Most people will not argue against the idea that The Lisbon Treaty is the renamed Constitution of the EU, a new suprastate that most of the previously sovereign states of Europe now belong to. There are of course those who will argue that the European states remain somewhat sovereign, or quite sovereign and that that is what counts. These are the folks who buy into the sui generis argument. That nothing like the EU has existed before, and that it is possible to have your cake and eat it too, because of the total novelty of this new setup.

It is no secret to anyone who buys newspapers or surfs news sites that the EU, as a country that wants to grow into maturity and begin to exercise more and more of the privileges and rights of a state, acquired the right under Lisbon to set up a Foreign Service.

When this mechanism blooms fully, one can question full well what is the point of having national embassies and legations and the like. We are in a trascendent phase. Perhaps the former national level edifices will be retained to humor the general public. Or perhaps a few Estonian-language speakers will be maintained on staff in the EU embassies in large cities when the shift is made to EU embassies.

I shan't get into the political CV of Baroness Ashton, though there is little there to make Estonian patriots happy, at least the kind that I grew up next to.

The Austrians are suddenly startled because this is happening, or merely because it is happening too fast for their liking?

These countries stood before the altar and there were countless occasions during which it was possible to make a response when it was time to speak now or forever hold your peace.

The fact that the EU will supplant national sovereignty and acquire what the Estonians call võimutäius - a full set of the mechanisms of power - should have been apparent some time ago to anyone who was paying attention. It is a matter of time, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I expect some countries will struggle and complain more than others as all of this stuff soaks in and gets locked down.

The song of Estonian independence and that of the other European nation states has been sung. The Lord knows whether sovereignty will ever return to Estonia and whether the Estonians themselves will still exist at that point.

753 BC was the birthdate of the city of Rome. The last western emperor of the Roman Empire was the boy Romulus Augustus, who was installed on the throne by his father in 475 AD and deposed by Odoacer in the following year. Seven centuries was the life span of the Roman Empire.

The subsequent Holy Roman Empire lasted from 800 to 1806 - ten centuries.

From 1806 to 1950 (year of birth of the Coal and Steel Community, the seed from which the EU grew), the countries in the European cultural area were sovereign - a period that included 1918-1940 , the years of independent existence of the Republic of Estonia. From 1994 (departure of Soviet troops) to 2004 (accession to the EU), Estonia was outside the EU and also sovereign, if we don't included being pressured in a number of areas from outside.

sad to say, once upon a time i actually thought bildt was ok
sweden is getting the future it deserves
since ww2 it has been the most cowardly, two faced vassal state on the globe
its gutless coverup of the estonia tragedy is par for its course
http://www.elaestonia.org/swe/...
http://www.just.ee/orb.aw/clas...
sweden would be better off if it was occupied by suomi, then its lady-men might learn a thing or two, such as not squatting to squirt
http://www.dumpyourwifenow.com...