IT'S LIKE WWII ALL OVER AGAIN:

Spain, Poland lead EU opposition (Roland Flamini, 11/26/2003, UPI)

Standing shoulder to shoulder, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and Polish counterpart Leszek Miller led the attack Tuesday against a European Union decision designed to let Germany and France off the hook.

The occasion was a meeting of European economic and finance ministers in Brussels at which the EU system of imposing fines on member states that exceeded budget deficit limits was suspended to avoid punishing Berlin and Paris.

"This decision deals a hard blow to the common (European) effort to maintain economic stability," Aznar declared. He went on to warn that the move "will obviously have consequences in the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference."

Spanish sources said Aznar's argument was that no agreement could be reached on the constitution if budget discipline has collapsed. But this was taken as a bold threat to carry on the battle against France and Germany when talks on a new EU constitution come to a head next month. [...]

Both Poland and Spain want NATO to remain the stalwart of European defense, free from the competitive challenge of an EU rapid reaction force, as proposed by Berlin and Paris.

Similarly, both countries are against any change in the EU "vote weighting," the distribution of votes to each country in relation to population size. At the moment both Spain and Poland have 27 votes each in the Council of Ministers, while Germany, with a far bigger population, has 28 votes. The constitution would switch to a new voting system that, smaller nations say, will give France and Germany more power.

Pretty much the only countries to resist both the USSR and Hitler now stand together to fight the latest threat to European freedom.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 27, 2003 7:13 AM