UK's Fight For Democracy

by The Bruges Group - 07:48 on 21 September 2009

This paper charts how Britain became entangled in the anti-democratic European Union. And outlines the damage this has caused to our own self-government; including how the European Union dominates legislation in the United Kingdom. On the most conservative estimate over 65% of new legislation emanates from the EU.

This study also looks at how the European elites are in danger of creating a profound moral and institutional crisis in Europe – a crisis of democracy. Those in the Brussels elite who have power have not been elected, and those who have been elected have no power.

• The European project was designed to take over the governance of the nation states and to create an unaccountable self-perpetuating oligarchy to rule without the inconvenience of democracy. It gave itself a façade of legitimacy by creating the European Parliament, but this Parliament is a sham.

• The European arena continues to be largely the domain of self-selecting political and commercial elites.

• The fundamental democratic flaws in the European Union are now so deep, and history shows that the Union exhibits no sign of wanting to change them. Perhaps the only solution if we wish to live in a democracy is for the United Kingdom to withdraw from this wholly undemocratic body.
  It is time for the people to decide.

Click here to read the full research online

The Impact of EU Legislation on the UK's Rail Network

As reported at length in The Daily Telegraph on Friday 18th September 2009, Britain has consistently been ahead of the game where EU railway legislation is concerned. We broke up a monolithic network, ran private trains and encouraged competition long before the EU told us to. However, as Britain’s horizontally fragmented network - the uniquely British franchise system - is in tune with Brussels’ thinking, if we wanted to revert to either a nationalised railway or vertical integration along the lines of the pre-nationalisation era, we could not actually do so while a member of the EU.

And even with the current convergence between Britain and Brussels on many railway matters, European legislation has caused far more problems for our railway network than would be expected, due to Brussels’ obsession with breaking down national barriers. Having eliminated border crossings in the Schengen Area, the EU is determined to create a harmonised pan-European rail network similarly free from national boundaries.

From the UK’s perspective, even though several aspects of the proposals are modelled on Britain’s rail privatisation, the European Union’s increasing interference is likely to be detrimental to rail operation in this country in several areas.For example:-

• The one trial implementation of the European Rail Traffic Management System on a single route in Wales has still not been completed, in spite of costing £59 million – over 10% of the cost of implementing Train Protection Warning System over the entire network.

• A European Commission proposal on giving priority to international freight trains on a busy UK trunk route, which if implemented could add 25 minutes onto passenger journey times only a few years after a £9 billion upgrade to speed them up.

• The possible costs of the planned extension of the Interoperability Directive to cover domestic train services will be expensive. Bearing in mind an earlier directive cost the UK over £80 million in implementation costs just for the very limited number of international trains that run here.

The longer Britain remains in the EU the longer we will be locked into its thinking on railways. Even as things stand, with so few international trains ever likely to run in Britain compared with other member states, the benefits of regaining control of our railways are obvious. Surely the nation that gave railways to the world deserves the freedom to determine the direction that its own network should take.  

Click here to read the full research online

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