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Originally posted by George Smiley No idea about the Central Bank! For a start I'm British so it does not apply to us which possibly explains why I've never bothered to look into it! Because the EU doesn't have a definite number of members. It started with 6 and now has 27. There are also 3 countries that have applied to join and something like 50+ countries in Europe that I suppose have the potential to join. Commissioners are like heads of individual government departments, and there will be one govt dept for each policy area, so you can see that every time the EU expands there will have been too many Commissioners for each policy area (unless they dilute the existing policy areas) You mean against corruption? Jesus whole books have been written on that! Well in a nutshell every policy area the EU has responsibility for takes that responsibility away from national governments, and therefore, a bit of sovereignty is lost. That's not automatically a bad thing, and those arguing it is good say it's not "lost" sovereignty but "pooled" sovereignty. It basically wrests around the principle that in some areas, one country acting alone cannot solve certain problems, but acting together many countries can overcome the problem As for what the major advantages for signing the Treaty is, in very simple terms, the Lisbon Treaty was supposed to streamline the EU to make it more efficient to make sure the decision making process did not grind to a halt with 27 members (when the previous treaties were written for 15 members)

Yeah, against corruption or any other kind of abuse, really.

And would you say that it's further creating the building blocks that will eventually lead to world government or do you not have any idea about that?

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Originally posted by Trancer-X Yeah, against corruption or any other kind of abuse, really.

Well there are lots of corruption allegations aimed at the EU. Not sure exactly what the Treaty does to combat that any more than what the EU is already permitted to do? There are three institutions of the EU, the Parliament, Council and Commission. As member states governments make up the Council, I guess corruption in this area is a matter for national law. In the Parliament, corruption comes in the form of bent MEPs fudging their finances to get extra money. They're cracking down on this as there were a few incidents in the press recently (but again, this is a matter for the police forces of whichever country the MEP is from). Most corruption charges are against the Commission, but usually this comes about over the EU's accounts never being signed off (which for the most part is because money given the member states through structural funds is mismanaged by the actual member state, not the Commission department). The Commission is accountable to the Parliament (ie the European people) which can sack the entire Commission if they don't like them

Accountability is something the Lisbon Treaty tried to improve, but not really sure that's in the field of corruption, more regarding openness in the decision making process (making the Council meet in public whereas before they often met in secret) and making the publicly elected Parliament joint decision maker in all areas of community law (where previously the Council had sole decision making responsibility)

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And would you say that it's further creating the building blocks that will eventually lead to world government

Nope!

the EU is a socialist conspiracy for world government is the dumbest thing ive ever heard.

i wish the marxists i hung out with at school could see this nonsense, they'd get to LOL as much as i have.

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN the EU is a socialist conspiracy for world government is the dumbest thing ive ever heard. i wish the marxists i hung out with at school could see this nonsense, they'd get to LOL as much as i have.

Well the "extremes" certainly don't like the EU.

The far left say it's a capitalist plot to take over the world, while the far right say it's a socialist/Catholic conspiracy to finish what Hitler or Stalin couldn't!