Cook Computing

It appears that the EU Commission is not giving up on software patents. You have to wonder about which vested interested are doing the lobbying and who is being influenced.

Meanwhile, in contrast to the British government whose position is that the EU Constitution is no more than a "tidying up exercise", the Czech President Vaclav Klaus has a rather different perspective. His points are:

• The EU will become one state with the adoption of the constitution.
• Its members will be mere regions or provinces.
• The EU constitution will be superior to the member countries' constitutions.
• The constitutional treaty is imprecise and is only temporary because after the ratification the document will become a real constitution
• The current concept of shared sovereignty will be abandoned and new, pan-European sovereignty will appear in which the EU member countries will lose their exclusive right to form their own laws
• Citizens of individual countries will become citizens of the state of the European Union with the rights and obligations directly towards the institutions of this European state.
• EU member countries will only be able to exercise those powers that the EU constitution will leave them, and not the opposite way as was an original idea of European integration
• The EU and not its member states will conclude international agreements with other countries.
• In the voting procedures, the weight of small EU member countries, including the Czech Republic, will be decreased with the adoption of the European constitution.
• Even those areas of decision-making in which EU members will keep their right of veto in the future, this right could be transferred to the area of a majority voting any moment. It will only be enough for the presidents or prime ministers of the EU member countries to agree on this, without the possibility of the national parliaments to make their own decision on the issue.

Perhaps the Czechs take a different viewpoint because they have recent experience of oppression by an external power, whereas the useful idiots in the UK are only too willing to give away our sovereignty. Providing another insight into the real ambitions behind the constitution, Hans Martin Bury, the German Minister for Europe, recently stated:

This Constitution is, in spite of all justified calls for further regulations, a milestone. Yes, it is more than that. I think, the EU Constitution is the birth certificate of the United States of Europe

I think United European Socialist Republic would perhaps be more appropriate, given the likelihood it will end up as an over-regulated and centralized bureaucracy, with its own new bureaucratic ruling class with special privileges. Its worrying to read that EU Commission employees already have a different status under the law compared to the rest of us and that the constitution confirms this:

Interestingly, the Constitution while extending the scope of the Union to limit the civil liberties of ordinary EU citizens, confirms in Article III-340 the Protocol 36 under which grants the legal immunities from criminal prosecution Commission employees, MEPs and others enjoy. The Protocol of the Privileges and Immunities of the European Community, Chapter V, Article 12 states that: 'In the territory of each Member State and whatever their nationality, officials and other servants of the Communities shall: (a) ... be immune from legal proceedings in respect of acts performed by them in their official capacity, including their words spoken or written. They shall continue to enjoy this immunity after they have ceased to hold office'.