Another Eurosceptic "myth" turns out to be true

[eurosceptic]

While this is an old article it proves that there is pressure for a single EU passport. Brussles planned new passports with sky blue covers and the ring of stars instead of national emblems. It was to be sold as "avoiding confusion in airports".
It is pertinent in the context of lisbon as bruno waterfield from the telegraph has expressed concerns that this will happen if the treaty is implemented.

Brussels to remove royal crest from British passport - Telegraph

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[setanta]

You really are getting to be something of a joke on p.ie at this stage, ES. All of the elements that pepper your europhobic posts are brought together in this lame attempt to attack the EU:

1. Very old story indeed (from 2001 FFS) that was bollox when it was dreamt up.
2. The newspaper source you use is an English nationalist rag that has a long-established reputation for inventing scare-stories about the EU.
3. English nationalist obsessions, in this case about the royal coat of arms on passports, are transported uncritically into an Irish context.
4. All of this is then bundled up and thrown at the Lisbon Treaty which has nothing to do even with the original made-up story.

After this fictional accusation, what will your next lie about the EU and the Lisbon Treaty be?

[Leftfemme22]

You really are getting to be something of a joke on p.ie at this stage, ES. All of the elements that pepper your europhobic posts are brought together in this lame attempt to attack the EU:

1. Very old story indeed (from 2001 FFS) that was bollox when it was dreamt up.
2. The newspaper source you use is an English nationalist rag that has a long-established reputation for inventing scare-stories about the EU.
3. English nationalist obsessions, in this case about the royal coat of arms on passports, are transported uncritically into an Irish context.
4. All of this is then bundled up and thrown at the Lisbon Treaty which has nothing to do even with the original made-up story.

After this fictional accusation, what will your next lie about the EU and the Lisbon Treaty be?

ouch.......................

[eurosceptic]

Well setanta again you play the man and not the ball.
1- The story is old but it is now in a new pertininent context.
2- The telegraph has its agenda but no-one (even yes bloggers on this site - other than yourself of course) would accuse it of lying. It has excellent standards of journalism.
3- The irish harp would suffer exactly the same fate as the british coat of arms, so the story translates 100%.
4- See 2. The telegraph has solid reputation as a reputable newspaper, bruno waterfield is a highly respected journalist on european affairs.

Once again setanta you base your response exclusively on personal attacks.

[FutureTaoiseach]

There you people on the yes side go again. You accuse us of being europhobic but then engage in Anglophobia. The causes of our previously difficult relationship with the UK have been resolved in terms of the GFA, so in that context, such tactics are unnecessary and childish. The reality is that eurosceptic is right. The people of EU member states are assured that Brussels won't interfere in one aspect of national sovereignty, which is later proven to be untrue. This isn't just an issue of what happens in the UK - it is part of a pattern of duplicity by the EU institutions whereby things that are not supposed to happen do happen. Another example would be the Metock case last August where the ECJ struck down our laws on marriages of convenience of the basis that it contravenes the Freedom of Movement directive. They did this, in spite of the fact that a number of member states including France, the UK and Germany supported the Irish govt in that case. Former President Herzog (Germany), former Chancellor Schussel (Austria) and former PM Rasmussen (Denmark) also condemned the ECJ for rulings that interfere in national competences after that ruling. The reality is that EU law means whatever the ECJ wants it to mean, unless the wording is watertight, and the reality of the Charter of Fundamental Rights is that it is anything but.

[eurosceptic]

Bruno's blog should be here
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[eurosceptic]

The text of bruno's blog is here. He is far more concerned with the personal freedom and security elements rather than the prospect of the common colour and symbols.
"Is the European Union going to strip your passport of all symbols of the Crown? The answer is no. Unless of course Gordon Brown insists it is so or if the French were to give up the emblem of their proud republic, the Germans their imperial eagle and everyone else their own fiercely guarded national symbols.


Will the British passport be replaced with EU passports?

It is simply not going to happen. The awful truth about EU passports is much worse. Under the new Lisbon Treaty there are new powers to create truly EU passports and ID cards. These will not be about superficial trappings and trimmings such as the Crown symbol and all that Lion and Unicorn stuff but the gritty reality of growing ID surveillance demands from and between states across Europe, and beyond.

The legend of the EU's evil intent to scrap national passport symbols is a potent one, for all it is complete cobblers. Over on EU Referendum, Richard North unravels and puts into perspective the latest stories about Foreign Office plans (after a non-binding European Commission suggestion) to include in passports a sticker telling Brits they can avail themselves of other EU consulates and embassies in the event of a crisis.

But the behind the scenes and your passport cover there is a lot going on with our ID documents. Now fitted with biometrics and microchips, all done to exacting, existing standards set at the EU and Trans-Atlantic level, there is lot, lot more to the modern passport than archaic heraldry or Royal flummery about "Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State".

Today's ID cards and passport have a simple objective, surveillance, one that is shared by all EU member states and, importantly, in these post-9/11 days the United States.

Writing in the newspaper today, Philip Johnston explains what the new ID era is for: "The answer has nothing to do with security, any more than the presence of CCTV cameras everywhere has anything to do with stopping crime, as even senior police officers now concede. It is about political control. The state wants to know where you are, and those who run it have always believed it has a right to know, but have usually been beaten back by Parliament."

As I have written about here, the EU is now one of the places (conveniently free of scrutiny and accountability) where the latest in biometric controls are being dreamt up. This is with the UK's enthusiastic support. Britain's own "e-Borders" is a trailblazer and there is more to come.

A little known element to the new Lisbon Treaty quietly drops old safeguards that specifically ruled out an EU dimension to ID cards and passports (the two are increasingly interchangeable).

Here is the detail. Part two, article 18 of the Nice Treaty states:
"18, 1) Every citizen of the Union shall have the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States, subject to the limitations and conditions laid down in this Treaty and by the measures adopted to give it effect.
"18, 2) If action by the Community should prove necessary to attain this objective and this Treaty has not provided the necessary powers, the Council may adopt provisions with a view to facilitating the exercise of the rights referred to in paragraph 1."

After a flaming row in Nice and British insistence, the following caveat was added much to the chagrin of the Commission and most other countries.

Article 18, 3 declares: "Paragraph 2 shall not apply to provisions on passports, identity cards, residence permits or any other such document".

This has now been ditched. In a silent U-turn, British officials let it go. What was a red line for Tony Blair in 2000 was no longer a red line for either Mr Blair or Mr Brown last year.

Article 17, of the Lisbon Treaty states:
"Citizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights and be subject to the duties provided for in the Treaties. They shall have, inter alia: the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States... "

Then tucked in Article 62 is the change.
"If action by the Union should prove necessary to facilitate the exercise of the right referred to in Article 17(2)(a), and if the Treaties have not provided the necessary powers, the Council, acting in accordance with a special legislative procedure, may adopt provisions concerning passports, identity cards, residence permits or any other such document. The Council shall act unanimously after consulting the European Parliament."

The climb down was for simple reasons. Britain has allowed Article 18,3 to be removed in order to allow the UK to participate in EU borders and security measures, such as biometric passports and ID cards.

Britain fought, and lost a battle, in the European courts last year because it is excluded from existing sharing digital biometric information, such as fingerprints, with the 24 countries that are part of the Schengen system of common EU external border controls.

British law enforcement agencies have lobbied hard to "opt-in" and gain access to EU-wide databases of digital photographs and fingerprint taken from biometric visa applications.

EU plans for future databases holding a fingerprint register of all European passport holders are expected in the next decade and British securocrats, typical of the breed wherever they are from, want in.

I am not especially bothered about the Crown symbol on my passport. To the degree it exercises me at all, I would say it and the Crown prerogatives that go with it (and that are used to neuter opposition to EU Treaties amongst other things) should be removed from a central role in British politics and public life.

I do care about civil liberties. I may not share the same national symbol on my passport as a Frenchman, a German, a Pole, Italian or any other EU citizen but I do share what I believe is a common European interest in freedom. That is the issue with EU passports."

[locke]

There you people on the yes side go again. You accuse us of being europhobic but then engage in Anglophobia. The causes of our previously difficult relationship with the UK have been resolved in terms of the GFA, so in that context, such tactics are unnecessary and childish. The reality is that eurosceptic is right. The people of EU member states are assured that Brussels won't interfere in one aspect of national sovereignty, which is later proven to be untrue. This isn't just an issue of what happens in the UK - it is part of a pattern of duplicity by the EU institutions whereby things that are not supposed to happen do happen. Another example would be the Metock case last August where the ECJ struck down our laws on marriages of convenience of the basis that it contravenes the Freedom of Movement directive. They did this, in spite of the fact that a number of member states including France, the UK and Germany supported the Irish govt in that case. Former President Herzog (Germany), former Chancellor Schussel (Austria) and former PM Rasmussen (Denmark) also condemned the ECJ for rulings that interfere in national competences after that ruling. The reality is that EU law means whatever the ECJ wants it to mean, unless the wording is watertight, and the reality of the Charter of Fundamental Rights is that it is anything but.

To be quite frank, I don't really think the emblem on a passport matters a damn to national sovereignty compared to decisions about where power is exercised. People on both sides of the debate get far to excited about symbols and not about real issues.

But much more importantly, I take huge exception to your claim that the judgement related to marriages of convenience. The vast bulk of people affected by the law were in normal loving marriages. Personally, I can think of one very good friend (a British citizen) who was on the verge of leaving Ireland because of it - this a man who had lived here for several years and was employing 3 Irish citizens. The implication that it only affects sham marriages and that the EU is promoting these sham marriages is presumably a sign that we're going to see the race card played in Lisbon II?

[setanta]

Laugh my fVcking ass off ... again.

Here are some choice examples of what Bruno Waterfield's has to say about your claim that teh EU is going to get rid of national symbols on our passports:

Is the European Union going to strip your passport of all symbols of the Crown? The answer is no. Unless of course Gordon Brown insists it is so or if the French were to give up the emblem of their proud republic, the Germans their imperial eagle and everyone else their own fiercely guarded national symbols.

Will the British passport be replaced with EU passports? It is simply not going to happen.

The legend of the EU's evil intent to scrap national passport symbols is a potent one, for all it is complete cobblers.

Do you even read the sources that you quote?

Waterfield does, however, deal with a much more important issue of biometric data held on passports and the role that the teh governments of members states and the EU plays in this - a very different issue to the rubbish you, and the English nationalist rag The Toryghaph, have claimed.

One more nail in the coffin of your claim that The Torygraph "has excellent standards of journalism" and "has [a] solid reputation as a reputable newspaper." You probably think the Indo has the same qualities!

[eurosceptic]

Setanta read bruno's article IN FULL rather than a highly selctive quote. If you do you will see how he expects the issue will be raised but only to deflect attention away from the security dimension of new EU passports. He is predicting grandstanding over the coat of arms (or equivalent national emblems) to divert our gaze from the civil liberties implications.