Apr
17
Binsted magazine, July 2005
April 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Beware The Hidden Power of Regional Government
By Ashley Mote, MEP
Did you know you live in a region of the European Union called South-East England? Did you know it stretches from Margate to Bournemouth, and around London up to north Oxfordshire? It covers 83 Westminster constituencies and last year you elected ten MEPs to represent the region and your interests in Brussels.
Such is the unaccountable nature of the EU that all ten could live in Binsted. In fact, the only one who does is me!
Did you know the South-East England region already has a regional assembly, a development agency and a regional government office? One way or another you have been paying for this new tier of regional government for years, including their offices in Brussels. The development agency alone has an annual budget of over £100 million. But you have no power to elect or dismiss these bodies.
‘No taxation without representation’ does not apply to the EU and its bureaucrats. Neither they, nor the appointees on these various bodies, answer directly to you. They answer to Brussels, where we have a mere two members amongst hundreds on the EU’s Committee of the Regions.
Under the terms of the Maastricht Treaty, the Committee of the Regions is responsible for ‘enforcing’ EU legislation at local level. So, as taxpayers, we are paying the EU for another tier of government whose purpose is to enforce its own regulations on us.
These new regional bodies have been given immense powers. Much of what used to be within the remit of county councils has already been handed over to the region – planning and the environment being two of the most visible examples.
Why, you ask. Well, it’s all part of a long-term plan to abolish both county and parish councils altogether, while leaving district councils to manage day-to-day local matters. It will have the effect of moving yet more executive power over UK affairs directly to Brussels.
On 16 March 2001, the Conservative MEP Dr. Caroline Jackson was asked at a public meeting in Bristol whether regional assemblies would eventually mean the Westminster Parliament being abolished. She replied ‘Yes’.
Not surprisingly, many county councils are unhappy about all this. Recently, 71 per cent of local councillors who sit on SEERA (the South-East England Regional Assembly, based in Guildford) voted for the assembly to be dissolved on the grounds that there had never been a referendum to validate its existence. Although nominated local councillors make up two-thirds of SEERA’s membership, its constitution demands that three-quarters of both local council members and appointees must support the assembly’s dissolution.
Unsurprisingly, only four of the appointed members, drawn from government quangos and agencies such as the Thames Valley Economic Partnership and the South East England Faith Forum, voted to abolish SEERA. So it carries on, knowing it does not have a mandate nor the support of even the majority of its own members.
Since then, several county councils, including Hampshire, have threatened to resign from SEERA, but it remains to be seen whether they will carry out the threat. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have said they will abolish regional assemblies, but it is difficult to see how they can do that without reneging on the Treaty of Maastricht.
Despite that, a new level of EU integration is now being planned by Hampshire and West Sussex county councils, Southampton city council and the Isle of Wight council.
By agreeing to work with their opposite numbers on the French coast they have been offered extra European Union funding to implement the EU’s maritime policy in the English Channel.
Extraordinarily, other EU member states with no coastlines – like Hungary and Slovakia – are also being told to implement the EU’s maritime legislation.
The underlying idea is simple – to create the next tier of cross-border EU mega-regions, which are intended to dilute national identities even further.
None of the four English councils concerned with the English Channel aspects of this policy were elected on manifestos that included such proposals.
These new cross-border European Union mega-regions lump parts of Sussex with Normandy, and parts of Kent with the area around Calais. Now the northern and southern coastlines of the English Channel are being bundled together in a new EU mega-region stretching 100 miles inland on both sides.
Policy areas listed for cross-border cooperation under EU direction include transport, tourism, trade, accessibility, air quality, coastal erosion, waterfront development, climate change, bio-diversity, IT, research and development, water and waste management, and health, culture and education infrastructures.
County councils and regional authorities already compete with each other in Brussels, begging bowls held aloft, asking for their share of taxpayers’ money that EU officials choose to allocate back to the UK.
These new proposals and financial incentives accelerate that process and create a new level of integration. They follow several years of less formal ad hoc cooperation. Yet nobody asked or told the people of Hampshire and Sussex.
Do we really need the EU to arrange cooperation with our neighbours on the other side of the Channel? Surely we are entirely capable of making such decisions ourselves and funding them from our own resources, especially if we no longer finance the EU to the tune of some £400,000 a week per English constituency.
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