Gideon Rachman, Financial Times If you want to understand what is happening to the European Union’s constitution, the EU flag is a good place to start

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If you want to understand what is happening to the European Union’s constitution,
the EU flag is a good place to start

The political foundations for union were never laid. Governments kept building higher and higher regardless.
History and ordinary prudence dictated that the union might be broad and shallow (a free-trade area) or else narrow and deep (an evolving political union, confined to countries willing to be led there.

>Euron: Krisen handlar om EU:s överlevnad och framtid
Den 9 maj 2010, nästan på klockslaget sextio år efter den allra första Europadagen, samlades EU:s finansministrar till ännu ett krismöte i Bryssel.
Den tydliga och nästan ödesmättade symboliken i detta sammanträffande ska inte överdrivas, men nog finns den där.
Annika Ström Melin DN Signerat 2010-05-11

Greece threatens more than the euro
The risk for Europe now is that if the EU does not move forward politically in response to the Greek crisis, it will move backwards – and the long process of European integration could start to unravel.
Gideon Rachman, FT. February 22 2010

If you want to understand what is happening to the European Union’s constitution, the EU flag is a good place to start.
European leaders will agree to delete references to the flag in the constitution.
Everybody knows the flags will keep flying.
The words in the constitution will change. But the substance will remain the same.
Gideon Rachman, Financial Times June 12 2007

Under den nu krackelerade europeiska ytan – ett Europa utrustat med både flagga och hymn – verkar alla våra historiska egenheter, skillnader och egendomligheter ha övervintrat.
Det är det europeiska dilemmat – något nytt visionärt mål annat än just denna fred har Europa inte lyckats ställa sig.
Richard Swartz, DN 15/5 2010

When the flag is removed from the treaty it should also, I guess, be removed from all public institutions in the European Union.

Otherwise the voters will understand that removing the flag from the treaty was only a PR gimmick in order to hide that they are making a State of the Union.

There You can read that
"The success of the Monnet method is based on satisfying immediate needs in Europe in a manner consistent with meeting longer-term objectives but actually separate from them. Maybe the inclusion of the flag and the anthem blurred the difference between the short term and the long term in an unhelpful way."

Svenska Europaparlamentariker om vad EU-flaggan betyder för dem
En symbol för samarbete eller förlorat folkstyre
SvD 16 oktober 2007

Carl Schlyter (mp): För mig är det Europarådets flagga som EU kopierat och gjort till sin.
Den har gått från att vara en symbol för mänskliga rättigheter i alla länder i Europa till att bli en symbol för stormaktsambitioner.

Troops from all 27 EU nations marched down the Champs Elysees in Paris, at the invitation of new French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and other senior EU figures, were also welcomed, underlining France's commitment to Europe despite the rejection by French voters of a proposed EU constitution
Read more here

My undemocratic survival plan for the euro
If Europe can avoid a financial breakdown at the end of this month, when its banks undergo stresstests to expose which are potentially insolvent, then the euro will almost certainly survive.
Indeed, this could be the year when the single currency mutates from being a morbid enterprise that is threatened by its internal contradictions into the project to create a United States of Europe that its architects always intended.
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times July 14 2010

People who have said all along that the euro was a fatally flawed project, a Frankenstein’s monster with the superficial trappings of a genuine currency, but without the political and economic coherence that would truly give it life. Speaking as one of these longstanding Eurosceptics, it has been tempting to say: “I told you so.”

Although I am saying that the euro is likely to survive, I yield to no one in my opposition to the single currency, which I believe to be undemocratic, economically damaging and intellectually incoherent.

I also pointed out years ago that the euro’s survival depended on a financial circle of manipulation: German property investors and banks recycled their excess savings to the heavily indebted countries on the periphery of the eurozone, whose farmers and homeowners then sold or mortgaged their land at exorbitant values and used the money to buy German cars.

Euron: Krisen handlar om EU:s överlevnad och framtid
Den 9 maj 2010, nästan på klockslaget sextio år efter den allra första Europadagen, samlades EU:s finansministrar till ännu ett krismöte i Bryssel.
Den tydliga och nästan ödesmättade symboliken i detta sammanträffande ska inte överdrivas, men nog finns den där.
Annika Ström Melin DN Signerat 2010-05-11

Den 9 maj 1950 läste Frankrikes dåvarande utrikesminister Robert Schuman upp en deklaration som låg till grund för det som blev EU.

Fyra länder – Belgien, Nederländerna, Luxemburg och Italien – svarade ett omedelbart och entusiastiskt ja. De förstod att det inte enbart handlade om kol och stål, utan om ett helt nytt slags europeiskt samarbete.

Storbritannien tackade däremot vänligt men mycket bestämt nej. Britterna insåg Schumanplanens politiska betydelse, men hade absolut ingen lust att låta en ny, överstatlig myndighet fatta beslut om landets viktiga kol- och stålindustri.

Den svenska regeringen begrep inte att frågan var politisk och gällde Europas framtid. Brevet från Paris skickades till branschorganisationen Jernkontoret

Den 9 maj 2010 inleddes en process som antingen innebär att det europeiska samarbetet tar ytterligare ett jättekliv på väg mot större enhet – eller markerar inledningen på Europeiska unionens väg mot upplösning.

Den gemensamma valutan är utan tvivel den mest långtgående och politiskt mest betydelsfulla delen av gemenskapen.
Om eurosamarbetet inte överlever kommer Europa att dras in i en uppslitande bodelning med oklar utgång.
Det skulle kunna bli riktigt otrevligt.

The European Parliament is considering flying the EU flag and playing the EU anthem more often in its own buildings
as part of a political message to member states who have scrapped the union's symbols from the proposed new EU treaty.
EU Observer 11/7 2007

The parliament on Wednesday (11 July) adopted its opinion on the EU's reform treaty which was agreed by EU leaders last month and which will be subject to detailed negotiations in a so-called Inter Governmental Conference (IGC) in the coming months.

But the EU assembly also "regrets" drafting changes in the new style treaty. It has been stripped of all constitutional elements while explicitly suggesting EU's powers can be limited and handed back to member states.

MEPs are particularly irked about the disappearance from the treaty text of the EU's 12 star flag and Beethoven's Ode to Joy – which were given official status as EU symbols in the failed EU constitution.

In a bid to defy member states on the symbolic issue, the parliament says in its opinion that it intends to give "official character" to the EU's flag and anthem in its own internal rulebooks. Some senior MEPs eye a more frequent use of the unions symbols in official ceremonies in the parliament itself.

Sverige bör använda EU-flaggan mer. Den hör också hemma i riksdagens plenisal.
Det anser EU-minister Cecilia Malmström, som vill göra Europadagen till allmän flaggdag.
SvD 15 oktober 2007

At Tuesday's press conference in Strasbourg, the Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso was asked what the European Union would be after the new reform treaty has been negotiated and agreed.
His answer: Europe is an empire, a non-imperial one, must be said.
But still, an empire.
EUX.TV 10/7 2007

Vem vill vifta med en EU-flagga?
Det har inte varit lätt väcka entusiasm för EU:s symboler, visar Johan Fornäs i sin bok ”Signifying Europe”.
Europadagen, mottot, hymnen och flaggan är artificiella symboler som lanserats uppifrån.
Kim Salomon, Understreckare SvD 15 februari 2012

The constitution is a symbol. After decades in which the EU has gradually accrued more powers – without going out of its way to draw attention to the fact – the creation of a real constitution was a coming-out party for those who believe in a European political union. Rather than disguising the true aim of the “project”, European federalists were proudly proclaiming it – and seeking popular endorsement. So the rejection of the constitution was a crushing blow.

The federalist response – pushed by the Germans who will be in the chair at next week’s meeting – is to repackage the constitution and to try to push it through regardless. The name constitution will be dropped. Instead, the document will be called a treaty and will be stripped of the symbols of statehood – like the flag and the EU anthem. But very little of the legal substance will change.

The aim is to make the constitution seem dull and technical – and so to allow governments to push it through parliaments without any unpredictable referendums. Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, has made it clear that this is exactly what he intends to do.

The Germans are strikingly frank about their aims and methods. To meet British objections that the Charter of Fundamental Rights – currently part two of the constitution – makes the EU look too much like a state-in-the-making, they propose to put the charter into a protocol to the main treaty and then to refer to it in a single article in the treaty itself. When I put it to a senior German diplomat that this was a purely symbolic change, which would do nothing to alter the legal power of the charter, he readily agreed.

If the French and Dutch had voted in favour of the constitution, there is no doubt that their verdict would have been hailed as a historic endorsement of political union in Europe. It is only a “No” vote that was taken as a sign of deep confusion.

The repackaging exercise that will be attempted in Brussels next week validates every eurosceptic prediction of how the EU would react to a popular rebuff.

The awkward squad of Poland, Britain and the Czech Republic will be accused of putting the Union in danger.
But the real long-term threat will be posed by those who insist that the EU must press ahead with “ever closer union”, while blithely disregarding the increasingly obvious disenchantment of ordinary Europeans.

Alain Lamassoure, tipped to be the new Europe minister in the Sarkozy government, said Paris will agree to stick "as much as possible to the original text."
"we will play the European hymn or fly the flag whether it is mentioned in the new treaty or not."
He added that the same applies to the exact title of the future EU's foreign affairs minister. "As long as his status and powers are preserved we're fine with [a title change]."
EU Observer 9/10 2007

Hjelm-Wallén efterlyser öppenhet Förra utrikesministern Lena Hjelm-Wallén är kritisk mot bristen på öppenhet i förhandlingarna om det nya EU-fördraget. Hon tyckte insynen och debatten var livligare både när det så kallade konventet arbetade fram det ursprunliga förslaget till fördrag och när Amsterdamfördraget beslutades i slutet på nittiotalet.
Det sa hon i radions Godmorgon världen i morse.
Aftonbladet Europabloggen 10 juni 2007