8 Bye-bye Abe Lincoln's Democracy! Bye-bye blue Planet?!!

At Copenhagen in December 2009, politicians failed to agree on joint action to save our planet. Politicians have also failed democracy. Has any one noticed? The only living planet in our solar system is in mortal danger -- and the melting glaciers, rising tides, desertification, and the annihilation of non-human lifeforms should be ample evidence to most rational beings of our own pending disaster. The only solution is the energetic mobilization to wise action of the world's so-called rational animals to safeguard our common and unique home. That does not mean world government. In the present deplorable state that would introduce overt or covert dictatorship. But it requires world supranational democracy. It would mean treating the world as a community of human beings with common problems and common interests in survival. It means treating our neighbours as ourselves, not as greedy enemies. Just rules must be agreed by all.

It would deal with the planet just like Europe approached the major threat to its existence -- ever more violent war -- and eliminate the problem through the Community method. Then as now, many people selfishly do not want to be treated as co-citizens for peace or creatures dependent on each other for survival. The founding fathers did in fact persuade an overwhelming majority of Europeans to 'make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.'

Are we up to the challenge today? In 1949 -- sixty years ago -- Schuman told all the newly arrived members of Europe's first parliament: You are here to save the world from suicide. Each of them got a copy of his text. All the governments too. He was right then, but we are NOW facing another act of human stupidity leading again, degree by degree, to WORLD SUICIDE.

If all the politicians had agreed to act on this new planetary threat -- which they didn't -- then that is not the same as mobilizing the entire population. Why? Because so many politicians have lost the trust of the people. It is the people who have to be convinced the planet is in danger. Why? Simply because it is the people who will have to make the changes in their lives and lifestyles. Every citizen has to show the same solidarity to save the planet.

The time is gone when politicians could say: Do this, and the people will follow obediently. Citizens are refusing more and more to vote for politicians. Less than half of 'voters' even voted. And that figure includes countries where politicians deem that citizens should be fined if they do not vote. (Some politicians arrogantly deny the people's right to be free to choose.) Still the electors refuse. They say in effect about the ballot slip: None of the above. Politicians are seen as being 'on the take'. The public sees the money -- if only in the newspapers. The politicians say they are professionals, whatever that is. But the public says that they are there for their political machines and to get jobs for their political friends. The political machines keep them busy, well-fed and, above all, dependent. For example they expect as a matter of course, not to do their jobs voluntarily, that is as a free public service -- like many of the politicians did in the past. No, they expect a salary (plus huge perks) that is perhaps ten times the national average salary. We're worth it, they say. Even the attendance allowance is often multiple times the voter's salary.

Not good enough. They failed the test that politics should primarily be about SERVICE. It would be far better for politicians to earn a normal living, to have a profession or to trade. A real job would perhaps set their feet on the ground, bring a dose of reality, and contact with normal human beings. They could be given expenses for trips to Brussels or Strasbourg. Is this likely to happen? No. Why? Because the moral fibre is lacking, even to propose such a measure. That is symptomatic of our moral bankruptcy. If European politicians can't kick greed and consumerism, we can have no leadership from them for the planet.

And, as if to make our survival more uncertain, the self indulgent, greedy party political image of rich politicians and poor electors has become the model that the developing countries seek -- even in the country of Gandhi. The former worker republics of Russia and China -- that used to preach world solidarity and considered themselves the saviours of the oppressed -- have become the selfish refusniks against action by a global community.

The only way to solve Europe's problems -- and the planet's -- is to ask all the people some simple questions, and get their positive affirmations. This is what is called the Community method. It mobilises all citizens in civil society and allows all citizens to react. That Community method has been abandoned first by people like de Gaulle in the 1960s and the rejection is now written up in the Lisbon Treaty. For example: how about asking the people whether they want carbon trading or not? When did anyone ask them? Taxation without representation but also without a discussion and acquiescence will end in tears and a crisis for parliamentary systems.

We are entering multiple global crises, not only climate change and energy but threats of global lawlessness, ideology and financial corruption. At this crucial time, Western Europe and USA have grown fat, ignorant and self-indulgent. They are in no way prepared for the intellectual analysis and spiritual testing that is required for such challenges. Multiple enemies, some of our own making, are at the gate. Do we have the tools and weapons to deal with them?

Take the example of our concept of democracy. Or rather, let us go back to US President Abraham Lincoln's famous definition, spoken out on the ruined battlefield of the American civil war. Democracy, he said, was government of the people, by the people for the people.

With the Lisbon Treaty -- brought in IN SPITE of the people and against their expressed will -- we now have a party oligarchy. It is rule by a party cartel of two or three main party machines. The party politicians in fact agreed to the Lisbon Treaty, NOT THE PEOPLE. It is government by the party, for the party and of the party.

The democratic bodies that the Founding Fathers like Robert Schuman declared to be non-political and free and independent of party interests and governments -- are all under the thumb of political parties. The Commission is now a forbidden zone to anyone without a party card. No elections were taken for membership of the Commission. No advertising was made to ask the public if they knew of any one who was qualified as experienced and impartial. No one from the non-political public proposed a member of the Commission. No member of the public had the opportunity to object to the politicians that the political machines put forward. The Council of Ministers that decided on these politicians was secret. No camera was allowed in, no journalist. Not even a member of the public, designated as an observer.

This is in direct violation of the founding principles of the Europe Declaration of 18 April 1951 that European citizens themselves, not the parties, should be 'FREE TO CHOOSE.'

In the beginning nearly all its members of the Commission were free from party political membership. Some resigned party membership because they wished to be seen to be impartial. Why? because all the members of the Commission must be INDEPENDENT. They also represented by this impartiality normal, free citizens. The only one of the FIVE institutions of Supranational Democracy that has remained free from being an exclusive party political zone is the Court of Justice. For how long?

7 The coming FIRE STORM on European Democracy. The Commission provides a poison pot

The European Commission has published a Press Memo called: Explaining the Treaty of Lisbon. Read it carefully as if you were enjoying a cup of tea — but treat it as if someone might have put lumps of poison in it. Remember these are the people who for several decades hid and denied the existence of the Europe Declaration. They still do. In this first Declaration about Europe's democracy, the founding fathers said the NEW Europe would be defined by countries where the people were 'free to choose' To hide such an important Declaration is a deliberate immoral act. Even more immoral is an act to deny any public consent while governments overturn a democracy.

When it comes to constitutional matters, any moral flaw is tested to destruction by citizens or leaders wanting or tending to corrupt it. Public revulsion will either eliminate the poison, or corruption will destroy a weak, morally-flawed constitutional arrangement. That final destructive stage amounts to a revolution or turning over of a corrupt and corrupting system. A constitutional system based squarely on moral principles will survive any test of fire. It will be rebuilt if necessary.

The European Community system is a treaty-based initiation of supranational democracy. It is still not working properly because governments have agreed to its five institutions but not to democratize them as required. Supranational democracy is the purest form of democracy so far initiated in practice. It is highly successful -- it brought Europe peace -- but it was immediately tried by fire. It has survived the attacks of nationalists such as de Gaulle. It is now being tried in a new fire: party political oligarchy.

'Democracy as defined by Robert Schuman involves being at the SERVICE of the people through actions AGREED by the people. It provides a democratic voice for nations, associations of individuals and for individual citizens. The rule of law is open to all. It has the means to provide the best practical solution to small and to global problems based on in-depth REASONED DEMOCRACY. That means the reasoned assent of different interests must coincide. Since its inception, supranational democracy has been supported by many who understood it. This is clear from the Europe Declaration that governments have suppressed. (Only Luxembourg to my knowledge has published it!) It was opposed by many who called themselves democrats (often combative politicians in conflictual parliaments).

Secretive Intergovernmentalism has been added by treaties like those of Amsterdam, Maastricht and Nice. The Lisbon Treaty tries to change what remains of supranational democracy by eliminating the voice of non-party civil society.

With the Lisbon Treaty we are entering a new period of trial and testing for the survival of real supranational democracy. The coming trial by fire will either burn its institutions or the undemocratic seizure of power by an oligarchy of political party machines will auto-immolate themselves to cinders.

The conflict that will take place is clear from this Memo. But be careful! It is in Orwellian PR speak.
Example. The Memo asks, ‘Why does Europe need the Lisbon Treaty?’ It answers 'To realize its full potential, the European Union needs to modernize and reform.’

That sounds reasonable. Who can be against modernization or reform? By modern most people would mean just and fair and correcting past wrongs and injustice. The truth is a bit different. The Treaty does not help Europeans have more democratic and responsible government. This is therefore a fib. What would be real modernization would be for governments to respect and observe the treaties they signed up to. That includes their specific obligations. They haven't even dealt with their bad school report.

It would therefore be modern for the Commission to become clearly more independent of all interest groups including political parties. Who wants it to be biased, prejudiced and partial? Instead, the reform has made it totally dependent on a party political oligarchy. Don't ask for an application form for Commissioner! The institution is under the control of two or three political parties. Who controls the parties? Under the the Treaty politicians have decided to exclude 98 per cent of the citizens from becoming a Commissioner. Normal non-political citizens have been kicked out off the Commission. It is probably the GREATEST ACT OF DISCRIMINATION EVER LEGISLATED IN MODERN TIMES. Is that modernization? Politicians seized exclusive control to secure their own interests. That is a corrupt act.

Though admittedly not impossible, it is difficult for politicians to be independent. Why? because the political parties are partisan. They are also a clan, an interest group. They are lobbyists. They are the biggest and most powerful lobby groups in the whole of Europe. Politicians have years of training and experience to fight for partial causes. That is the opposite of being trained to be impartial. Yet this dubious category "politician" is the only one the Treaty deems capable to be candidates. And they are chosen in secret. Hm, something smells fishy. Let's look further.

Modernization for the European Parliament would mean to have ONE proper, fair European election. It is NOT modern to have 27 separate national elections where the government parties in each Member State fix the rules to maximize their party votes.

The founding Treaties of Paris and Rome said there should be one single election under common rules for all. Governments agreed to this. They did not implement it. It has still not been implemented since then — nearly SIXTY year of undemocratic ABUSE!

First the governments led by Charles de Gaulle refused to have any elections at all. Other governments spinelessly acquiesced -- until 1979. That immoral act sowed the seed and harvested the bitter consequences. Five governments opposed de Gaulle and said they were more democratic. But they kinda liked the corrupt idea that they could choose who the people's representatives would be. They would definitely not be any one who went against party political machines.

The British Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin strongly supported this abuse. Worse he may have started the anti-democratic trend in Europe. He refused Schuman's proposals for direct elections, sixty years ago. This was to the Council of Europe Consultative Assembly in 1948-9. French parliamentarians, wartime resistance leaders, (may they be long remembered), riposted with vigour: 'Where can we go if we see old England abandoning democracy?'

It is exactly that British attitude of party political paternalism that has now been proclaimed as the central doctrine of the Lisbon Treaty. Party machines now believe they have a divine right to rule everything in Europe. They are wrong. Non-political civil society has rights too. People are losing confidence in politicians.

Faced with elections in 1979, the governments continued to fiddle the outcome. They do this by having national rules for so-called European elections. Some voters are getting the equivalent of ten or twelve votes compared with other Europeans.

Let's move closer to the origin of this poisonous mess. What real modernization would mean would be that the Council of Ministers would open its heavy doors to the public and the press — like the Parliament and other normal democratic institutions do. This is what Schuman said should happen. And he said all committees should be open to the public and democratic decisions.

Rather than modernization we have a great leap backwards into the dark ages. We have a secretive, unresponsive, political cartel and political nepotism. That is a seizure of power, without democratic consent. The people were not 'free to choose'. When they said NO -- three times at least -- they were ignored.

The Press Memo also asserts falsely that there will be 'increased democratic accountability.' How can there be accountability when the treaty renders it impossible to sack the Commission? See Debate commentary 2 and also my letters to the Commission, Parliament and Council on this. And the politicians have created a system were they can vote themselves whatever extra money they want. It is up to their conscience, without checks and balances. They can create extra jobs for their chums. No one in the Commission, Parliament or the Council will stop them. They all benefit; they are all fellow politicians. Will they exercise restraint or will their hands be in the cookie jar? Both hands are already in the jar, according to many observers.

The Memo also asserts that the citizens will benefit because the Lisbon Treaty provides a ‘more democratic approach to EU decision-making (strengthening the role of European Parliament and national Parliaments.)'

This is also patently not true. Look, I acknowledge that, so far, the politicians and their machines got their way after ten years of public disgust. Their chums got fancy jobs. But don't say it is democratic, when the people weren't asked. (The treaties both Constitutional and Lisbon, were written by politicians and agreed by politicians. The Lisbon Treaty was signed by politicians and benefits politicians. Europe's founding treaty of 1951 wasn't written by politicians -- that's another reason why the Europe Declaration which says so, has been hidden from public view. It describes how treaties for supranational Communities should be written, by whom and who should assent to them.)

Reform. The Lisbon Treaty does absolutely nothing to insure the Parliament reforms itself. (It is the Council that can refuse any reform.) At the moment the European Parliament and a number of national parliaments are unfortunately hardly exemplary debating chambers of free independent representatives of their electors. In previous times, parliamentarians made up their own minds. The best decided by what they considered to be the most enlightened moral criteria. Reform was often made in spite of politicians, not by them. Parliaments today have rather become political theatre for out-of-touch party political machines. The machines force parliamentarians to vote in one direction or another, according to party whips.

This is no way to run a highly complex, technical society when issues have to be decided, and politicians admit they do not understand the technicalities (from global problems to how their own poor live) and are overtly partisan about other issues. This was one reason why Schuman introduced supranational democracy, designed to deal with complexity. Presently national parliaments can come up with half-baked and quite unfair decisions. Does it help? Even if they have a firm opinion, it does not really count in Europe.

In the end, it is the Council, which decides in secret about what it really wants. The Council and the whole system is largely a European party political duopoly.

Whoever controls the parties, controls the dossiers of government ministers. Parties receive European funding from the taxpayers without asking the public's permission. The Commission, now free of non party members, is the secretariat of the political cartel. That is practically the opposite of how supranational democracy is supposed to work. The Lisbon Treaty is a politicians' wish-list, cooked up at night in secret by the Council's politicians, a rehash of the rejected Constitutional Treaty. Hardly a model of democratic consent that their grandchildren could be proud of.

The Treaty shows that the Council still has not got enough courage to have open debates when it decides. Ministers think secrecy is best for their policies for Europe's 500 million fellow citizens. That is paternalism. It does not reflect the original concept of five free and independent democratic institutions coming together to arrive in REASONED DEMOCRACY. Who knows what influences the secretive Council? What we have seen so far about their decision making procedures shows raw, ignorant power plays, not reason.

The Commission Press Memo asks: How will the Lisbon Treaty change the Commission’s role in economic and financial policy? It quickly answers — it hopes before the reader has time to reflect — ‘The Lisbon Treaty strengthens the Commission’s role as independent “referee” in economic governance.’

Nonsense. That is the reverse of the truth. It tries to cover over what is a political coup d’Etat by the political party cartel. The Commission is supposed to be as independent as the most impartial judge in the most impartial court of law. Politicians do not like independence — especially when it impinges — in this case heavily — on what they consider to be their own sphere of bombast. But the founding fathers said that the Commission should be INDEPENDENT — and for that it should NOT be composed exclusively of politicians but mainly of NORMAL human beings who inhabit Europe. I would not like to go to an independent Court of law based on the same principles -- where the judge is also an interested party in the dispute. The founding fathers, mostly Statesmen, were able to discern that fellow politicians often cannot be trusted. They decided that the Commission should be INDEPENDENT because interest groups -- call them lobbyists or cartels -- were expert in influencing politicians usually to the detriment of the wider interests of the public.

The previous treaties did allow the original principle of independence to persist in THEORY. In practice, especially since the time of de Gaulle, it became just lip-service. Politicians gradually edged their way into the Commission. The first were honorable enough to resign from parties. Then once the politicians had made a bridgehead and gained a majority, they refused to resign from their political parties. Then they took over.

The fib in this reply asserting 'independence' can easily be seen by the fact that today’s President of France was cock-a-hoop that he had got a very political Commissioner who would twist things in the way of French policy — or rather his own policy. He did not boast that France had the most impartial, independent and experienced candidate. That means he is the President's messenger, contrary to European law. We should not blame the French president in isolation because many of the other governments do exactly the same. By the definitions in the treaties about independence, that is illegal.

The principle of independence of the Commission is defined in the early treaties. They should take no instructions from any government, nor any other interest group. At the moment the Commissioners are the puppets of governments/ political parties. How do I know? They are nominated in secret by governments.

Did you see any elections for so-called 'national Commissioners' taking place? Or was I nodding off at the time? What of the famed Democratic countries? What of the Mother of Parliaments? If one country had a widely publicized election for ‘their’ Commissioner it would of course embarrass everyone else. What ever happened to democracy? It is all done with extreme rapidity in the hope that no one will notice how undemocratic the political parties in 'democratic' governments were. They put in their chums. Some governments sent off political chums to cool their heels in Brussels, because they were no longer really wanted at home. No eminent Europeans who were not proud possessors of party cards had a ghost of a chance. Nobody!

All the governments send these politicians to Brussels with a clear understanding about what they should be doing and how they should act. The Commissioners then use the Commission as a stepping stone for a political career. They resign when asked by the governments to do so. That is contrary to the treaty. It is also immoral.

Clearly the writer of the Press Memo had not looked into the treaties. The original Commissioners had to sign up to an agreement that they would not take a job in any sector of their European competence for three years after leaving office. That ensured their independence. Even that shows the treaty writers were rightly skeptical about human nature. To compensate, Commissioners received a sufficiently high salary and severance pay. Ex-Commissioners could also take a normal job elsewhere. But apparently this is not sufficient for the present greedy breed of politicians.

I am waiting for the first Commissioner to say they are voluntarily refusing any similar job after they leave the Commission for a minimum of three years after. And then there is the other side of the coin. It would be nice also for them to sign a document that they would refuse to resign from the Commission — if their home government, that is, their political party — offered them a ministerial post in their State.

Oh, I have only got to the first two pages and there is much more of this kind of PR poison to follow. No doubt we will get back to it again. I have the feeling that the real debate on Europe is only now beginning. We had no real debate about what supranational democracy is. The Commission provided no information about how supranational democracy works. And then there was the conspiracy of silence across the road. The Council of Ministers refused as long as possible even to publish the text of the treaty so that the public could not debate it. They said they would publish it after everyone had agreed to it. What sauce! And the Hungarian Parliament passed it without even reading it!

Unfortunately like a complex money-making racket invented in secret by people who profess little understanding of supranational democracy, we are in for the practical demonstration of the flaws in the cartel's coup d'Etat. Don't expect riots to happen tomorrow. It took years of abuse by de Gaulle with scandalous wine lakes and meat mountains, and secret finances, to bring Europeans to their senses. By then the Mafia, with their mattresses stuffed from Community funds, had built up a stronghold in the Italian south. Democrats elsewhere were askance -- and stayed away.

Schuman said that democracy is not something that can be improvised. He spoke of the thousand years it took for democracy to emerge in the history of Europe. May I live so long to see it come after all this! But it is sure that immoral rascals will not persist, and they will eventually be thrown out, one way or another. Democracy provides the means to throw the rascals out.

It is a great pity because all of us will suffer for the folly of a few greedy politicians. All Europeans are missing a far better form of democracy that would be of benefit to all around the world. And how the world needs it!

6 Open letter to new Commission on SUPRANATIONAL DEMOCRACY

Subject: Europe's foundational Declaration of Inter-Dependence
Communicating Europe with "old documents"

Dear President Barroso and Commissioners,
Congratulations on your new positions. During the coming months, the 60th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration must be planned to take place on 9 May 2010. I hope that the entire Commission will give great thought to the preparations for this major event. The Member States are living through the longest period of peace in more than 2000 years of European history. We are faced with global challenges of the greatest dimension. Europe has to set the highest moral example as it did by creating a Community of peace.

Yet for the last decade or more I have asked the Commission's information services to communicate in publications and on the web the foundational documents of Europe. This includes the FULL text of the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 and the Europe Declaration made and signed by all founding fathers on 18 April 1951 after the signing of Europe's founding treaty. This Declaration of Inter-Dependence is equivalent in importance to America's Declaration of Independence. I have never seen a publication of the Commission where this is printed. Why not?

In this regard, I am enclosing a copy of my latest letter to the Commission's Communications services, who have not yet replied to my August request to publish these foundational documents. I hope that the first thing in office will be for you to publish "the real foundation of Europe" -- to quote from the Europe Declaration.

My best wishes for your term in office to build supranational democracy.

Yours sincerely,

David Heilbron Price
Schuman Project


Extract from letter.
To Commission Communications services.


In August I again wrote that it was high time that the Commission published the EU’s founding public documents. I asked about its plans on the 60th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration in May 2010. This time they should publish the full text. For many decades the Commission has published only a censored version. It said it was the FULL text. It isn’t. To my knowledge the Commission has never published the founding fathers’ Europe Declaration on Inter-dependence of 1951. This announces and confirms the birth of Europe and its democratic principles.

I have received no answer. No explanation was forthcoming. Instead in the internal correspondence between officials that I was also sent, the question was raised: Why is this gentleman obsessed with old documents?

It is a good question and deserves an answer.
I would first like to ask my own question as part of that answer:
Why are Commission officials so little concerned about the origin of the vitally important institution for which they are working? Do they understand the history and purpose of European construction?

Forgive me for my tone, but I have been waiting more than a decade for the Commission to answer. I have made many requests. These requests to publish the founding documents of the European institution are not for some academic knowledge. The Commission was the world’s first SUPRANATIONAL institution and the public has a perfect right to know what it is all about and how it affects their lives. It is up to officials to be able to explain this in detail. Supranational Democracy was not introduced as an academic exercise but to solve some of the existing problems like stopping more than 2000 years of continuous war between European peoples. It was also designed to tackle future global calamities facing not only Europe but all those on the planet.

This is what Robert Schuman’s long-term friend and colleague, René Lejeune, wrote: ‘The solution of the enormous problems, which future generations will have to face, largely depends .. on the {Community approach} of which Robert Schuman will be the initiator.’ He called it ‘the principal procedure for the future of humanity’.

Notice the future tense. If you do not know what process Robert Schuman started, if you do not know why he started it, or how it works, no civil servant is capable of serving the public.

The cost of NOT having a supranational democracy is enormous, both in human terms, its social disruption, its financial cost and in its global consequences. I wrote about this in a recent commentary on Your Democracy in Europe.

The sort of distortions, disinformation and falsehoods that the European institutions are propagating against the founders of those institutions is costing billions of euros and possibly trillions.

That is no exaggeration. Take one example in simple monetary terms. We have already lost untold trillions to the European economy because Europe has NO ENERGY POLICY. It has an intergovernmental wish-list at best with no democratic or legal basis worth speaking of. If officials had paid attention to the founding fathers and read the declarations and official reports, they would long ago have taken serious action to create an Energy Community (to follow the Coal and Euratom treaties). Why? Because lack of ENERGY INDEPENDENCE is Europe’s political Achilles’ heel. Instead all plans of the founding fathers towards energy independence were blocked, abandoned, side-lined or chloroformed.

The rise of oil from around $2 in the 1970s to nearly $150 a barrel cost the European economy multiple trillions. This ruined the economy in the 1970s and 1980s, and wiped out a colossal surplus balance of payments. It destroyed industries. It set back the introduction of the Euro by a decade. That alone amounted to multiple billions in wasted costs to the economy. Economists say that the oil cartel, by unilaterally increasing the price of every barrel of oil and gas equivalent by $25, dispossesses the EU of around $100 billion yearly extra for exactly the same goods. Another way to call cartel action is economic blackmail. And abroad, it set Africa ablaze with wars and corruption. That is why the founding fathers designed the Commission to be a strong anti-cartel agency.

It is shameful that the Commission succumbed to political pressure in the time of de Gaulle. Even more as it is still doing so. Is it on automatic pilot? It has for decades refused to publish the founding or birthday document of the European Union. That is the Europe’s Declaration of Inter-dependence. It was signed by all the founding fathers such as Schuman and Adenauer who had just signed the founding treaty of the European Community.

By that spineless act of hiding these documents from the late 1950s to the present, the European Commission has participated in the blindness of de Gaulle and similar autocrats believed that they alone had the intelligence to solve all of France’s, Europe’s and the world’s problems. He was proved wrong on most counts. The Community method involves open democracy with a multitude of counsellors to provide safety.

The Founding Fathers denounced the false and counterfeit ‘democracies’ behind the Iron Curtain where various parties (sometimes even called Christian Democrats, Liberals and Socialists as in the DDR) were a sham. Schuman called them a sinister caricature of democracy. Whatever the people thought, whatever their opinion, the decisions were all made by political apparatchiks and functionaries in meetings behind closed doors. Those who suffered under dictatorships in both the east and west of Europe are familiar with this.

The Europe Declaration www.schuman.info/EuropeDeclaration.htm affirms that Europe is open to all countries that have the freedom to choose.

Indeed, one of the main reasons why I founded the www.Schuman.info web site about ten years ago was to be able to publish the full text of the Schuman Declaration because the Commission had signally failed to do so, despite my and other requests. It failed also in its primary duty as Guardian of the Treaties.

The Commission will have to publish these documents one fine day. Will it be now or when it is covered with further shame? I am asking therefore that urgent reconsideration should be given to publishing these foundational documents in the immediate future.

I look forward to an announcement about the Commission’s plans for the sixtieth anniversary of the Schuman Declaration.

I am sending a copy of this letter to the Commission President and also to Vice President Wallström. I am publishing this as an open letter on several websites including www.schuman.info http://democracy.blogactiv.eu and http://eurdemocracy.blogspot.com .

Yours sincerely

David Heilbron Price
Schuman Project

5 Has Europe lost its sleek democracy and got an old, lame camel? Politicians hid the most important document in Europe's sixty year history !

The Europeans and especially their leaders are behaving like a blind man in a coal cellar. They have lost their way and lost their vision.

What is the most important of the documents signed by the Founding Fathers of Europe? Even if people knew what it was, they would be hard pressed to find a copy. Europa.eu of course will not show you a copy. You won't find it in any of the Commission's publications. Forget about the secretive Council or the passive EcoSoc!

What I am talking about is the Declaration made by the Founding Fathers that defined their vision of a democratic Europe and of their future. That is especially relevant now, in our time and for our future. But where is the document? Why do the so-called European institutions not have a copy on show somewhere or at least accessible in the public archives. Even if they violently disagree with it, why do they deny its existence??

The Document I am referring to is called the Europe Declaration. It was signed by all the leaders of the Six founder States. Schuman of France, Adenauer of Germany, Count Sforza of Italy, Bech of Luxembourg, van Zeeland of Belgium and Stikker of The Netherlands and a few others for good measure. All signed the founding treaty of the European Union on 18 April 1951. On that same day they signed another document right after the signature of the Treaty of Paris. It described the principles of European democracy. It is called the Europe Declaration because it gives a lucid vision of the future.

Do you ever get the impression that you are living in Stalin's Soviet Union? Maybe Dr Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda UeberBoss, has been working in the basement of the Commission's Berlaymont building for the last few decades. The vital truth of one day, its most important information for all citizens, is buried and censored as if it never existed. We are given ersatz 'information', crafty distortions, PR paid for from EU funds. Instead of the obligations to reduce the membership of the Commission, the politicians provide jobs for political chums, one per majority party in each State, and scores of new but unnecessary jobs for the political cartel. The new political leaders want to play their own game and a bit of truth is most inconvenient. The Declaration also reminds governments of their duties towards their citizens -- as servants. A Europe following the vision of the Founding Fathers would be leaner and all Europeans would be better off, in many ways.

The reason, of course that the leaders -- the political cartel today and the Gaullists of yesteryear -- do not want you to know about this Declaration is that it gives an idea about how we should be running the show democratically today. It uses the words, politicians do not like and cannot explain. That is SUPRANATIONAL DEMOCRACY. It speaks about nations where the citizens are free to choose. And many other uncomfartable truths.

We now have a lame camel of a treaty -- the Lisbon Treaty -- a horse designed by a committee and decided without democratic assent -- instead of the thoroughbred race horse we could have had.

As a public duty I present the full version of the Europe Declaration. It is as important a document as America's Declaration of Independence. This we can call the Europe Declaration of INTER-DEPENDENCE. Not something to appeal to Charles de Gaulle. However today we are living on a planet that is perishing. If we do not recognize our interdependence it will not just be sad, it could well be the end of our species. Other species are dying out fast, due to man's egotism. The principles of inter-dependence and how we can manage the planet democratically are of vital importance, not only for Europeans, but all earthlings on this blue planet, the only speck of hope in all the black, hostile reaches of space.

Europe Declaration
18 April 1951
The following declaration was made and signed on same day as Europe's founding Treaty of Paris, creating the European Coal and Steel Community. It affirms that Europe must be built on supranational democratic principles. That is true then. It is true now.

The President of the Federal Republic of Germany, His Royal Highness the Prince Royal of Belgium, the President of the French Republic, the President of the Italian Republic, Her Royal Highness the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, Her Majesty, the Queen of The Netherlands,

Considering that world peace can only be safeguarded by creative efforts commensurate with the dangers threatening it;

Convinced that the contribution that an organized and invigorated Europe can bring to civilization is indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations;

Conscious that Europe will not be constructed except by concrete achievements establishing first of all the reality of partnership, and by the establishment of common bases for economic development;

Anxious to cooperate through the expansion of their basic products in raising the standard of living and progressing in works of peace;

Resolved to transform their age-long rivalry through the consolidation of their essential interests, and, by the inauguration of an economic Community, to assemble the initial basis for a broader and deeper Community of peoples who had for centuries been opposed in bloody conflicts, and to set the foundations of institutions capable of providing a direction to a destiny that is henceforward shared,

Have decided to create a European Coal and Steel.Community

This work that has just been confirmed by our signature, we owe to the wisdom of our delegations and to the perseverance of our experts. We are deeply grateful to them.

Even before the work was set in motion, the very idea that was its inspiration had already aroused in our countries and beyond its borders an extraordinary surge of hope and confidence.

In signing the treaty founding the European Community for Coal and Steel Community, a community of 160 million Europeans, the contracting parties give proof of their determination to call the first supranational institution into life, and consequently create the true foundation for an organized Europe.

This Europe is open to all European nations that can decide freely for themselves. We sincerely hope that other countries will join in our common endeavour.

In full awareness of the need to reveal the significance of this first step by sustained action in other sectors, we have the hope and the will in the same spirit that presided in the elaboration of this Treaty, to bring the current projects now in preparation to a successful conclusion. The work will be pursued in conjunction with the existing European bodies.

These initiatives, each with their particular objective, should rapidly take their place within the framework of a European Political Community, the concept of which is being elaborated in the Council of Europe. This should result in the coordination and simplification of the European institutions as a whole.

All these efforts will be guided by the growing conviction that the countries of free Europe are inter-dependent and that they share a common destiny. We will strengthen this sentiment by combining our energies and our determination, and bringing our work into harmony through frequent consultations and building ever-increasing trust through our contacts.

Herein lies the significance of this day. We have no doubt its importance will be understood by the public opinion of our countries and by our parliaments, who are called to decide on its ratification. The governments that are represented here together will act as interpreters of our common will to build a peaceful and prosperous Europe. And we will serve it together.

The declaration was signed by Konrad Adenauer (West Germany), Paul van Zeeland, Joseph Meurice (Belgium), Robert Schuman (France), Count Sforza (Italy) Joseph Bech (Luxembourg), Dirk Stikker and J. R. M. van den Brink (The Netherlands).

4 Would the Founding Fathers be shocked at the fall of the Berlin Wall? Hardly. They planned for it!

In 1989 leaders of the European Community were shocked and worried about what they considered the dangerous consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall. German unity was inevitable.

Some tried to block it. Others warned of a German Reich. Germany had been at the origin of three wars in a century: the Franco-Prussian war and two World Wars.

In the twenty years since the Berlin Wall fell, have politicians learned anything about the European Community? The Community was actually designed as the guarantee that Germany would not be able to go to war against its neighbours EVER again. That is what the founding fathers said.

I have looked as best I could over the past two decades to find a politician clearly explaining this point by point to the public. Maybe I am negligent but I have not found any evidence that either the European Commission, or the Council of Ministers or other politicians ever explained how Schuman and others conceived that the five institutions should work and would create peace with Germany when it was united.

Yet Robert Schuman and others gave the highest profile speeches about it fifty years ago. Why were these speeches not republished by the European institutions? Why were they not republished by the French, German and other Governments? Were the institutions asleep -- dreaming of federations or confederations or their brain child, the Constitutional Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Lisbon?

Let's look at the speeches given by Robert Schuman in 1948 and 1949 to the United Nations General Assembly.

On 28 September 1948 -- three short years after the massive destruction and hate of World War 2, Schuman told the UN General Assembly that the unification of Germany was inevitable and he, as Foreign Minister of France, was going to make sure that the unification of Europe was also inevitable because this was the guarantee that all could live in peace:

‘A renewed Germany will have to insert itself inside the democracy of Europe. The dismemberment of this old continent, so often and cruelly torn by war, is a relic of times past. ... Now, however, our times are those of large economic units and great political alliances. Europe must unite to survive. France intends to work on this energetically with all its heart and soul. A European public opinion is already being created. Already concrete efforts are taking shape that are marking the first steps on a new road.. …

'We are, of course, only at the start of what is a great work. … Let us hope, God willing, that those who are presently hesitating will not take too long to be convinced about it. An economic union implies political cooperation. The ideas of a federation and a confederation are being discussed. We are happy to see such concepts being taken up, and studied in numerous international meetings in which personalities most representative of European public opinion are participating. Now is the time for such ideas to be analysed and supported by the governments themselves. In agreement with the Belgian Government, the French Government has proposed to follow up suggestions to call a representative assembly of European public opinion with a view to prepare a project for organising Europe. This assembly will have to weigh all the difficulties and propose reasonable solutions which take into account of the need of a wise and progressive development.’

The next year on 23 September, after he had laid the foundations of the Council of Europe, an institution that would guarantee Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms for all Europeans, Schuman reported to the UN General Assembly on progress in Germany and Europe:

‘The first President of the new Federal Republic has just been elected and the first Chancellor designated. The destiny of Germany is again conferred on the Germans themselves. Facts will show if they are in a position to face up to their responsibilities that are restored to them and to prepare their future in an orderly manner and in freedom. The rhythm of developments that follow will depend on the results of this experiment. Our hope is that Germany will commit itself on a road that will allow it to find again its place in the community of free nations, commencing with that European Community of which the Council of Europe is a herald.’

Europe's peace would be based on a supranational democratic European Community, not a classical federation or a confederation. This was the year before the Schuman Declaration. (However, we are still awaiting the Commission to publish the full text, rather than the censored version it says is the full text.) This speech besides clarifying how Schuman was to guarantee a permanent European peace, also exposes the mistake or vain boast in Jean Monnet's Memoires that Monnet invented the term, European Community, on 21 June 1950. Schuman used it in many major speeches before Monnet ever uttered it.

Thus the European Community was the key that would ensure lasting peace, not only for Germany but for her neighbours. Schuman gave speeches in Germany about the reunification of Germany. He gave them in German so there would be no misunderstanding.

But let us quote another witness, Robert Buron, who records in a diary what Schuman said to him on 10 July 1953. Schuman described the options: Germany might make a secret deal with the Soviet Union or it could develop a real democracy inside a democratic European Community. Only the latter would safeguard the peace.

'Sooner or later, wished for or not, the reunification of Germany will happen. It may be in a climate of détente between East and West that would help the development. It may occur in a rapprochement of Germany alone with the Soviet Union, after elections favourable to socialists for example. The balance of the world will then be thrown into question.'

Schuman told him that the existence of the European Community had already caused the Soviets to stop and think about a less aggressive policy than world revolution. In Schuman's opinion, he recorded, 'the pursuit of a European policy is one of the causes for the decision of the new Russian rulers to move towards détente.'

Schuman was no longer in office as minister and Europe required a well informed governmental spokesman to speak out about the European Community. He would give 'a frank explanation between French and Russians about the policy of European integration.' Gaullists, nationalists and the large Communist party made this as difficult as possible. Today we need not only someone to speak to the Russians but to our own European citizens about the real meaning for them of a supranational, democratic Community.

Schuman said: 'If I believe profoundly in détente and in peace, I believe equally deeply that the strategy that we have traced is only realisable in practice if Western Germany remains solidly anchored to our European construction.

It is necessary to progress at the same time with European integration, the improvement of East West relations and German unification. Everything lies in the art of progressing simultaneously.'

Schuman and others foretold that the Soviet Union would collapse before the end of the century. But none of today's politicians were listening either.

3 Why political party structures are a danger to Europe and global politics

The greed and covetousness of the political party machines will put all Europeans citizens at risk. The new political elites want to undermine the Community system of supranational democracy. By attempting a selfish power-grab, this narrow-minded minority of Europeans is threatening the European economy -- and much besides. More than ever, Europeans need a real Community approach to global problems.

One clear example is the financial crisis. This cannot be solved by a top-down approach, as it might in the nineteenth century. Hoping that massive infusions of money will wash out toxic assets from a corrupt system is futile when the system itself is morbidly unhealthy. Another case is the Energy/ Climate Change crisis. This too requires the full mobilization of all citizens. The science may be right and verified but human greed remains a factor than planning won't eradicate by fiat. No party political programme has resources, the independence or brain-power to solve the extreme complexity of these problems. Human ingenuity will selfishly unravel even a plan for planetary survival. Illegitimate party political control of European institutions is likely to make many matters worse with unforeseen consequences, corruption and low-level compromises. This approach is inadequate for the twenty-first century’s infinitely complex society.

Party political hierarchies encourage hasty, 'efficient' decisions, usually leading to unanticipated disasters. Only a Union based on an intense, open debate and the firm agreement at the levels of individuals, all associative organizations of civil society and national governments has any hope of dealing with such all-pervasive dangers. It needs to be based on fair, European rule of law. Europe's now dozing institutions need to wake up. be active and analytical, and assume their legal role in the original treaties.

The cracks in the replacement system, the top-down approach, are now under increasing strain. Their incapacities are becoming daily more apparent. The ever-more frequent European Council Summits with vaporous results are an obvious danger signal to the public. The leaders cannot solve the problems by international or even inter-governmental measures alone.

To solve European and global problems, Europe needs more democracy, not less. The disdain of the party machines and their ignorance of the original principles of Community democracy of the 1950 treaties will leave all 500 million Europeans in grave danger of economic and political subjugation. This is even more dangerous now in a globalized world with ruthless international entities eager to control from without or devour the Community from within.

The Founding Fathers designed European Communities in the 1950s to avoid wars among member states. www.schuman.info/ceca.htm But they also saw the grave danger that their economies could be taken over piecemeal by powerful foreign entities. In war they had seen the depths of raw, evil, human nature. www.schuman.info/Strasbourg549.htm For this they designed powerfully democratic institutions.

Self-assured politicians have over recent years selfishly tried to whittle away the independent pillars of dormant European democracy. They seem to think they are smarter than these great democrats who founded the most prosperous, peaceful Community and re-established vibrant democracies in all the founding Member States. Modern politicians seem to be little aware of the dangers the founding fathers faced and courageously tackled. These dangers included those identified as the root cause of two world wars.

The so-called reformers are ignorant of the European system, the Community. This Community is Plan Z, Europe’s last chance. It stands out like white against black to all the other national or European plans for peace over two thousand years. All the rest brought war and destruction.

How do I know the party machines are ignorant? Am I being too hard? Well I have never seen one ‘reformer’ politician properly explain what exactly is a supranational democracy. Who most recently told the public how the original Community is supposed to work? No wonder! Ministers are often quoted as saying they do not understand it. Which so-called reformer explained how their proposals will improve its dynamic structure by bringing more democracy to its five institutions? Has any politician of recent date initiated a system that makes war impossible elsewhere in the world?

Let's ask them an easier question. If they reluctantly concede the facts that the Schuman Plan brought Europe an extraordinary peace and prosperity, why haven't they described, scientifically and academically, how such a model works and could do the same throughout the world? Even the Commission does not explain how the system was originally designed to work. It would embarrass the present political Commissioners!

A further proof of this ignorance is the practical record. When it comes to the democratic ground rules in the European treaties, the very basis that they now want to change, they have shown no inclination or desire to respect them. Why? Because it will set them on a path for an ever-widening democracy, in Europe and at home!

We have seen in the previous Debates that (1) for more than fifty years governments have been refusing fair elections under the single statute specified in the treaties; (2) these unfair election results distort power structures; (3) the proposed Lisbon Treaty would legitimize an irreversible power-grab by party machines of the Commission; (4) the proposed treaty worsens these distortions and encourages corruption by ruling party machines because NO CORRUPT Commission President will EVER be sacked by the Parliament; (5) a morally fused Commission and Parliament will encourage corruption, try to marginalize legitimate opposition, while encouraging extreme groups with monetary hand-outs.

This was de Gaulle’s system: ignore the European Parliament, subsidize important voting groups in France with European taxpayers’ money to encourage uncritical compliance. It ended in the riots and revolution of 1968. Germany was forced to pay as his price for political rehabilitation. Supported by corrupt Italian and other governments for decades, the agricultural budget with its massive subsidies to voters remained as secret as the nuclear programme. Why? Because the CAP and much of the money flowing ceaselessly to Italy’s south for ‘structural reform’ was corrupt. When these people ‘chloroformed’ the institutions in the 1960s and 70s, the Mafia got fat. The poor stayed poor.

One would have hoped the public had learned a lesson: 'Chloroform' the European Community democratic institutions at your peril. You will end up breeding secret committees, secret money networks, and a level of political corruption that is still with us today.

In their wisdom and understanding of human nature, the Founding Fathers of the European Communities created five independent institutions that would assure, justice and democracy in Europe. www.schuman.info/supra5.htm It would make war impossible. They succeeded in spite of the corrupt politicians. In their system all States were equal and none was able to use power politics of the strong to dominate the weak.

Politicians who replaced the Statesmen over the last half-century have endlessly tried to subvert those institutions for their own selfish purposes. The present threat is the attack on the independence of the European Commission, the central institution of the supranational Community system. De Gaulle failed to put the Commission under French national control as a secretariat. The other States had a few statesmen with the sense to insist that the Commission must remain independent. France had its European resistance figures against a return to power politics too.

The present threat comes from a more diverse source, party political machines. They want the Commission as a secretariat in their own sullied hands. They learned the lesson from De Gaulle who had only the powers of one centralized Gaullist State. He could not succeed against the solidarity of the other smaller democratic States. Perhaps, say the party bureaucrats, a multi-pronged attack by all political parties together will succeed, where he failed.

By one perspective they are smaller than the Grand Charles and the French Fifth Republic — they represent only two percent of the population who have party cards. But on the other that two percent includes party members who control the government machines and have enormous influence in society. They promise a plethora of new jobs for the party boys and girls, career prospects, to water the appetite of the more flexible and less-than-scrupulous party followers.

The crux of their proposal is that the European Commission should give up its last pretence of independence. It should be fused to party machines. For what purpose? The ‘reform’ will remove any restraint on budget control.

Who designed this open invitation to corruption? The political drafters of the proposed Constitutional Treaty and Lisbon Treaty foolishly wanted to stitch in the yah-boo, confrontational politics like they have in the trough at home. That's a 17th Century distortion of democracy. The Community system is a 21st Century super democracy. For Europe it would be like trying to stitch a pig's head on a human body. Such ideological shouting matches were NOT part of the revolutionary Community system. Instead the original concept requires that the Commission should be an honest broker. The Community works on the basis of pragmatism, tried and tested steps to acquiring wisdom.

But the politicians had invented a clever ruse so beneficial to themselves that even when the Constitutional Treaty was roundly defeated in referendums, they insisted on the same thing in the Reform/Lisbon Treaty. This time they said: No referendums, wherever party machines can stop them. Only one court said NO.

How did the parties explain this power-grab to the public? They said that they wanted the EP elections to attract more public attention. Party politics would make the issues more controversial, they said. They wanted to reverse their decline with public trust. Fewer and fewer Europeans wanted to vote.

So much for high principles! But why don’t people vote? They are disillusioned by tales that politicians are corrupt. One recent scandal alleges a score of multinationals ran an expenses-paid ‘lobby office’ inside the European Parliament. Another, about MEPs’ assistants, involves millions of Euros. MEPs are refusing to publish other, apparently more explosive, auditors’ reports. If the Parliament won’t come clean on rumours involving millions, why should voters trust the ‘usual suspects’ to elect a political pal as Commission President dealing with billions? Their pal would be in cahoots with the political machines. Impartiality and budget control would go out the window.

These billions are taxpayers’ money that will be lavished at home and abroad to fulfill the myopic, ideological goals of a party machine that has taken power in parliament and has thus gained and even more valuable prize — the Commission.

Why do I call the politicians myopic? Firstly the potential instruments of democratic solidarity to solve such problems lie in the letter and spirit of the original treaties. The political class has not only ignored and bad-mouthed these principles.They offered no viable alternatives. They want the alternating competition of the trough.This is barren, even destructive. It is Plan A. There is little chance of having a lasting, honest solution either to the financial crisis or the coming environmental catastrophes by means of the Constitutional Treaty or the Lisbon Treaty.

The instruments in these treaty 'reforms', the product of best brains of party machines, are totally inadequate for the gravity of today's problems! Governments have already returned to secret talks behind the walls of the Council building in the vain hope that inter-governmental agreement will be forged with the democratic control shut out. Vain hope! Our disaster!

The public is being taken for a ride, like an emergency patient being taken to hospital. You are diagnosed with serious brain and heart damage (Commission) and renal failure (Parliament). Arms and legs are broken (organs of Civil Society). What's more you are blind and need a delicate eye operation (the secretive Council meeting behind closed doors). Arriving at the operation room, you are told that the surgeon is to be ... your family butcher. He knows all about body parts, at least in a dead pig. He also knows how to make a soup of the meat (fusing legally independent organs together). But does he know how a human body works and what is needed when it is seriously sick?

Unless the politicians can provide a proper diagnosis and show adequate training, the warning is to keep far away. You are better off without the butcher, unless you want to be part of someone else's soup!

The next debate will deal more about specific acute global problems that would follow from the party political power-grab of Europe’s democratic institutions.

When is the Commission going to tell the TRUTH about Europe?

For the last several decades the European Commission has been telling whoppers, fibs and lies. At the time of writing, it is still doing so. A disinformation campaign has cost Europeans millions of euros. In total the losses to the European economy must amount to billions, possibly trillions. They began in the Gaullist period. They distorted competition and robbed consumers not only of money but political powers for a fairer Europe.

The lie is equivalent to telling a child that he is a poor orphan. In reality he is the son of a rich, benevolent family. The untruth that the Commission and many of the institutions are perpetuating is about the origin of the Community. It is about the real meaning and description of European democracy. They want to tell a lie about when, where and how the European Union came from. Believe it or not!

If you don't believe it, check the facts! Go to Commission publications and the site www.europa.eu the website of the European institutions. Under history, you will find what is supposed to be the FULL text of the Schuman Declaration. It is no such thing!

If the Commission started publishing the FULL text it would expose the falsity of the whole so-called debate on democracy in Europe. It would expose the Orwellian efforts that spent million of taxpayers' money trying to convince Europeans that 1957 was the Birthday of Europe and that citizens had been "Together since 1957" ! That untruth was simply a campaign to impose a Constitutional/ Reform Treaty that had already been rejected. Behind this disinformation is the sordid attempt by economic/ political forces to impose a new system that undermines the European supranational democracy. It broke up cartels that robbed citizens and incited conflict and wars. Schuman announced this new supranational democracy in multiple public speeches in the period 1948 onwards. He did this at the United Nations in 1948 and 1949. He spoke about building a supranational democracy in Europe in May 1949 ONE YEAR before the the Declaration of 1950.

In other words the European Commission -- led by the Council of Ministers who find it even more embarrassing -- have chopped out, deleted and censored a decade from Europe's history of democracy. They imposed a blackout on the first decade since the war as if a Common Market arose by magic and saved everyone's bacon. Coincidently this date 1957/8 coincides with the seizure of power by anti-communautaire Mr Charles de Gaulle, now draped in the European flag rather than the tricoleur!

A real democracy would impose citizens' control on the Community budget. I have never seen or heard any Commissioner discuss these matters. Yet it is the fundamental duty of all Commissioners to discuss and support European democracy. The Commission is supposed to be Guardian of the Treaties! How on earth can you get public support for a new and highly improved form of democracy if you seal your lips with sticking plaster on what it is all about? Are Commissioners sworn to silence, ignorant or in a plot against the public? What qualified them to be Commissioners if they do not know the history of the Institution?

Here's what the European Commission does not want the public to know. This is the full translation of the introduction of Robert Schuman's Declaration that was made nearly SIXTY years ago. And before we begin, What preparations are the Community institutions preparing to celebrate this 60th Anniversary, the longest period of peace in Western Europe's bloody history? Or is it all too politically embarrassing, so soon after the fiftieth???!!!

"It is no longer a question of vain words but of a bold act, a constructive act. France has acted and the consequences of its action can be immense. We hope they will be. France has acted primarily for peace and to give peace a real chance.

For this it is necessary that Europe should exist. Five years, almost to the day, after the unconditional surrender of Germany, France is accomplishing the first decisive act for European construction and is associating Germany with this. Conditions in Europe are going to be entirely changed because of it. This transformation will facilitate other action which has been impossible until this day.

Europe will be born from this, a Europe which is solidly united and constructed around a strong framework. It will be a Europe where the standard of living will rise by grouping together production and expanding markets, thus encouraging the lowering of prices.

In this Europe, the Ruhr, the Saar and the French industrial basins will work together for common goals and their progress will be followed by observers from the United Nations. All Europeans without distinction, whether from east or west, and all the overseas territories, especially Africa, which awaits development and prosperity from this old continent, will gain benefits from their labour of peace."

Note what the public has not been told:
1. Schuman makes clear that this proposal is the REAL start of major changes in Europe and consequently all the world.

2 This initiative will have IMMENSE consequences.

3. It will provide the ONLY real solution so far proposed for world peace.

4. An entity called EUROPE must exist for this world plan to succeed.

5. Five years previously Europe lay in blood, ruins and scattered with dead and dying. In only five years, Schuman and the French government were making the FIRST DECISIVE ACT in constructing Europe.

6. The European Community will transform the entirety of world politics. It will 'facilitate other action which has been impossible until this day.'

7. The first Community marks the BIRTHDAY of Europe. This is exactly what the Six leaders who signed the founding treaty on 18 April 1951 declared in the Europe Declaration. As far as I know this has never been published on the Commission's website. This makes complete nonsense of the attempt by unscrupulous politicians to try to make the signing of the Common Market treaty the birth of Europe. Absolute irresponsibility worthy of the propaganda systems of Joe Stalin and Herr Hitler! They rewrote history and changed facts to support their totalitarian regimes. They repeated lies until they made it difficult or dangerous for any citizen to resist and oppose them with truth.

8. The European Community will have a solid foundation. In terms of personnel it is small. In terms of budget (even with the inflated, political operations) it uses only one per cent of the GDP of 27 Community Member States. The USA's federal budget uses multiple times that amount. The Community has had the strength and flexibility to withstand attack, opposition and abuse of selfish, nationalistic leaders and self-serving politicians. It provides a model for many other aspiring Communities of States in the world that are empty shadows in comparison. Nowadays they mistakenly think that something like the European Union is the solution (without a Community legal and democratic system)!

9. Schuman's forecast that Europe would both be prosperous and would also see falling prices for goods is remarkable. Economically these two matters rarely coincide. His declaration contrasts starkly with contemporary prognosticators who in 1950 saw Europe as a continuing zone of war, poverty and and more conflict.

10. Europeans behind the Iron Curtain would not only benefit from the European Community but they had a right and an open invitation to join it. Schuman made this clear at the press conference. It was, he said, open to Russia. Membership would have totally turned the communist system upside down because it imposed gradual democratic change. (The Soviets immediately attacked the Community as a Cartel. That was pretty stupid. The European Community was the world's first international anti-cartel agency.) The Community was a beacon of light to all the countries of central and eastern Europe and wore away the Iron Curtain itself. Schuman predicted this would happen.

11. The Community system -- if properly understood -- would bring peace and prosperity to Africa and other continents where European powers once had colonies.

12. The mission statement of the European Community -- is to make peace at home and to create the labour of peace abroad, based on the realistic and true principles of the type of democracy that Schuman announced. This is far from how democracy is presented by politicians -- who all too often favour a system that benefits political parties and not the people.

The full text can be found on www.schuman.info where it has been published for the last decade. There you will also find an analysis and a quiz on the full text.

2. Why the Lisbon Treaty is an open invitation to corruption

The proposed treaty will make it impossible for Parliament to sack the Commission for overt corruption, even of the type that stinks in the public's noses. Here's how the degradation of Europe's democracy was instigated. Either by malice, lust for power or ignorance, political party machines are trying to block or subvert the checks and balances initiated by the founding fathers like Robert Schuman.

Over the last two centuries the European States were faced with major problems. Not only war - that was the common virus of the Continent. A violent outbreak of war was expected at regular intervals. The main problem was the ever-increasing deaths in these endemic wars. Increased wartime mortality, caused by the industrialization of war, took on aspects of a generalized European suicide, said Schuman. In reality there are just two ways to deal with Europe. Let us call them Plan ‘A’ and Plan ‘Z’.

Plan A was seen as the usual solution to a war. Actually Plan A caused war as much as it solved it. One country conquered another to seize property or booty, or put an end to oppression. But then with time the second country rose up and freed themselves and conquered the first. In fact all the plans from A to Y caused war. They were really only variations of Plan A. Solutions A to Y all involved one nation, or one industrialized group, or one cartel, one political, military, economic, philosophical, religious or racial ideology, dominating all the other groups of Europe. Historians say that for Europeans war was business as usual for two thousand years. Within Western Europe every generation was either recovering from war, preparing war or actually conducting war. see www.schuman.info/jubilee.htm

After World War 2, nations were still faced with the same choice, (when X= atheistic Marxism and Y= racist and neo-pagan Nazism plus the persistent W= lucrelatrous Cartels).

In 1950, the European Community’s founding fathers created an entirely new idea, called Plan Z. This was the final solution. Not for death but for living together in peace. It is also called a supranational democracy. By banning domination by a clique, it encourages prosperity while eliminating the seemingly inevitable descent into war every generation. Europeans chose LIFE. They chose peace.

Supranational democracy made war materially impossible. It made war unthinkable. There have been NO wars in Western Europe inside the Community in more than sixty years. No other period in all European history has had such a long peace.

At the turn of this new century, along comes another generation of politicians. They are a privileged third generation. The only third generation of Europeans who have not known a European war inside the borders of what was the original Community. They chose to reform the founding treaties. Fine. But how do they choose to reform it? Cocooned by peace and prosperity, they said that Plan Z is outdated. Forgetful of who caused the damage to the Community idea and why, or just willfully ignorant of the original concept of democracy, they say their idea of a political oligarchy is more efficient and more modern. It would certainly benefit them. They ignore the people who warn: ‘This continuing loss our rights and our freedom of expression will end in our subjugation and then disaster for you. You politicians do not respect our rights in the treaties. This proposal for treaty 'reform' is really Plan A, writ large. This time it inserts a pernicious political clique inside plan Z. Your plan A introduces the same poisonous virus, asserting control by one powerful group over the weak and apparently powerless. That virus is written in deep letters in the heart of the proposed Constitutional Treaty and the ‘Reform Treaty’ now called the Lisbon Treaty.’ In short, they say, the poisonous virus enters the Community system lethally by making the European Commission a party-political oligarchy. The other institutions of civil society are chloroformed.

This menace has been growing in the years since the departure of the founding fathers. De Gaulle attempted a nationalistic fight-back 'to suffocate and chloroform' the institutions. He wished to be in control of Europe with the Commission as his secretariat. He therefore subverted the Community system for his own egotistical and nationalistic purposes. Other politicians followed suit by playing nationalistic cards. They did not succeed. Whether democrats or not however, they did not stop filling the Commission vacancies illegitimately with national politicians only.

Arrogant politicians are cuckoos who have lulled the public to sleep. They coo: 'The virus is harmless. Why not make the Commission political? Why should it be independent? All European governments have political parties, don’t they? All Commission members must be national representatives, and of course politicians'.

Democrats, WAKE UP! The politicians are attacking every autonomous aspect of the Community system with its five independent institutions for all Civil Society; www.schuman.info/supra5.htm They are turning Europe into a rubber stamp without checks or balances. The ‘reform’ fuses the competence of two independent bodies, the Commission and Parliament. It puts both under party control. It makes the secretive Council of Ministers complicit in this underhand political nepotism. The treaties say the Council should have a higher, nobler responsibility for States, not parties.

A democratic system must protect the rights of the individual against the abuse of governments. What does the ‘reforming’ treaty do? It puts the foxes (the politicians) in charge of the chicken coop and right inside the coop too! They want the key to lock anyone out who would stop this oligarchy! That means ALL non-political people and associations. Referendum results are ignored or banned wherever possible.

The foxes want to exclude the public from becoming candidates for the President of the Commission. Unlike the USA, children will be told they should not consider becoming President if they wish to remain honest, impartial and non-ideological. Only a person selected and supported by political parties will legally be allowed, the foxes declare arrogantly. Now and for ever more. Naturally, this person must also support them, the political foxes. Only two or three people have any chance of becoming the new Commission President, one each selected exclusively by the big party machines. Who makes the final selection? The Council of Ministers, themselves all party politicians. The European Parliament run by the main parties must then confirm this person by electing the Council's choice by a majority vote. What a stitch-up!

Each party has already gone to the polls supporting 'their' political candidate for Commission President. Each party has also denounced the other parties’ candidates as incompetent. The Council designates who has won this hypocritical media theatre of vitriol and infantile name-calling. He or she will be the one who has gained the most votes in the parliamentary election. This person is then nominated for an entirely different institution, the Commission. The previous treaties say exactly the opposite: the Commission should be independent of ALL interest groups, including and we might say especially, the political parties.

The electoral result will also not be fair. As we have seen in the first Commission Debate, the election results are willfully distorted by national governments. They refuse a single electoral law specified in the treaties.

To succeed in being elected in Parliament, the would-be Commission president must flatter the majority MEPs, his pals, and their ideology. Thus, each new Commission presidency will boast and vaunt distinct political biases and a preferred ideology. An ideology is, for any who need reminding, a sophisticated mixture of truth, error and ignorance.

Why do politicians want to change the extraordinarily successful supranational model of democracy, by creating an undemocratic oligarchy and destroying the Community's balanced, if chloroformed, democratic framework? They figure that a treaty written by politicians brings a sort of legitimacy if passed by the politicians’ parliaments in all States. That will trump referendums and popular disapproval. With ratification they will say they have the law on their side for a potential power and money grab, unprecedented in Community history.

The Commission has powers to redistribute the budget. In a fully functioning European Community an independent Parliament and the other independent bodies like the Consultative Committees must control the budget. The latter institutions, that the treaties say represent organized Civil Society, are already chloroformed. Members, now mostly politicians not NGOs, are hand picked to keep quiet. And in this politicians’ ‘reform’ the Parliament is no longer a controller but becomes an accomplice. Corruption? No problem! The Commission has Parliament in its pocket. The MEPs will also expect something for their open pockets and purses!

The second danger relates to turning over the reins of power to vote-gathering machines. Under the ‘reform’ system, parliamentary elections would try to vacuum up every vote, including the most extremist ones. Once a Commission is politicized, it would try to seduce the voters of either one section of the population or the other, searching for the marginal voters to make up a majority of MEPs. For example, some parties would naturally turn left to labour, others to capitalists, others to the middle ground. But that is not all. Some covertly turn to cartelists, financiers or a religion such as atheism, secularism or fanaticism, those who threaten violence. With the smell of corrupt money in the air, Europe will suffer the worst excesses of right-wing or left-wing politics, and covert politics, while trying to seduce with money the fanaticism of extreme, and sometimes highly dangerous, groupings. In our society, all should have a voice, but none should threaten violence.

If voter-gathering machines make the theatre by fair means or foul to elect MEPs for a majority, the real object is to capture the Commission Presidency. Only one person can occupy this chair. For democracy, the most important question relates to the earliest stage of candidate selection. The ‘reform’ is silent on this, of course. Who selects the candidates for Commission President from the millions of potential candidates among the public? The main political parties! Who will they chose? One of their own. That is one of the 2 per cent of Europeans who carry their party membership card. Some 98 per cent of citizens will be eliminated.

Don’t hope if you buy a card, you will have a chance to become President! The party secretariats will help chose the preferred candidate amongst a small clique of ‘suitable’ names. A bare handful of people are the real candidates. The ‘Reformers' want to limit European free choice for democracy - of half a billion citizens - to the smallest possible number, those of the party chiefs. The people’s democratic duty will be reduced to voting Yes to one of two or three faces.

This represents the most blatant discrimination ever attempted in any democratic state. And with powerful political incentives. Top political oligarchs in a political cartel can choose their Joe President to influence the entire European economy and proposals for European funding for their own cause.

What a prize! Parliament will NEVER sack the President, even for gross corruption, www.schuman.info/LTEP.htm . The treaties give Parliament the job of dismissing the Commission for misconduct. The Commission President’s political pals, the foxes, are the only ones who could sack him. Dismissal requires an open vote with two-thirds majority! No chance of that! The majority are his most stalwart supporters. Any brave soul who broke ranks would be roundly abused for disloyalty. The Commission’s built-in parliamentary majority and the party machine would pressurize the honest MEPs who contemplated becoming turncoats! In the elections, the majority of MEPs and their party allies have chosen, nurtured and influenced the corrupt President in all his policies! The party secretariat picked him. They all not only committed their vote to him but also got the Europeans to vote to create the Parliament's majority that put this political fox in office. This is Europe's best person, they said, to be the referee and arbiter of European politics.

Thus the proposed Lisbon Treaty fails in the essential task of any true democracy: the ability to throw the rascals out! A politicized Commission President will be absolutely free to fund party political foundations and activities from taxpayers' money. No questions asked. Money calms other critics. And extra funding for the main parties will eliminate any difficult grouping (especially those for the poor and oppressed) that opposes them.

This invitation to corruption is not just a local matter affecting only Europe’s half billion people. The dangers of this fatally flawed ‘reform’ are of worldwide importance as we will discuss in the next debate.

1: Where's the democratic debate in Europe?

America has had its presidential election. Where is Europe’s democracy? Who should be the leader of the economic Super-Power on this side of the Atlantic? Where and how can European voters find the most suitable person to help organize a Community of some 500 million people and the world’s largest trading power?
On 15 April 2008, when governments of the EU eventually published the proposed Lisbon Treaty still in provisional form, a dozen parliaments had already ratified it. Isn’t it unusual, even bad form, to ratify something you haven’t seen? Would you buy a used car without seeing the engine — or more importantly — finding if the brakes work? Would you buy an insurance policy or a parachute without knowing the contents? Why are politicians in such a rush?
It’s a presidential race. But nothing like USA. The EU, a world super-power, even larger economically and commercially than the USA, has no presidential elections. Not even for the new-fangled, 2½-year presidency of the European Council, the body where heads of governments decide EU policy in secret.
The big difference between the United States and Europe is that the new treaty will provide enough presidents for a football team. There will be presidents for the European Council, another for the Council of Ministers, presidents for the Parliament, a president for the Economic and Social Committee, and a president for the Committee of Regions. There will be untold presidents for the secret committees like the Monetary Committee, Council and the Coreper committees. And that is not to mention the innumerable Agencies, sometimes a law unto themselves.
But with all this football team for the boys and girls of the political parties to splash mud, it will not kick off the first Europe-wide elections specified in all treaties back to 1951. Has no one read the treaties? Does anyone understand the founding principles of European democracy? Instead the so-called ‘reform’ politically stitches up the referee in the most brazen and unscrupulous denial of democracy in modern times.
Governments keep silent about one president — that of the European Commission. It is Europe’s most essential post. More than just the referee, the Commission, and only the Commission, can make a proposal for legislation. The Commission is like the person who cuts the cake into fair and equal slices, before the greedy children, the governments, chose portions. It proposes policies for the common good of 27 democracies. Competence and impartiality are indispensable. The Commission can do far more than cut cakes fairly. It can propose how, when and where all Member States, working together in democratic harmony, can bake a new cake of common policy together. When States know they can trust each other, they can accomplish positive things beyond their previous, limited, nationalistic vision. They can help each other and the world beyond, now in sore need of peace.
Does the system work? You bet! The founding Coal and Steel Community of 1951 ended Europe’s incessant wars and dismantled greedy and dangerous cartels. Drawing inspiration from moral philosophy, not yah-booh politics, the Commission must exude fairness and honesty in a Europe of values.
In short, the President of the Commission had to be chosen by several characteristics that some politicians do not wish to examine: namely, and above all, independence. That means an honest character, who is not attached to any commercial, governmental or POLITICAL grouping. He or she should have the requisite experience and, as the treaties imply, humility!
The founding fathers, like Robert Schuman, designed this democratic high authority to strengthen member state democracies. They insisted that the Commission be totally independent of governments. How? Firstly, governments had to chose the president unanimously. Unanimity guarantees some impartiality as any country can veto a dishonest candidate. Big states vetoed each other’s biased and self-serving nominees. The Commission had to build trust between States. That’s why it has to be independent, impartial and experienced. Quite often, good Europeans to act as President could only be found in smaller countries.
Today, politicians think they know better. Their contribution is usually to throw sand into a delicately working motor of democracy that still has to build up democratic speed. Under the proposed Lisbon Treaty, this impartial Commission ends. Politicians want to restrict the candidates to a tiny group of politicians like themselves. Then this president of Europe would be chosen in secret with votes weighted in favour of the big States, the bullies of history.
Early Commission presidents were often former civil servants, lawyers, professors or diplomats. They were NOT party politicians. If they had had political or governmental experience, they gave up party activities. Their records were scrutinized to see if they remained honest under pressure. However, when de Gaulle seized power in France in 1957, he declared at first a covert then an open war. He attempted to ‘chloroform’ the democracy required of governments and pledged in the treaties. Inserting his partisan nominees into institutions, he attempted to gain personal control of the three European Communities. Commission presidents Walter Hallstein, a former law professor who as a captured soldier had the courage to teach fellow German prisoners of war about the rule of law, Étienne Hirsch, a brilliant engineer who had lost much of his family to Hitler’s depravity, and Paul Finet, a metallurgist/ trade-unionist, stood up against these undemocratic assaults. These great European democrats were NOT party politicians!
Did the democratic governments learn a lesson? The party politicians REFUSED to implement the basic democratic requirements, such as direct elections to Parliament under a single electoral statute. These were written into every treaty from Europe’s founding Treaty of Paris in 1951, the two treaties of Rome of 1957, the Adhesion treaties, the Amsterdam, Maastricht and the present Nice Treaties. Whatever may be said of ‘democratic politicians’ at home, they are as slow as treacle in Antarctica when it comes to European democracy!
After de Gaulle, democracies half-heartedly reviewed treaty obligations. Direct elections to the European Parliament, required for about 30 years, were only implemented in 1979. (Schuman initiated Europe’s first parliament in 1949.) And then the governments refused to do it according to the fair, democratic rules that the treaties specified. Each government wrote its own electoral rules. These distort the outcome of the elections in the interests of big parties and the benefits the party political elites. It deprives the average citizen of a fair vote. How do we know this bias is intentional? Well, firstly the systems are all different. Yet the dominant national parties like them: many small parties and individuals don’t. What does that tell you? Secondly, if the distorted system did not please and delight the national politicians in their unethical objectives, they would have changed it long ago to something fairer, more just, more legal and more democratic. They would have examined the treaties they signed and implemented the fair rules of a single electoral statute, agreed by all.
The main governmental parties still refuse to initiate major democratic pledges in the treaties. Some institutions are still disempowered. The chambers of the Consulative Committees are filled with ‘representatives’ - not of the European civil society as the treaties say, but ‘representatives’ for politicians and parties! Special governmental (=politicians’) committees deny civil institutions and NGOs the political powers, some of which should be equivalent to the secretive Council of Ministers. We have only to investigate agriculture, an area essential for Mr de Gaulle’s political support. Much of the public funding to big farmers was until recently shrouded in secrecy, as if it were military security!
Today, who raises an eyebrow that the Commission is stuffed with national politicians? Some proudly boast their party affiliations, in complete defiance to the treaties! Does this profession of ‘party politician’ have the only wise people with adequate qualifications to be members of the European Commission? Are there no wise democratic people who can be candidates among the 480 million independent citizens who decline the offer of party membership? Do the fair-minded have to become ideologically biased by joining a party? What nonsense and lack of logic!
The proposed Lisbon Treaty goes much further towards an authoritarian oligarchy than Mr. de Gaulle ever dreamed of. It enforces bad practice by law. Anyone who is not a card-carrying member of a political party is outlawed. Jean Monnet was the first president of the Commission, then called the High Authority. Today he would be banned. He was never a member of a political party. Many people today have the same sentiment as Monnet. They want to be independent and non-political. Many don’t trust politicians. They see them as too often motivated by out-moded ideologies. Some are suspected of sharp or even corrupt practice.
Yet politicians say only they should be eligible to lead the Commission and hence Europe. And to prove they are right, politicians voted themseves a personal power grab — and in nearly all States ONLY the politicians were allowed to vote on this, the most important decision for all European citizens. The representatives of the people voted to EXCLUDE the people.
It is a momentous decision made exclusively by a political elite who claim to represent the people! It marks the start of party political oligarchy, not democracy. The proposed Lisbon Treaty ‘reform’ makes it impossible for the Commission President to remain impartial, ever again.
(To be continued.)