More specifically, democracy and transparency in European decision-making would sluice away many of the back-door deals and secret trade-offs, by which EU governments tend to negotiate and legislate. The effect would be to increase the influence and power of central EU institutions but also, essentially, the influence and power of national parliaments.The EU has 23 ways of making decisions (which is, in itself, part of the problem) But the core EU legislative process has three main players The European Commission initiates and drafts legislation. As the Select Committee report shows, the procedures which exist for consultation before EU decisions are reached are widely circumvented or ignored.Paradox Three: drawing attention to the democratic deficit of the EU is not, properly speaking, a Euro-sceptic cause. Decisions taken by governments in Brussels are presented to the House of Commons as faits accomplis. Less noticed is another fact, identified by Alan Butt Philip in a recent pamphlet for the John Stuart Mill Institute*. The EU builds up the power of national executives and national bureaucracies, at the expense of national parliaments and national electorates. How? The need to satisfy 15 EU viewpoints means legislation by government-to-government negotiation - mostly civil service to civil service negotiation - not by debate.
Why? Because most member governments - and especially the British - like it that way.Paradox Two: the EU is accused by the sceptics of sucking power and sovereignty into an amorphous, quasi-federal Europe. Despite lip service from member governments, and promises in the Maastricht Treaty, and rulings by the European Court, this is getting worse, not better. But it is not, in itself, fully democratic: it legislates in secret meetings at some distance from the voice of the electorate. The charge is denied in Brussels; but, again, there is a case to answer Just another tedious Euro-squabble? Not really.
It raises a very large issue - in some ways the largest single European issue - the democracy and openness and accountability of the European Union. These are deep and murky waters where many things are not quite what they seem. Consider three inter-locking paradoxes: Paradox One: the EU was created to sustain democratic values. The charge is denied by Whitehall but there is a strong case to answer. The committee also complains that the European Commission is slow in providing official English texts of its proposals. How accountable is the European Union? Example: A House of Commons committee is furious with Whitehall and furious with Brussels.
The Select Committee on European Legislation, which is supposed to scrutinise draft EU laws, complains that the government is first frustrating, and then ignoring, its work. She also realised that this was an important part of learning development But she wouldn't do it; she didn't love me. For she was an animal, and - as this research now clearly proves - most animals are selfish bastards.. Bathsheba knew all too well that I wanted her to climb the joined-up toilet roll tubes, negotiate the pillow-maze and walk through the Lego house. If they were human they would be prosecuted for negligence or cruelty.So the scales have dropped from my eyes. The pooch who craps in front of your front gate is more than aware of your anguish at his actions - but he doesn't give a shit.
No matter that you are sending him mental pictures in which he relieves himself on his slimeball of a master's duvet.Worst of all are those millions of pampered animals who have utterly failed - despite their knowledge of what is about to happen - to give warnings of natural disasters, and whose masters have duly and horribly perished in crashes, floods, volcanic eruptions and fights with aggrieved husbands. The cat that will not answer the phone, even when you're on the loo and it's important, is refusing out of malice, apathy, or an unpleasant feline sense of humour.What about the dog who does not go for help when you lie broken-legged in a field, but trots home, eats its Pedigree Chum and goes to sleep? It must really hate you. As the Times put it on Thursday, "scientists have proved that dogs can read human minds". It is hardly surprising then, that everyone concerned with this research seems to have concentrated purely on the "upside implications" of their findings.But consider. If dogs and cats and mynahs and llamas are capable of these wonderful things, how then do we explain all the times that they do not behave psychically or telepathically?Presumably all those notices tacked to trees lamenting a missing moggy or a lost pup, are completely redundant. The animals concerned are either dead, or simply don't want to come back. There was Bobbie the collie, who travelled three thousand miles across the United States to find his owner; there was Jaytee the terrier, always excited by the imminent arrival of her mistress, no matter how unpredictable that arrival was; there was the Mynah bird who squawked when the son of the family was coming home from boarding school ("the bird had a great rapport with our son, Robert", said the head of the house); there were the telephone answering cats, who only picked up the receiver for certain people; there was Lisa the embassy dog, who warned the ambassador to China of an impending earthquake, thus saving much life; there were the dogs who howled when their masters died on other continents; there was the American Internet subscriber whose llama, Dancer, used to defecate in the wrong place, until one day, "I sent Dancer [mental] pictures of him going in another part of the yard and within one day, he started to go there!" All this is, of course, pretty persuasive evidence of the extraordinary and unexpected powers of pets.
