Superstate running out of control

Evidence suggests that we love to be part of Europe.

Each year UK citizens make 50,000,000 visits to mainland Europe.

Three hundred thousand British people work there.

One and a quarter million have set up home there. Approximately half of all UK foreign trade is with Europe. British people are impressed by the art, culture, achievements and lifestyles of fellow Europeans.

Supporters of the EU rightly point out that European nations working in peaceful co-operation is a vast improvement compared with the destruction and trauma of the Second World War.

And the EU claims commitment to fundamental humanitarian principles - human rights, democracy, equality, freedom, the rule of law (including "strict observance of international law"), tolerance and justice.

Its objectives include full employment and sustainable development.

Does it sound too good to be true? Well it is. The EU is seriously mismanaging the superstate it has created.

Life may seem rosy for most Europeans at the moment, but EU leaders are out of touch, their policies are failing and their attitude towards European citizens is cynical, inflexible and anti-democratic.

The EU is a law-making factory which has produced 11,000 pages of legislation to direct our lives.

A key aim of the EU is a totally unified state. This aim is expressed in treaties from the Treaty of Rome in 1957 to the Constitution of 2004 and the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007 as "ever closer union".

It means ever increased centralisation of control from Brussels. This is where policies are decided by the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Council.

This system of government excludes citizens from knowledge of what is going on. Most decisions are taken in secret by people we have never heard of.

Democracy cannot function in a vacuum of silence since the involvement of citizens in decision-making is what enables democracy to work. Policies need to stand the test of public examination.

Democracy also requires that parties with alternative policies submit themselves to the electorate at intervals. Without this opportunity to choose alternative politicians with alternative policies there can be no democracy.

Voting for the talkingshop of the European Parliament or voting at national level on non-EU issues is not a substitute.

It has sometimes been painful to learn that EU laws take precedence over our own laws. We had a very significant lesson in 1976.

That year the British Government passed an act extending our territorial waters from 12 miles to a 200-mile limit in what was termed an exclusive economic zone.

This would have given us exclusive fishing rights and exclusive marine conservation responsibility in this vast area. We were entitled to take this action under international maritime law.

But the European Court of Justice ruled against the British government's action and then, in 1977, opened our territorial waters to the fishing fleets of all other member states.

In 1983, the EU introduced its Common Fisheries Policy. The EU, not our government, controls our deep sea fishing and has taken responsibility for marine conservation.

The result has been devastating for the 300 fishing vessels registered in Sussex.

Because most of the county's boats fall into the smaller category (under ten metres) their quotas on catching cod have been limited to a pathetic three per cent of the total catch.

In some cases this amounts to a laughable single fish per day.

Despite these controls aimed at preventing fish being wiped out, after 25 years of action we have the clearest of demonstrations of the EU's inability to manage a major conservation project.

Numerous reports tell us that the North Sea fish stocks are on the brink of collapse and that irreversible damage has been done to the marine ecosystem.

It is the same EU, with its record of disastrous environmental mismanagement, that now claims to be our best hope for combating climate change.

EU carbon trading schemes will be another bureaucratic nightmare and we are running out of time to get things right.

Immigration has now hit us as a major issue. This is because EU leaders have failed to foresee the obvious consequences of their policies.

One fundamental rule of the EU demonstrates how we are just one big country now. The rule is that any citizen can travel to any other EU country for any purpose, has the right to settle there, buy or rent property, work there or establish a business or profession.

It is a wonderful freedom for the adventurous individual.

When the EU consisted of only 15 states in 2004 there seemed to be no problems.

Suddenly, in that year, ten new states in eastern Europe with very low income levels joined the EU. Two more joined at the beginning of last year.

The Guardian has suggested that the result has been the biggest influx of immigrants into this country for three centuries.

It suggested that, for example, within a two-year period a million Poles had arrived (a figure far exceeding official estimates).

This has been felt widely in Sussex, which has one of the highest levels of migrant workers from eastern Europe.

EU immigration has many benefits and is only fair if our citizens also have the right to settle in any other EU country.

The problem is the speed with which so many people have arrived. The pressures on housing, public services and lessening job opportunities for native citizens are all obvious.

The solution is to limit the rate of influx but the UK is powerless. Unrestricted movement of persons is EU policy and that is the end of the matter. The policy has been fixed by a treaty and so we have a kind of dictatorship by treaty.

The Treaty of Lisbon, now before Parliament, should be rejected in favour of real reform.

For a start we need decisions within the EU to be taken at the lowest practical level, EU institutions to be opened up so we know what, how, why and by whom decisions are being taken.

We need to be able to vote out unsatisfactory EU politicians with unsatisfactory policies and we need temporary restrictions on immigration and enlargement of the EU.

Most important of all, we need the "ever closer union" aim to be dropped from EU governing treaties, including the Treaty of Lisbon, to put a stop to the everincreasing centralisation of power in Brussels.

The European Union and You, published by Saxon Books, is available in all good bookshops.

Do you think the EU has been good for Britain? Let us know below.