Brusselswatch – europhile myths

europhile myths

"We should always tell the press, freely and frankly... anything they could easily find out some other way."
Sir Humphrey Appleby in the BBC's Yes, Prime Minister

It is common for Europhiles to dismiss as a "Eurosceptic myth" anything done by Brussels they feel unable to defend. (This applies especially to the professional Europhiles paid by the European Commission to do its PR.) However, the sad truth is that even the most absurd of these stories generally turns out to be true – yes, even the famous "straight bananas" directive, or to give it its proper name, Directive 2557/94. Its companion concerning straight cucumbers, incidentally, is Directive 1677/88, and the recent directive on lead in electrical equipment which had the effect of making all church organs illegal is Directive 2002/96. (Admittedly, it wasn't intended to have that effect, but with only 18,000 permanent staff the Commission can't be expected to think through the ramifications of every law it forces on Europe.)

None of this should be surprising. If a body considers it reasonable to prosecute a greengrocer for selling bananas by the pound when his customers requested this, why would it draw back from legislating on what shape those bananas should be? But perhaps what is most shocking is that they can't meet even Sir Humphrey's low standard of honesty – that one may as well admit anything people can easily find out for themselves. Instead it is the Europhiles, not the Eurosceptics, who deal in myth and lies, such as the following:

1) The proposed Constitution wouldn't give more powers to Brussels – in fact, it would return some powers to nation states.
2) EU member states don't lose their sovereignty, they just "pool" it.
3) Pooling sovereignty in a supranational union is "progressive".
4) The principle of "subsidiarity" means that democracy will be preserved.
5) European politicians represent their country's interests in the European arena.
6) People today think of themselves not as Italian, German, French etc. but as European.
7) There is no plan for a United States of Europe.
8) Eurosceptics just hate foreigners and/or are obsessed with the Second World War.
9) "Nobody is talking about..."
10) Britain has more clout as part of a supranational union.
11) Diversity is a core value of the EU.
12) The only alternative to the EU is to be dominated by America.
13) The euro has been a boost to tourism in Europe.
14) Business, then.
15) Harmonising laws spreads best practice across Europe.
16) It doesn't matter that the Commission in unelected.
17) Belonging to the EU is necessary for Britain's trade.
18) EFTA countries have to abide by legislation they played no part in framing.
19) Britain couldn't leave the EU as it is the source of so much of our legal system.
20) Britain would face reprisals if it left the EU.
21) These Eurosceptics have no idea what they'd put in place of the European Union.
22) The EU has prevented war between its member states for 60 years.
23) No other country is as Eurosceptic as Britain.
24) A new EU deal will reduce international air fares.
25) The Constitution is necessary because rules devised for a club of six won't work now there are 27 members.
26) Domestic issues are more important than the EU in determining how I vote.
27) The EU can't be called an empire because it exists with the consent of its member states.
28) The EU must be a good thing since so many countries outside want to join.
29) The EU may have its problems, but the best way to reform it is from within.
30) Sovereignty is a myth in the modern world.
31) "There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe, we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified."

1) The proposed Constitution wouldn't give more powers to Brussels – in fact, it would return some powers to nation states.
In fact, Article 1-6 states that "The Constitution... shall have primacy over the laws of the member states". The document goes on to say that Brussels will have jurisdiction in virtually every area of government policy: transport, energy, public health, trade, employment, social policy, competition, agriculture, fisheries, defence, foreign affairs, asylum and immigration, criminal justice and even space exploration. Member states may set their own policy in these areas if and only if the EU chooses not to do so.

It is interesting that, as always, pro-Europeans prefer simply to deny what the Constitution would really mean, at least until it is too late to do anything about it. Indeed, it is sometimes hard to see what pro-Europeans are actually pro, since their line on integration is always that it isn't really happening. Why not simply explain to us all why it is such a good thing, as they presumably believe?

2) EU member states don't lose their sovereignty, they just "pool" it.
The word sovereignty means complete control – terms like "pooled" or "shared sovereignty" make no more sense than "cold heat" or "dry water".

There's a well known story that Denmark's King Christian X, on hearing that the Jews of his country would be forced by the occupying Nazis to wear a yellow star on their clothing, put a yellow star on his own clothes and encouraged all non-Jewish Danes to do the same. Less well known is the story that in the mid-1930s, before the outbreak of open hostilities, Hitler cabled Christian several times, saying that it seemed pointless that Germany and Denmark should be two separate countries, and why didn't they merge them into a union. Christian ignored this at first, but after Hitler had sent a third telegram making the same suggestion, he felt he had to respond. "Your idea of a union between Germany and Denmark is interesting," he cabled back, "but I think at my age running two countries would be too much for me."

Christian, of course, understood perfectly well that Hitler envisaged a union in which he (Hitler) and not Christian would have ruled both countries. He understood that the weasel word "union" actually meant the subjugation of his country without a shot being fired. It's interesting to note that Denmark is one of the most Eurosceptic countries now.

3) Pooling sovereignty in a supranational union is "progressive".
Truly progressive politics brings power closer to the people and makes it more accountable. The European project is doing the exact opposite.

For example, one of the motivations for Scottish devolution was that, as a minority within the UK, the Scots tended to be saddled with whatever government the English had voted for, even when they had voted a different way themselves. The Scots now have their own Parliament, its members elected solely by Scottish votes. But instead of devolving to this Parliament, power is leeching both from this and from the Westminster Parliament to Brussels. Even if the Brussels machine were truly democratic, rather than just a cosmetic measure intended to disguise rule by an unelected oligarchy, the interests of Scotland – and every other member state – would inevitably be swamped in a polity that stretches from Ireland to the Baltic states.

4) The principle of "subsidiarity" means that democracy will be preserved.
"Subsidiarity" states that every decision throughout the EU should be made at the lowest possible level of government. It is always cited as a counter-argument to the idea that too much power is being centralised.

The trouble is, the question of whether a particular decision should be made by the Brussels elites or national governments is decided by... the Brussels elites, who of course tend to feel that every decision is best left to them. This is partly simple power-grabbing, and partly a genuine (if puzzling) belief that in every area, not just cross-border questions like trade but domestic matters also, it is best to impose a single policy on the whole of Europe.

This attitude is typified by British MEP Andrew Duff, who complained in January 2007 that "Too many Dutch MPs are also keen on using the principle of subsidiarity as a pretext for stopping things happening at EU level." In other words, the norm is for decisions to be made at EU level and subsidiarity only a comforting myth to fool the gullible, not something that was ever meant to be put into practice.

The Constitution would take this process even further (see above).

5) European politicians represent their country's interests in the European arena.
Quite the opposite. European Commissioners, for example, are required to swear a formal Oath of Independence on taking office, declaring that they are "good Europeans" rather than representatives of their home countries. In fact, there is even a point of protocol that they should not refer to their home country but to "the country that I know best".

6) People today think of themselves not as Italian, German, French etc. but as European.
A deliberate confusion of two quite separate ideas is being attempted here. On the one hand, people no doubt enjoy the freedom to work and live in any European country, However, this could easily have been achieved through voluntary agreements between sovereign democracies, and did not require a single government for the whole continent, and the consequent erosion of national sovereignty, to achieve it.

As to whether people consider themselves European rather than Italian, French, German etc. the only objective evidence we have is participation in elections to the European Parliament – and throughout Europe, turnout has been falling steadily for decades, even though the EU has taken over much of what national governments used to do during this period. Furthermore, we see at every EU summit that national leaders always fight for their country's interests – with the notable exception of Tony Blair, of course, for whom seeming the "good European" was always far more important than representing those who elected him.

Ronald Reagan famously contrasted America, which he called a nation that has a government, with the USSR, a government that has a nation. In the EU we see a third category – a government that hopes one day to have a nation.

7) There is a no plan for a United States of Europe.
This was being pointlessly denied as recently as 2005 by European Commissioner Margot Wallstrom. Unfortunately, her colleagues were more honest about EU ambitions:

"The EU Constitution is the birth certificate of the United States of Europe. The Constitution is not the end point of integration, but the framework for – as it says in the preamble – an ever closer union."
German Europe Minister Hans Martin Bury

“This is a big change from the basic concept of nation states. It’s a change of centuries of history.”
Then European Commission President Romano Prodi

"Absolutely... We are witnessing the last remnants of national politics."
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguelnuel Moratinos, in response to the question "Does accepting the European Constitution mean a surrender of member states' sovereignty?"

“It is a birth of a political union, not only an economic and social union; an event unique in the history of our Continent, a turning point in the history of humanity.”
Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi

"The Constitution is the capstone of a European Federal State."
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt

"Our continent has seen successive attempts at unifying it: Caesar, Charlemagne and Napoleon, among others. We, for our part, seek to unify it by the pen. Will the pen succeed where the sword has finally failed?"
European Convention President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing

"On 29 October 2004 in this most sacred Capitoline Hill, which is the citadel of this bountiful city... the high contracting parties of the nations joined in the European Union signed a treaty about the form of constitution to be adopted, so that the races of Europe might coalesce into a body of one people with one mind, one will and one government."
Plaque to commemorate the signing of the European Constitution in Rome (our italics)

8) Eurosceptics just hate foreigners and/or are obsessed with the Second World War.
The Eurosceptic position is that nations should elect – and be able to dismiss – the governments that rule them. Sovereign nations should cooperate on cross border matters like trade (as of course they always have) but domestic matters should be handled domestically, by whichever government the people of that country choose to vote into office. If neighbouring countries happen to have different ideas on, for example, whether to have high or low taxes and public spending, they should be free to do as they wish without unnecessary outside interference. Is it hating foreigners to trust them to govern themselves?

As for the Second World War, this card is indeed frequently played – by Europhiles. European Commissioner Margot Wallström held a press conference at the site of a concentration camp in which she contrasted the Constitution, which she (for once) admitted was the blueprint for a superstate, with "the old intergovernmental way of doing things" ie the existence of nation states, which she claimed led to genocide.

Invoking the Second World War has proven particularly effective for Europhiles in Germany, where any doubt or scepticism about the EU is treated as if it were a call for a return to Nazism. Thus the Germans, already suffering with the massive costs of reunification with the former East Germany, have been bullied into paying by far the largest share of the EU budget, and into ratifying the proposed Constitution without a popular vote.

The Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim stated as his famous "614th commandment": "Thou shalt not grant Hitler a posthumous victory." This would include accepting the undemocratic and corrupt EU on the entirely false grounds that, if it didn't exist, Nazism would be bound to arise in its place.

9) "Nobody is talking about..."
Even with its massive propaganda budget, Brussels knows that European integration will be easiest to achieve if most people don't know it's happening. As Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, put it:

"We decide on something, leave it lying around, and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't know what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back."

If word nevertheless gets out that another step towards integration is planned, Eurocrats airily deny it with the phrase "Nobody is talking about..." At one time or another, "nobody" has been talking about political union, the single currency and the Constitution (and of course most of what the Constitution would mean is denied even today – see above). As Daniel Hannan MEP wryly commented, "This 'nobody' is obviously a pretty powerful individual – whatever he wants one day becomes law the next."

10) Britain has more clout as part of a supranational union.
It's one thing to say that the EU has more clout than Britain, or any member state, on its own. But that does us no good unless what the EU is pushing for is in Britain's interests, which it often isn't.

The folly of creating a single state stretching from Ireland to the Baltic is that anything you propose will inevitably suit some member states very well, some less well and some not at all. A sane answer to the problem might be simply not to force a single set of rules on such a varied group of nations (thereby promoting the "diversity" the EU always claims to be in favour of). Brussels' answer, on the other hand, is to extend QMV (qualified majority voting) to more and more areas which previously required unanimous decisions, meaning that measures could be pushed through even if several member states objected to them.

11) Diversity is a core value of the EU.
The word "diversity" appears frequently in EU public statements. However, the very basis of the EU is to stamp out diversity – the ability of member states to make their own laws and policy, differing from each other as they see fit.

For example, when the French rejected the proposed Constitution, many commentators noted that the British would also have rejected it, but for the opposite reasons – for the French, it was economically too laissez-faire, for the British too protectionist. Of course, this is only a problem if you start from the assumption that a single constitution has to be forced on both countries, let alone the other 25 EU members. Let every country have the type of government – and therefore policy in economics and every other area – that its people choose, and you have no more problem. You also have diversity in action, not just as a cheap and insincere slogan.

12) The only alternative to the EU is to be dominated by America.
Why? Our relationships with Europe and America are two entirely separate issues, to be considered on their own merits, and withdrawing from one entanglement does not necessarily mean sinking further into the other. If anything, those who advocate independence from the EU are more likely to feel Britain should be independent across the board.

In any case, America simply does not corrode our national democracy the way the EU does. Westminster has never been forced to rubber stamp a law dictated to it by Washington, whereas fully 80% of the the laws Westminster passes originate in Brussels in precisely this way. In almost all areas of government, Parliament's job is to sit by the fax machine, waiting to be told what laws it has to pass.

Of course, America may influence British policy in ways many people dislike, for example over Iraq – in which case we can seek to change the government's mind by public protests or, in the last instance, vote the government out in favour of one that would behave differently. The EU's stranglehold on Westminster, on the other hand, is not affected by which party in is government in Britain, since the law-making power has already been surrendered to Brussels. All Britain could do to resist is to leave the EU entirely.

13) The euro has been a boost to tourism in Europe.
It might seem undeniable that tourists find it convenient to be able to cross borders without needing to change their money. However, what tourist these days doesn't have a cashpoint (ATM) card that makes it easy to get hold of the local currency, and credit cards that can be used everywhere? The era of tourists having to get foreign currency from their bank or travel agent before leaving home was over long before the single currency was introduced.

14) Business, then.
It is argued that the single currency has led to lower prices because of price transparency ie businesses can more easily compare the prices of different suppliers around the continent. This argument seems a little weak – are business people unable to understand exchange rates or use a calculator? As for lowering prices, the truth is that when the euro was introduced, many wholesalers and retailers took the opportunity to hike up their prices, hoping their customers wouldn't realise.

In any case, the single currency is far more than a question of what picture is on the banknotes. The eurozone countries are required to adhere to the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), artificially keeping their economies in line with each other. This robs them of many of the tools they formerly used to manage their economies – for example, Italy used regularly to devalue the lira as a counter-inflationary measure, and is struggling now that it can no longer do this. This has created a strong anti-euro sentiment in Italy.

If the SGP seems unworkable, trying to force an artificial similarity on vastly divergent economies, this may be because it was only ever intended to be a short-term measure, paving the way to full political union. The single currency itself was intended not as an economic goal in its own right, but as a bridgehead that brought the true political goal, a single European state, one step closer.

15) Harmonising laws spreads best practice across Europe.
Unfortunately, the laws imposed across Europe are not necessarily the best or wisest, merely those with the most political power behind them. In fact, EU laws are often designed to disadvantage the states on which they are imposed.

Consider for example the Working Time Directive, which limits the number of hours people may work. The French are keen on this measure, part of the "social model" they prefer to what they see as the unrestrained capitalism of the "Anglo-Saxon model". However, they know that whatever the benefits to lifestyle, it puts them at an economic disadvantage to countries where people can choose to work as long as they like. The solution? To impose the same disadvantages on every other European country and remove their competitive advantage.

Of course, there is no mechanism to impose the Working Time Directive on the rest of the world, so in the long term Europe will lose out economically to countries like the US, and increasingly India and China as well.

16) It doesn't matter that the Commission is unelected.
Europhiles will sometimes pretend that the European Commission is equivalent to some unelected body in British public life, hoping to make it seem more acceptable that the Commission is not elected either. Thus the Commission has at one time or another been compared to Britain's Civil Service and even, absurdly, to the telecoms regulator OFCOM.

This is obviously nonsense – imagine OFCOM having the sole power to propose new British laws. However, let's consider the question from a different angle. The fact that the Commission is unelected is the focus of a huge amount of resistance to the European project. If it is so unimportant, then why not change it? Why does Brussels not wipe out at a stroke something which gives so much ammunition to Eurosceptics?

The answer is, of course, that an untouchable elite at the top of the EU food chain, immune to public opinion, is and always has been essential to the project. Altiero Spinelli recognised back in the 1950s that popular backing for European unification was "as yet non-existent". In the face of this, the EU has proceeded with integration via a combination of massive propaganda spending on the one hand and secrecy, or even outright denial, on the other. As Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, explains:

This could never work if the driving force of the EU, the European Commission, needed to seek re-election on a regular basis. It would be forced to do what the people of Europe wanted, instead of trying to persuade them that they wanted what it was already doing.

17) Belonging to the EU is necessary for Britain's trade.
In fact, the four countries of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) can trade with the EU on the same basis as EU countries can with each other. They can also trade with that little place known as the rest of the world without falling foul of the EU's external trade barriers. But they are not bound by the massive direct and indirect costs of EU membership, and of course as sovereign democracies they are free to govern themselves as they see fit.

As a result, the EFTA countries export twice as much per capita to the EU as Britain does from within, despite the supposed trade advantages of EU membership.

In fact, the Commission's own statistics show that the EU has been bad for business. Commission Vice President Günter Verheugen admitted in October 2006 that EU standardisation now costs businesses €600 billion a year. This is a larger sum than the total spending of 20 out of the 27 member states. It dwarfs the EU’s €110 billion budget. On the Commission’s own statistics, it is nearly four times as much as the €180 billion savings supposedly generated by the single market.

18) EFTA countries have to abide by legislation they played no part in framing.
There are two obvious problems with this argument. Firstly, there are currently 27 EU member states – if the EFTA countries joined as well, there would be 31. This would give each state a 1/31 voice in any new legislation, hardly enough to guarantee that it will be designed to suit them when there are 30 competing interests.

In any case, the legislation concerned is entirely in the very narrow area of trading standards. If you want to sell your products to the EU, they must meet EU standards, just as they must meet American standards if you want to sell them there. Does anyone argue that we should become the 51st state of America just so that we can influence American trading standards to suit our exporters?

In return for losing a token amount of influence over EU trading standards, EFTA countries avoid the massive direct and indirect costs of EU membership and are free to govern themselves as sovereign democracies. By contrast, EU members find that 80% of their laws are dictated to them by Brussels. For example, since 1992 Norway has had to adopt 3,000 European directives, but most of these were so trivial – the right way to list ingredients on food packaging, for example – that only 50 Acts of Parliament were required. During the same period, Britain had to accept 24,000 directives, many of them far from trivial.

19) Britain couldn't leave the EU as it is the source of so much of our legal system.
It is interesting to hear this argument coming from those who have consistently denied the way the EU has been eroding Britain's national sovereignty for years!

However, it is based in a misunderstanding of the way the EU works. Although national parliaments do not have the authority to resist directives from Brussels, they must nevertheless rubber stamp them before they can become national law. Thus British laws created in response to EU Directives are, apart from their origin, just like any other British laws, and would remain in place if Britain were to leave the EU. We would then be in the happy position of being able to consider the existing EU-derived laws on a case by case basis, keeping those that seem worthwhile and rescinding the rest.

20) Britain would face reprisals if it left the EU.
This is an interesting statement. Europhiles normally tell us of the tremendous benefits of belonging to the EU. Why, then, would other EU members resent our leaving – surely they would just shrug their shoulders and wonder why we would do something so damaging to ourselves? If they resent our leaving, doesn't this imply that they know that leaving would relieve us of a burden, leaving them to shoulder all the more of it themselves?

In any case, whatever hypothetical rancour they might feel, they have no choice but to trade with EFTA members just as freely as they do with EU members.

21) These Eurosceptics have no idea what they'd put in place of the European Union.
Perhaps the most absurd statement ever made by Europhiles, or indeed anyone else. All over Europe, the EU has leeched powers away from sovereign democracies while leaving their outward form intact – ie national parliaments still exist, their members chosen by a popular vote, even if they now only do 20% of the governing. Take the EU out of the equation and national democracies could reassert themselves and govern without interference, just as they used to.

22) The EU has prevented war between its member states for 60 years.
This tends to be the Europhiles' last ditch argument – never mind how corrupt and undemocratic the Brussels system is, never mind how damaging the Common Agricultural Policy is to Europe and the third world etc. All this is worth putting up with because the EU has prevented war between its member states for the last 60 years. The EU's website explicitly makes this claim.

Well, the politician hasn't been born who wouldn't try to take credit for anything good that happened on his/her watch. The trouble is, there is no correlation at all between whether different groups belong to the same nation (or supranational union) and whether there is conflict between them. Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, to take only the most obvious examples, show that you will not stop bloodshed by pronouncing from on high that the two groups concerned are part of the same polity. Indeed, in Rwanda's case the legacy of imperial rule (by Brussels, as it happens...) was a major contributing factor to the slaughter of the mid-1990s. Conversely, of course, there are innumerable examples of nation states living side by side without any conflict between them, suggesting that something other than national identity must be the problem.

One of the motives for the unification of Germany in the 19th century was that individual states would no longer fight against each other once they were melded into one nation. Indeed they didn't – but the newly unified Germany fought three increasingly disastrous wars with its neighbours in the next 75 years. But rather than stopping to wonder whether their methodology is wrong, the integrationists simply want to apply the same principle on a larger scale.

23) No other country is as Eurosceptic as Britain.
This argument took rather a knock when the French and Dutch voted against the proposed Constitution – it seems that what the French political elite wants and what the French people want are two different things. There are also strong Eurosceptic movements in Denmark, Sweden and the Czech Republic in particular. Meanwhile Italy, while not exactly Eurosceptic, is beginning seriously to question whether the considerable sacrifices necessary to stay in the eurozone are worthwhile.

On the continent as in Britain, Euroscepticism is not represented fairly in the media. In Denmark, for example, despite a strong Eurosceptic feeling in the country as a whole, all 42 of the daily newspapers are Europhile.

24) A new EU deal will reduce international air fares.
A particularly pernicious lie. The truth is that for a long time the EU kept air fares unnecessarily high by restricting competition, ruling that an airline could only operate a service to or from the country it's based in, not between two other countries. This was, needless to say, to protect inefficient European airlines from fair competition. Having now relaxed that rule, Brussels hopes to be praised for helping European consumers when in fact it is merely ceasing to harm them (in this area, at any rate).

25) The Constitution is necessary because rules devised for a club of six won't work now there are 27 members.
First and foremost, this is simply not true. As the EU has grown from six to 15, to 25, to 27 members, there has been no let up in the amount of legislation it has produced. Indeed of the 170,000 pages of the Acquis Communautaire (the sum total of EU laws and agreements since 1957), 100,000 have been added since 1997. Some paralysis!

In any case, it worth considering what is meant by "changing the rules to reflect the greater number of members". Of course, what this means is abolishing national vetoes, so that matters which formerly required unanimity could now be decided by qualified majority voting. Naturally this would increase the number of laws that could be passed, but would also mean that countries would be forced to accept laws that harmed their interests – proving wrong once again the siren voices that told us that EU membership would never mean being forced into anything we didn't want to do.

26) Domestic issues are more important than the EU in determining how I vote.
The whole problem with the EU is that it doesn't confine itself to international or cross-border issues but interferes needlessly in national politics, to the extent that 84% of new legislation in member states is now dictated by Brussels. To take a random sample, the recent change to the frequency of dustbin collections has its origin in the EU Landfill Directive, and HIPs (House Information Packs), the new system of stamp pricing by size as well as weight and the increasing bureaucracy involved in opening a bank account all flow from EU legislation. Of course Brussels is more than happy for us to remain ignorant of this and blame national governments, while splashing the EU logo all over anything that might be more popular.

Add to this the fact that Britain pays nearly £14 billion of taxpayers' money to the EU every year – money that then can't be spent on Britain's schools, hospitals, public transport etc. – and it becomes clear that the EU is the biggest domestic issue of them all.

27) The EU can't be called an empire because it exists with the consent of its member states.
Those who make this argument presumably imagine that the imperialists of the past never did deals with local rulers, granting them a degree of autonomy in return for their accepting the overall authority of the empire. In fact, this was entirely standard practice, and for obvious reasons. Consider for example the size of the British Empire at its height, and the size of Britain itself. Did Britain maintain control by having an overwhelming military presence throughout the empire, ready to quell any stirrings of revolt? Of course not. Britain made deals with local rulers, rewarding their "loyalty" to the empire with money and power – just as Brussels today rewards those national politicians who agree to deliver their countries into its embrace.

28) The EU must be a good thing since so many countries outside want to join.
It would be truer to say that their politicians are keen to join, seeing how much they themselves could gain from it. Eurocrats are past masters at manipulating this sort of greed. Before the 10 new member states joined in 2004, representatives from each country spent a year in Brussels, observing and even taking part in debates but not voting, and were paid as if their countries were already members. An Estonian newspaper calculated that a civil servant moving from Tallin to Brussels at the same grade would make 22 times his previous salary. At the end of the year, not surprisingly, they were in no hurry to return to their former lifestyles, and all 10 countries joined the EU.

Norwegian politicians, similarly, have several times tried to take their country into the EU. But at least they had the honesty to put the matter to a plebiscite, and the people have voted no every time.

29) The EU may have its problems, but the best way to reform it is from within.
We have been hearing this argument for years. The trouble is that no matter how long we stay on board, sacrificing Britain's interests left, right and centre to do so, it never results in the slightest improvement in the way the EU conducts itself. Reform is endlessly discussed but never actually takes place.

The Common Agricultural Policy – reform of the CAP was dangled in front of the gullible Blair to persuade him to give up Britain's so-called "rebate" on payments to the EU budget. Needless to say, his capitulation was immediately followed by a budget that allocated an even larger percentage to the CAP than did its predecessor.

The EU budget – now in its 13th year of the auditors refusing to sign off on it because of the huge amount of money unaccounted for.

EU milk quotas – set in 1984 and never reformed since. These are not only out of date, they are also inflexible, leaving some farmers with a much higher quota than they need whilst others are legally prevented from producing as much as they could. As a result Europe's share of the world milk market is steadily falling.

MEPs' expenses – bear no relation to expenses actually incurred, and in any case are never audited. For example, travel from the home country to the EP is reimbursed at the rate of a first class ticket plus10%. An MEP who travels more cheaply, for example using a budget airline, simply keeps the difference, tax free. This is supplemented by a daily "attendance allowance" of €268 just for showing up at the EP – an essential part of the job, one might have thought.

MEPs have several times discussed reforming their expenses regime, but always found some excuse to vote against doing so. Instead, they voted to ban the media from certain parts of the building, following an incident where a German TV crew filmed MEPs signing in to receive their daily attendance allowance and going home immediately.

The monthly Brussels to Strasbourg jaunt – once a month every MEP, along with 5,000 support staff and 10 truckloads of documents, must travel from Brussels to Strasbourg and back. This costs the taxpayer €200 million a year, to say nothing of the unnecessary carbon emissions.

Even within the EU there is strong opposition to this colossal waste. Swedish MEP Cecilia Malmström started a petition (see oneseat.eu) calling for the EP to be located solely in Brussels. In September 2006 the petition reached one million signatures (the number is significant because the European Constitution included the rather empty promise that any legislation which gained the support of one million European citizens would be "considered" by the Commission). Needless to say, no action has been taken.

30) Sovereignty is a myth in the modern world.
It is sometimes argued that politicians are so constrained by the complexity of the modern world, in particular international relations, that nations would have no "sovereignty" even if they did not belong to the EU. This is nonsense – surely the unique challenges of the twenty-first century make it all the more necessary that we should have the freedom to act as necessary, not be tied to whatever fudged compromise 27 countries come up with between them.

As for the sovereignty being illusory, imagine an EU member state as a man in prison. Suppose we told this man that, even if he were released, there would still be certain places he couldn't go, because they were private property. Would he conclude that his freedom wasn't worth having?

31) "There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe, we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified." (Edward Heath, 1972)
To be fair, even the most extreme Europhiles do not tell this lie any more. It was merely necessary at the time, to get the British people to sign up to what was then called the European Economic Community (EEC). Heath later admitted that a United States of Europe had been the intention all along, and indeed documents released in 2001 in line with the 30 year rule confirm that he knew this, but was concerned that the public shouldn't find out since it might make them wary of joining. In a pattern that has been repeated many times since, public enthusiasm for the European project was in inverse proportion to public knowledge about it.

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