Truth11 : Is the Commission mad, bad, ignorant or incompetent to refuse to publish Europe's founding Declaration of Interdependence?

The following letter was sent to Mr Barroso and the European Commissioners about the continuing refusal to publish the Great Charter of Interdependence made by the Founding Fathers of the European Community on 18 April 1951.

That Declaration of Inter-dependence marks its 60 years anniversary on 18 APRIL 2011

Why is the Commission not preparing to celebrate the founding of European Democracy?? Refusal to publish the Foundational Charter and the correct version of the Schuman Declaration is one thing. It amounts to censorship and propaganda.

Refusal to even take notice of the foundational dates in European history is quite another. It implies that the leadership is anti-democratic. It will not discuss democracy. Isn't that an extraordinary commentary on the leadership's LACK of Democracy and lack of confidence in a discussion about Democracy? Doesn't it permeate the whole Brussels political cartel ? Why is it not discussing HOW European Democracy is supposed to work -- according to the original treaties?

It fears a revolt. And now it has seen plenty of really worrying revolt on the southern borders. Will Europeans remain passive?

Faced with

• financial crises,
• possible unauthorized borrowing of billions,
• to cover decades of corrupt practice,
• the Euro crumbling,
• revolt across the southern Mediterranean,
• the desire to increase the number of seats in the European Parliament
• while preventing fair elections,

the European political Cartel in Brussels is doing everything it can to avoid a referendum on any of these crucial issues. Given the need to change the faulty Lisbon Treaty, they know that any referendum will lead to revolt at their unacceptable behaviour. Not only taxpayers but riots in the streets.


There is one way to avoid revolt. It is easier too. Just introduce the supranational democracy that the treaties require them to install. In a true, supranational democratic system everyone -- individual, civil association or nation -- would have a voice and an influence plus a recourse in justice.

Why won't it publish the Charter and the Schuman Declaration? The Commission wrote that it will ONLY publish documents that are in the Archive of the European University Institute of Florence. Is this a case of willful ignorance or incompetence?

Here is my letter in reply:
To: the Director General of DG Communication and Members of the European Commission.

Schuman Project
www.schuman.info

David H Price
Editor
16 February 2011

Mr Claus Sørensen
Director General
DG Communication
European Commission

Ref: Ombudsman complaint: 1200/2010/RT

Dear Mr Sørensen and Commissioners,
Thank you for your reply of 5 July 2010 following my earlier correspondence about publishing the correct version of the Schuman Declaration and the need to publish what Schuman called the Charter of Europe’s Community.

Firstly, I would like to present to you the probable source of error that lies behind the Commission’s publishing the wrong version of the Declaration. I would renew my request that the correct version be published.

The Commission should be guardian of the treaties. This function requires that the Commission have a clear understanding of the letter and spirit of the treaties, where they are kept and also how to discern the truth and veracity of documents. The officials should know where to look for the original (which is clearly stated in the treaty). The officials quoted in your letter have chosen an archive that is obviously the wrong one. That is the European Institute in Florence. It is true that it is presently the official administrator of the EU’s historical archives. However I would like to point out the following:

(1) It can easily be shown that the real Declaration is not the document at Florence. The document there was presumably that provided during the Monnet presidency of the High Authority. It is not the correct one because the original was not made available at the time. Even the thirty year rule was not generally applied. The Florence archive of Commission documents was only set up by the Commission Decision of 1983. Officially it only deals with documents deposited since the European Coal and Steel Community started. Its archives started in 1952. The archive contains a dossier labeled the Schuman Declaration but when I checked it some years ago it was obvious that it does not contain the original of the Declaration. Nor does the archive contain important originals such as the Treaty of Paris, signed on 18 April 1951 or other foundational documents like the Charter of the Community (‘Europe Declaration of Interdependence’). These documents were apparently never in the Commission archive. That is because the Commission was never given legal power to act as a depository nor was it a designated recipient of an official copy. (There are possible reasons why the Commission never asked for official copies. Monnet did not like the word supranational, the foundational, legal term for the Community. “I do not like the word supranational and never fancied it.” Mémoires p 352.) At best the Commission’s alleged Schuman Declaration used so frequently by the European institutions and others is a shortened copy introduced by the Monnet team who have been proved to be unreliable when it comes to historical fact.

2(a) What is the original of the Schuman Declaration and how can it be identified and proved? The original Declaration is the authentic text of the actual speech that Schuman made on 9 May 1950 in the Salon de l’Horloge of the Quai d’Orsay, the Foreign Ministry building in Paris. Where is it? As might be expected, it is deposited at the French Foreign Ministry archives. Is it considered a secret matter, kept out of public view? Possibly. However, the Commission has at hand an authentic copy of the original text. It is annotated with corrections in the handwriting of Robert Schuman before delivery. That proves it is authentic. It contains the full text of the introduction that set the geopolitical context and describes the importance of the initiative. These vitally important paragraphs are always omitted from Commission publications. Where are these original pages? They are reproduced in colour facsimile in the book, ‘Un Changement d’Esperance’ published only in 2000 (fifty years after the event) by the Jean Monnet Foundation (JMF). A copy is to be found in the Central Library of the European Commission in Brussels. The book says that one copy of the important introductory paragraphs of the Declaration is to be found in the archives of the Jean Monnet Foundation, which also holds important private papers of Schuman. The last words are ‘Voici cette décision, avec les considérations qui l’ont inspirées.’ According to this book, Schuman’s corrected text of the rest of the Declaration is to be found at the French Foreign Ministry. It should be noted that the pages of the typescript are numbered and that page 3 starts with the phrase ‘La paix mondiale …’ (That is the part that the Commission uses with some changes on http://europa.eu/abc/symbols/9-may/decl_en.htm .) That page numbering would indicate the full text with Schuman’s corrections in his own hand is probably in the Ministry. The JMF copy of this first part of the Declaration is typed on a different typewriter and the book says that this is to be found at the JMF at Lausanne, Switzerland.

(2b) In your letter you wrote that in May 2010 a reconstitution of the Schuman Declaration took place at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of celebrations. It is not clear if this and the ‘re-lecture of the Schuman Declaration’ at Paris include the full text. Could you please confirm which version was read out.

(2c) The list of events that the Commission supported for the sixtieth anniversary of the Schuman Declaration includes many events having nothing to do with Schuman (Chopin, Nikowitz, cocktail parties and discussions of Gaullist ideas like ‘Franco-German engines’, which Schuman opposed. I am surprised that the Commission spending money supporting anti-communautaire ideas.) The letter fails to say how much money was spent directly on the Schuman Declaration celebrations compared with the so-called 50th Birthday campaign of 2007-8, called ‘Together since 1957’. I would be grateful if you could supply figures for funding of both projects.

3 (a) The French Foreign Ministry is also the Depository of the original text of the Treaty of Paris. According to Article 100 of the Treaty there is only one authentic copy and that is held in Paris. Certified copies of the Treaty are to be sent to Member States. The Commission is not mentioned as a depository.

(3b) The French Foreign Ministry is presumably the legal Depository of the Charter of the Community, the Europe Declaration of Interdependence. This document is of primary importance as it represents a signed agreement of all the Founding Fathers, the plenipotentiaries of the Six. It defines the spirit and purpose of the European Community. However it is not clear whether the French Ministry sent copies of the Charter of the Community to Member States. It is hard to find. After Schuman left the Foreign Ministry it came under even stronger Gaullist control. The Charter is printed in books about the Treaty such as Der Schuman Plan by Ulrich Sahm with a preference by Prof Walter Hallstein, the first President of the Commission of the Economic Community. It is titled ‘Gemeinsame Erklärung’. It is also published in newspapers of the time with great prominence. This Charter is, by some considerations, more important than the treaty itself as it describes the principles on which Europe should unite, such as freedom of thought and the free and wholehearted action of the people. In signing it, the Founding Fathers defined the federating principle for organizing Europe as supranational democracy. Schuman puts the Charter in the category of the Magna Carta for Europe.

May I ask you again that the Commission publish these foundational documents of the European Union, given the importance of the soon-coming 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Paris and the signing of the Charter on 18 April 1951. I would be grateful to receive your reply to this letter.

Yours etc

No reply to this letter has yet been received.

The present political cartel of the major parties controls the institutions. It refuses to have a Commission independent of political parties. All citizens except politically loyal members are denied. It denies a place for non-political civil society in its institutions.

The Cartel's website continues to publish obvious falsehoods like the following in its "Together since 1957' propaganda :

Primarily an economic organisation at its inception, the EU has evolved into a project to guarantee high levels of social protection for its citizens.

R U B B I S H ! ! !

The EU was in fact founded as a system to make War not only unthinkable but materially impossible. Commerce in history has often led to wars. Commerce without a real democratic foundation leads to corruption and cartels. Commerce with democracy leads to prosperity. That's why the Founding Fathers signed the European Charter of Inter-dependence.

The Community system was designed to deal with the problem of 2000 years of continuous war between its peoples. A Community or the EU could not be built without a system to stop war. When is the EU going to stop publishing such falsehoods?