IN THIS pamphlet, Anthony Coughlan examines the political and economic roots of Eurofederalism and asks who loses and who wins from it, given that Ireland is now a net contributor to the EU.

“The EU is … a supranational anti-democratic system that deprives Europe’s diverse peoples of their democracy,” he writes, “while serving the interests of its big states, in particular Germany and France … through their ruling politico-economic elites, interacting with the Brussels bureaucracy … on the economic side it serves the interests of EU-based transnational finance and corporate capital.

“Free movement of labour and capital provides cheap labour and freedom from democratic control to the European and American transnational firms that are the principal economic backers of the EU ‘project’.”

Elitist EU backers extol globalisation, disdain the solidarities of the national community they belong to and embrace “Europeanism” as an ideology that has for some become a substitute for a lost religious or political faith.

Proponents of supranational integration are few in number, but they are powerful and influential, Coughlan asserts. Democracy and national independence have been stolen, and the imperative now is to organise to get it back, in conjunction with fellow democrats in the other EU countries and  in an international movement in defence of national democracy.

“Success in that task is historically inevitable,” he writes.

He takes to task the the SNP’s slogan of “independence in Europe” which is as bogus as Sinn Fein’s call for a reunified Ireland inside the EU.

If both stood for genuine national independence they would be aiming to set up their own national currencies, make all their own laws and establish their own unique national citizenships, instead of opting for a subordinate second-class citizenship in a dual-citizenship federal EU state.  

“A realistic policy on national reunification requires the Irish state to re-establish its national democracy and independence vis-a-vis the EU, get back its own currency, repatriate control of all its laws from Brussels and reassert a policy of meaningful neutrality,” he concludes.

Available free from the National Platform, nationalplatform.org.