EU Crisis: Resistance to Brussels Rule Spreads Through Europe

What began as lone voices of dissent against Art of Superstate some decades past, has become a contagion of resistance sweeping across Europe.

As nights grow shorter, so does patience within national states towards Brussels Federalists. UK clamours an opportunity to cast a decisive vote on EU membership. Greece continues to tilt at the edge of chaos. Spain mulls over its existence as a unitary state. France is exposed as a fearful weak link in the status quo. And even Germania Magna sees real danger ahead.

Still Brussels Federalists sing lofty songs about union and dreamy futures. Can they be so right. Can they be so far sighted. This October 2012, the Irish Dail (parliament) hosted a new leader from the European parliament lauding desires for more and more solidarity. Solidarity, to no surprise, was clearly just not there.

Excerpts: Speech from the leader of the European Parliament Martin Schultz.

Your nation's tumultuous history, marked by many highs and lows, is the embodiment of the European experience. Ireland has lived through so much of the European experience......

But it's easy to be pro-European when times are good. - true commitment is proven when times get tough.

A parliament devoid of substance. Chancellor Angela Merkel holding the centre
calls the shots in Europe today. Can the European Parliament grow to protect citizens
from  a power hungry EU commission. Image 2012

The biggest risk for Europe is the lack of mutual trust. Democracy lives when people know that they can take decisions about their lives.... We elected politicians are called upon to win back their trust!

Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to say some words on a trend that is worrying me deeply. Times such as these, times of crises are always times of the executive. (read: EU IMF ECB bureaucrats, autocrats & technocrats).

Parliaments are increasingly seen as an annoying waste of time - they are not! Parliaments are the guarantors of democracy. We together have to ward off attempts by the executive to curtail the key prerogative of parliaments: the right to adopt a budget.

Today, in Europe we are all in the same boat. Either we all sail together or we all sink separately. Solidarity is in all our best interest. From the crisis we have learned that we need more European cooperation.

Excerpts:The Response from Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams.

Jose Manuel Barroso in his “State of the Union” address to the European Parliament several weeks ago confirmed that a federal Europe is the ultimate goal of the EU Commission.

We in our party (Sinn Fein) have consistently raised concerns in previous referendum campaigns that Irish sovereignty was being undermined and that we were being pushed toward a federal Europe.

The Irish people have never even been consulted on this. We talk about the democratic deficit. The people of this state, the people of this island, have never been consulted on that issue

So, I welcome very much your comments about the need for greater democratisation of EU institutions but there needs to be a recognition in Brussels there is no mandate and there is no popular will in this state for a European super state – a United States of Europe.