The Lisbon Treaty was signed on December 13, 2007, with the stated purpose of “amending the treaty on European Union and the treaty establishing the European Community.” However, antiseptic phraseology aside, the Lisbon Treaty function amounts to far more than a mere ‘amending,’ as Open Europe has documented in “A guide to the constitutional treaty.” As the 110 page study declares in the “Executive Summary”:

The debate over whether the Lisbon Treaty is substantively different to the Constitution is effectively over. Virtually every EU Government has admitted that the Lisbon Treaty maintains the substance of the Constitution.

The “new” treaty reintroduces virtually all the changes proposed in the original Constitutional Treaty, by transferring them into the two existing treaties, the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty Establishing the European Community (TEC). The latter will be renamed the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (hereafter referred to as TFEU).

Open Europe’s analysis finds that only 10 out of 250 proposals in the “new” treaty are different from the proposals in the original EU Constitution. In other words, 96 percent of the text is the same as the rejected Constitution. Of the few changes that there are, few are of any significance. For example, the new version of the Constitutional Treaty no longer mentions the symbols of the union, like its flag and anthem. However, of course, these symbols already exist.

Despite efforts such as that which were undertaken by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office to dismiss concerns about the Lisbon Treaty in terms of various ‘myths,’ the Open Europe “guide” documents numerous ways in which the the Lisbon Treaty effectively creates a far more powerful, centralized European Union.

There are some signs of a growing concern that the EU is turning out to be far more than that to which some member nations had agreed. Thus a story at Telegraph.co.uk reports:

Confidential negotiations on how to implement the Lisbon Treaty have produced proposals to allow the EU to negotiate treaties and even open embassies across the world.

A letter conferring a full "legal personality" for the Union has been drafted in order for a new European diplomatic service to be recognised as fully fledged negotiators by international bodies and all non-EU countries.

According to one confidential paper, the first pilot "embassies" are planned in New York, Kabul and Addis Ababa.

The move is highly symbolic in Britain as it formally scraps the "European Community", the organisation in which Britons originally voted to remain in the country's only referendum on Europe 34 years ago.

“Confidential” is the polite way of saying “secret”—it allows one to describe a process which is essentially being hidden from the people until it is a “done deal” without all the messiness of public protests and other efforts to derail the plan before it becomes public. If managed with sufficient secrecy, the entire plan is ready for implementation before it bursts forth into the public eye, ready to subdue all opposition, like Athena from the brow of Zeus. Any protests which do arise may be met with mock-alarm and the retort, “But we have been working hard toward this goal for years. Why are you only protesting now?”

Critics of the EU are not prepared to simply give in to the plan. Again, according to the Telegraph, Lorraine Mullally, the director of Open Europe, described the move as "a huge transfer of power which makes the EU look more like a country than an international agreement. Giving the EU legal personality means that the EU, rather than member states, will be able to sign all kinds of international agreements – on foreign policy, defence, crime and judicial issues – for the first time," she said.

She pointed out that the 1975 referendum was on staying in the EC and that it was the European Communities Act that gave Brussels legislation primacy over British law. "British voters agreed to join the European Communities, not a political union with legal personality with the power to sign all kinds of international agreements," said Miss Mullally. "No one under the age of 52 has ever had a say on this important evolution and it's about time we did."

But, as it has been said, “a small error in the beginning leads to a large error in the end.” Margaret Thatcher issued a warning of some of the dangers associated with the European Community in her Bruges Speech of September 20, 1988:

Indeed, it is ironic that just when those countries such as the Soviet Union, which have tried to run everything from the centre, are learning that success depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the centre, there are some in the Community who seem to want to move in the opposite direction.

We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.

Certainly we want to see Europe more united and with a greater sense of common purpose.

But it must be in a way which preserves the different traditions, parliamentary powers and sense of national pride in one's own country; for these have been the source of Europe's vitality through the centuries.

Thatcher’s conclusion to this speech struck, with great foresight, at the very heart of the problem of what is now coming to pass with the Lisbon Treaty: “And what we need now is to take decisions on the next steps forward, rather than let ourselves be distracted by Utopian goals. Utopia never comes, because we know we should not like it if it did.”

All attempts to implement Utopia simply produce a Dystopia. The nearer the ‘dream’ of a united Europe comes to becoming a reality, the more the people will realize that what may result is a nightmarish end to everything which has given definition and distinction to their respective national identities.

Rt. Rev. James Heiser has served as Pastor of Salem Lutheran Church in Malone, Texas, while maintaining his responsibilities as publisher of Repristination Press, which he established in 1993 to publish academic and popular theological books to serve the Lutheran Church.  Heiser has also served since 2005 as the Dean of Missions for The Augustana Ministerium and in 2006 was called to serve as Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America (ELDoNA). An advocate of manned space exploration, Heiser serves on the Steering Committee of the Mars Society. His publications include two books; The Office of the Ministry in N. Hunnius' Epitome Credendorum (1996) and A Shining City on a Higher Hill: Christianity and the Next New World (2006), as well as dozens of journal articles and book reviews.

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DDW

October 09, 2009

173.74.213.85

Votes: +2

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World government

Here we come. And wouldn't you just know that it would be, again, New York for the "embassy" location.

Peter Steele

October 11, 2009

69.182.102.166

Votes: +0

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Never returned to Europe after WWII

My late father stayed in our great nation after he came home from Bremerhaven Germany. He was right as an American to do this. He went to work against the socialists and commununists in our country and was very successful. He did befriend three German girls who were orphaned by FDR's and Hitler's war saying so much for enmity and was right about two Germans - Pastor Deitrich Bonhoffer and Clau von Stauffenbrg. Had Stauffenberg succeeded and lived WWII would have ended in 1944 and not 1945. I did spend two weeks in Sweden in 1973 on vaction to see a friend of the family Karin Wahlstrom. She told me the truth about a socialist friend of hers with a son in Communist Cuba and I quit writing to her feeling betrayed and deceived. My Souther Baptists are sending bibles globally to spread the word on Christ our Lord and Savior. Dad was an expert on Communism and the non-Communist left meaning that he was a good friend of Goldwater. God is aq tough taskmaster ever since George Washington prayed for freedom and victory.

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