lose a referendum. They think the British voters would vote 'No,' and they are not prepared to risk it. So they want--as Mr. Blair wants--to ratify the proposed treaty against what they consider to be the will of the British people."

In his column for April 23, Rees-Mogg points out that in Britain, and throughout Europe, the EU is declining in popularity as it becomes more authoritarian. "Most British people want to see a more liberal Europe, with more democratic values," Rees-Mogg writes. "What they now see is an increasingly bureaucratic Europe, in which power is still moving towards nonelected bodies."

In fact, according to Rees-Mogg, Europe under the EU has given up all but the pretense to democratic forms of governance, with rule by bureaucratic fiat the order of the day. "The European Union has developed as an over-centralised, over-bureaucratised structure," Rees-Mogg writes. "In Germany the EU is now responsible for 84 per cent of legislative acts, with parliamentary democracy left with the other 16 per cent. The same, or something like it, is true of Britain. The EU bureaucracy has become a burden for the European nations."