I am grateful to Sid for posting the ecologist article, which I thought was an unusually well-researched statement of the anti-EU postion. However, I think that Sid - and the Ecologist - fail to distinguish sufficiently between the EU and the Maastricht Treaty. I agree with the criticism that Sid and the Ecologist make of the Treaty. It is an extremely reactionary document. Its proposals for monetary union are undemocratic, monetarist and deflationary. But while the Maastricht treaty marks a significant right-ward shift in the way that the EU is being developed, the EU is a wider project. Sid says that the underlying purpose of the EU and the Maastricht Treaty is to strengthen the ability of transnational capital to impose anti-social standards. This is true as far as the Maastricht treaty is concerned. But the EU has more contradictary roots. For example, many of the bourgeois politicians who were involved in promoting the European Community in the 1950s were concerned to ensure that the national divisions which had given rise to two world wars should be overcome. Since then, as Sid notes, major business figures have played a key part in shaping the form of the EU. Just as business organises and pushes for its interests at a national level, so the heads of the big multinationals have met regularly under the auspices of the secretive Business Round Table on Europe, and, helped by the lack of democratic accountability of EU institutions, have been very succesful in promoting their agenda in Europe. But the fact that the right - or at least big capital - have been more successful than the left and the working class movement in shaping the EU is no reason to abandon the struggle at that level. The lack of democratic accountability of the new European Monetary Institute, and the deflationary bias in the way it is consituted are a serious cause for concern. But, with the exception of Britain, whose monetary policy is more directly affected by US policy, the other members of the EU have for some time found that there monetary policy is effectively determined by what the Bundesbank does. For the governments of these countries, a structure which allows them to share in shaping European monetary policy is seen as a step forward. I think it is mistaken, and also dangerous, to argue that powers are being transferred from national governments to the EU, and that this is reducing democratic accountability. Britain in particular has a semi-feudal system of government, and many important issues - like Brown's decision to give operational independence to the Bank of England - are not subject to parliamentary control. Certainly, its important to push for greater democratic control at the national level, and also for that matter, at a regional level within nation states, particularly in the case of the old centralised states like Britain and France. But, given the degree of integration of the European economy, I think that there are many areas where it is more appropriate to push for democratic control at the level of the EU. Trevor Evans Berlin.
