The coalition of multicultural fanatics, postnational technocrats, neo-Marxists, and crooks who run the European Union had warned, until the very day of the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty (June 13), that its rejection would sound the death knell for the “united Europe” and mark the end of the world as we know it.  But as soon as the negative result became known, France’s President Sarkozy, Britain’s Prime Minister Brown, and others started explaining, with a matter-of-fact aloofness, that the Irish vote did not matter: The collective march toward an ever-tighter Union must go on unhindered.

One week later, the E.U. summit in Brussels decided to move on with the treaty’s ratification despite the Irish rejection, hoping that the process in all other member countries—no referenda, parliamentary votes only—will be completed in time for the next European elections in June 2009.

European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering welcomed this “strong signal” from the European Council.  The French leader of the E.U. Parliament’s center-right EPP-ED group, Joseph Daul, was happy to see the E.U. leaders “united” in their commitment to continue the ratification process.  The Austrian vice chairman of the PSE group, Hannes Swoboda, said the “rescue mission” for the Lisbon Treaty was the main challenge for the incoming French presidency that started on July 1.

There is nothing surprising about the Eurocrats’ refusal to accept defeat.  They are truly committed to a federal superstate, no less sincerely than the comrades east of the Berlin Wall had been committed to the Peoples’ Democracies between 1945 and 1989.  In their world, only a European Union free of national parliaments and wily electorates can guarantee the fulfilment of their ideological vision and, more importantly, the protection of their power and privileges in perpetuity.  The lack of democratic legitimacy theoretically should mark the end of the federalist project, but its proponents see “democracy” as an annoying hindrance.  The treaty’s own requirement to have every member-state endorse it before it becomes legal is now regarded as less than absolute.

The E.U. leaders in Brussels and their supporters in 27 national capitals have heralded on many occasions the birth of a “new” Europe.  Various treaties have been defeated several times over the past decade, but their proponents were always able to revive them and try to impose them again by hook or by crook.

An earlier Irish referendum, rejecting the Nice Treaty in 2001, was repeated a year later amid unprecedented foreign pressure; the yes vote narrowly prevailed.  Then, following the rejection of the European Constitution by French and Dutch voters in 2005, E.U. leaders promptly devised a new document to replace it: the Reform Treaty, or the Treaty of Lisbon.  Had it passed, the Treaty would have further eroded  the national sovereignty of E.U. countries and increased the power of unelected Brussels apparatchiks.

Once hailed as a mechanism for overcoming deadly rivalries and increasing economic efficiencies, the European Union has morphed into a giant tool of social and political engineering.  Its now defunct constitution pointedly excluded Christianity from the Preamble, replacing it with references to “equality” and “non-discrimination” and an obligation to combat “social exclusion” and respect “diversity.”

The Lisbon Treaty inherited this ideological baggage in toto.  It would have had primacy over the law of member-states, formally making Brussels superior to all national constitutions and legislative bodies.  The political and legal straightjacket that it seeks to impose on some 490 million Europeans is gradually making opposition to the demographic change of their continent not only undesirable but illegal—to the benefit of unassimilable, overwhelmingly Muslim multitudes.  The term Eurabia, introduced as an intellectual concept three decades ago by Ameriphobe French intellectuals, is on the verge of becoming real.

The most important aspect of the defeat of Lisbon is in the sphere of law.  Under the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), which was to be implemented under the terms of the treaty, every citizen or visitor of a member-state would be subject to arrest and extradition at the behest of a judge in any other E.U. member-state, under 1 of 32 vaguely defined categories of “crime.”  This was a momentous development, and not 1 in 100 E.U. citizens—including the Irish—are fully aware of the implications.

The list of 32 offences includes criminal conspiracy, terrorism, human trafficking, child pornography, smuggling of drugs, weapons, and explosives, fraud and money laundering, murder, kidnapping, forgery, etc.  It also includes “racism and xenophobia,” as well as “computer crime” and “crimes under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.”  Local police would be obliged to arrest the indicted person and transfer him to the issuing judge’s court for trial—regardless of their own country’s judicial system or penal code.  Once delivered, the arrestee would be judged according to the local laws, and the involvement of the ICC implies possible further extradition to non-E.U. countries.

The EAW is already in force in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.  An initial hearing takes place before a judge within 48 hours to establish the identity of the arrested and whether the arrest warrant has been filled in correctly.  Additional information may be requested from the state that issued the arrest warrant.  The major difference between extradition and EAW procedures is that the “hearing” in the latter process does not consider the allegations against the defendant or examine evidence; it is merely meant to satisfy the court that no “legal bars to surrender” apply.

The European Arrest Warrant was one of the main topics at the recent Counter-Jihad Summit in Vienna (May 10-11), where the former Austrian Ambassador Edgar K. Selzer pointed out that the inclusion of “racism and xenophobia” brings “an emotion, a sentiment” into the category of major crimes, which is a legal and logical absurdity.  As he explained, the EAW does not define “racism and xenophobia” as such; its drafters have relied on the European Commission’s “framework decision on combating racism and xenophobia,” which criminalizes “belief in race colour, descent, religion or belief, national or ethnic origin as a factor determining aversion to individuals.”  According to that decision, “racist and xenophobic behaviour must constitute an offence in all Member States and be punishable by effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties.”  This applies to all “offences” committed within the territory of the European Union, or “for the benefit of a legal person established in a Member State.”

The implications of the Lisbon Treaty are significant, not only for the future of civil liberties in the Western world but for me personally.  I also gave a speech at the Counter-Jihad Summit in Vienna.  In E.U.-speak, “racism and xenophobia” have long included the nebulous thought-crime of “Islamophobia”—and in the minds of the drafters of the framework decision, my speech could be construed as paradigmatically “Islamophobic” and reason for issuing an EAW.

I am not an E.U. citizen, but that is immaterial if the “offense” was committed in a member-state.  Once the European Arrest Warrant is in force, a Muslim-friendly judge in, say, Leicester or Birmingham could issue a warrant for Trifkovic’s arrest in Greece this summer for the “offense” committed by giving a speech in Austria last May, and the authorities in Thessaloniki or Athens would have to comply.

Furthermore, the speech was given at a gathering of 60 like-minded people, most of them E.U. citizens.  This constitutes a criminal conspiracy, a separate offense among those 32 crimes listed, since the framework decision defines a “racist or xenophobic group” as “a structured organisation consisting of at least two persons established for a specific period.”  The speech was given “for the benefit of a legal person established in a Member State,” which makes matters even worse.

Last but not least, that speech is available on the World Wide Web, in both German and English, which potentially falls under the separate and as yet undefined offense of “computer crime.”  A warrant has already been issued by British judges to the authorities in the Netherlands demanding the surrender of a Danish citizen in a case involving pornography.

Under the framework decision, anything that is said at a John Randolph Club meeting here in the United States may be deemed illegal and actionable under the EAW, if the offending speech or statement is posted on a website (such as ChroniclesMagazine.org) accessible within the European Union, or if some supposedly “racist and xenophobic” material found in these pages is distributed by mailing Chronicles to a subscriber or an institution in the European Union.  This would amount to the “public dissemination or distribution of tracts, pictures or other material containing expressions of racism and xenophobia,” potentially subjecting the author to arrest in any E.U. country on a warrant issued by a judge in any other E.U. country.  Orwell was off by a quarter-century.

Far from grasping the danger to American interests inherent in such developments, the Bush administration is acting as an accomplice in this project.  On his farewell tour of Europe, only four days before the Irish referendum, President Bush went out of his way to praise the European Union as a strong partner of the United States: “It’s in our interest that the EU be strong, vibrant, and it’s in our interests to work hard to have a partnership that solves problems.”

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso—a Portuguese leftist—responded exuberantly:

This is indeed a great achievement, and this achievement was possible thanks to the commitment of founding fathers of the European Union to a united Europe, but also thanks to support of the United States of America. . . . Thank you for all the support you have been giving to the integration and progress of democracy also in Europe.

The agreement between Mr. Bush, a “conservative,” and Sr. Bar­roso, once a Maoist and now a socialist, is unsurprising.  They both favor a propositional concept of “Europe” and “America,” and the concomitant rejection of common heritage that includes common ancestry.  This kind of partnership, which gives a new and unwelcome meaning to the phrase “beyond left and right,” can be resisted only if we have a backlash against propositional statism, both in America and in Europe.  The foundation for such a backlash is that, for the time being at least, nations still survive.

Various multiethnic states (imperial Russia, the Habsburg monarchy, the pre-World War II kingdom of Yugoslavia) have been labeled—often unfairly—as “prisons of nations.”  That designation would have applied even more aptly to the European Union, had the Irish not said “no.”  On Friday, June 13, Ireland provided a welcome proof that it is possible, and necessary, for a small nation to resist the forces of Euro-Gleichschaltung.