Budget8: The underhand, one trillion euro budget -- Parliament breaks Lisbon Treaty law again!

The time has come to start re-aligning EU financing with the principles of autonomy, transparency and fairness and equipping the EU to reach its agreed policy objectives.' These are the words of European Commission's 'A Budget for 2020' -- its proposals for a multi-annual financial framework (MFF) 2013-2020.

The proposal was presented by Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso IN SECRET in the European Parliament on 29 June 2011. Again!

So much for TRANSPARENCY. So much for FAIRNESS for citizens. It is a strange idea of transparency for the press and the public to be firmly excluded from hearing exactly what goes on at a meeting of two democratic institutions. It is a bizarre idea of fairness to exclude taxpayers from a room full of people planning to seize their money.

The doors were shut and guarded to stop any ordinary taxpayer from entering the sixth floor chamber of the Paul-Henri Spaak building. In it were assembled, besides Commissioners Barroso and Lewandowski, all the presidents of the political party groups plus legal and other officials. What a sauce! A secret budget meeting would be a major scandal in any national parliament. Here it involves BIG money, European taxpayers' money.

The Commission has proposed that taxes for the EU should rise from around one percent of Gross National Income to 1.11 percent by 2020. Whichever way you slice it that represents a substantial increase in the taxes or levies that European citizens have to pay. The calculation has also shifted from GNP figures to GNI. GNI is the same thing as GNP but with indirect business taxes deducted. A trillion euros is involved in the budget plan under consideration.

I haven't seen the citizens massing on the streets demanding a 11 percent rise in money that should be taken from their pockets! I haven't seen them massing for the projects that the politicians have devised. What is the explanation?

Possibly what the Commission Budget Document meant was not Autonomy, that is free-spending of taxes by the parties machines. That includes setting their own salaries and perks. What they meant was AUTOCRACY of the political class (in the EU and governments) to raise taxes at will.

All the institutions of the Community that were created by the Founding Fathers to express NON-POLITICAL, Organized Civil Society have been suppressed or taken over by the new political class. That is why this autocracy should be referred to as a political CARTEL because it suppresses the free market of ideas and democratic accountability of the parties. It refuses to treat the citizen seriously, making politicians autocrats not servants. Politicians have just two demands of the people: money to run their party machines and acceptance of the policy they hand down to them without proper consultation.

The cartel has distorted the meaning of democratic representation, which involves free-speech and accountability, not party machinery running roughshod over the citizens.

The European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek is reported as saying: 'The Commission's proposal on the long-term budget for the EU is an intelligent starting point for negotiations. The next MFF will be one of the most important in the EU's history. It will set the direction for the Union at an exceptional time when the European project is under pressure from the sovereign debt crisis and from external instability.'

The sovereign debt crisis is largely a problem of the politicians, by the politicians about money for the politicians and party funding, involving soaring national debts and falsified statistics. The countries that kept their budget books straight and where the parties did not accept 'funding' from rich people and associations in return for a tax-free break, are not in a 'sovereign debt crisis'.

At the core of many of these 'sovereign debt' countries is the need for parties to get funds and they are willing to bend the rules to get them for the voters, the public and large corporations. When this dishonesty becomes exposed at the local, regional and national level, Europe seems to them the next level to be exploited. This is an old and growing scam that brought wine lakes, meat mountains in the Gaullist era and useless or non-existent infrastructure in southern Italy thanks to the corrupt regional policy. It was followed by massive infusions of cash to Greece in the 1980s, agreed by Europe's party politicians, much of which subsequently 'disappeared'

We now have political theatre without legitimacy or substance. The Commission has thrown off any veneer of independence. It is composed exclusively of national politicians. They are apparently in a debate with politicians of the same parties in the Council -- representing national governments. The Parliament is also composed of nationally elected politicians of exactly the same controlling parties. They refuse to hold Europe-wide elections as required by the treaties for sixty years.

This is not democracy because the most important element, individuals in civil society and organised civil society who ultimately have to pay are left out in the cold, because the doors are locked. The press is barred. The debate inside is about a fait accompli.

Mr Buzek continued: 'A system of real own resources would be fairer, more transparent, simpler and equitable. We should also see an end to rebates, exceptions and correction mechanisms that have accumulated within the current system.'

That gives the game away. It is transparent only for the politicians. The citizens -- including the non-political majority of the EU -- have not accepted or even had a say in the Commission/ Council budget and its assumptions. A democratic budget is supposed to relate to citizens' demands and citizens' needs -- expressed in fully functional Community institutions. It should not be fixed according to the whims of the political barons themselves. The present procedure -- which is inherited from the Gaullist autocratic system -- lacks any semblance of real democratic legitimacy. It has more in common to the so-called People's Democracies of the Soviet era.

The chairman of the EP's Budget Committee had something to say about secrecy. Not the Parliament's secret meeting but another institution. He said that 'a debate of such importance should not be held in the secrecy of ministerial meetings behind closed doors. This should become the subject of as wide a possible public debate, including a conference with full involvement of national parliaments. In the coming days we will make an effort toward realising this.'

A closed door Parliament is telling the closed-door Council of Ministers not to be secret! Herumph! The Commission's presentation in secret in the Parliament was illegal under the Lisbon Treaty. This bogus treaty was passed by politicians in spite of citizens voting in referendums that they did not like the system.

Article 15 of the Lisbon Treaty's TFEU deals with institutional consideration of financial legislation. It states: 'The European Parliament shall meet in public, as shall the Council when considering and voting on a draft legislative act.'

It also makes clear who should be in control of the budget: civil society, not the political class. The first paragraph of Article 15 states:
'In order to promote good governance and ensure the participation of civil society, the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies shall conduct their work as openly as possible.'

It is not difficult to open the door to one or two reporters or provide a video feed. Yet this was refused -- ILLEGALLY.

The Lisbon Treaty generation of politicians is now embarking on a vast misadventure of illegitimacy. They suppressed referendum results. They refused to accept those that took place until the voters were forced to vote again under threats. They have embarked on internal policies without the full participation of non-political civil society. They have established massive aid and development programmes based on political ideologies -- without the participation of civil society. And after some sixty years the European Parliament and the Civil Society institutions have still not had the electoral framework for free and open elections.

This dereliction of democracy is compounded by the false road-maps. What the Budget document called 'agreed policy objectives' are anti-democratic policies that the party cartel gave themselves. The participants in both the 2020 and 2030 reports were given strict instructions that they were not to deal with European democracy. The political class are afraid of more referendums. They will inevitably come!

The 'agreed policy' reports said nothing about the 'Arab Spring,' global financial piracy, the Japanese Tsunami, drought and religious strife in Africa and elsewhere and other world-changing events that they would not or could not foresee. When such surprises occur the only solution seems to be to throw money at them. Will that work with a nuclear-armed Iran and Pakistan? In many cases the cartel policy of naivety and their pacifistic answer to blackmail may just make matters worse more rapidly. Who is controlling European money going to the wrong forces in potentially violent societies?

The present policy objective of encouraging jihadi and anti-Semitic actors in the region is pure madness! When did the public agree to creating, intolerant Jew- and Christian-free states, giving control to groups that still proclaim terrorism as part of their 'party policies'??

Why do they omit to say that foreign policy should draw from the positive outcome of Europe's great democratic experiment that Schuman proclaimed in 1949, his declaration of 9 May 1950 and founding Fathers' Great Charter of 18 April 1951? Nothing!! It brought peace. The 'agreed policy objectives' applying the parties' wilfully ignorant ideologies WILL NOT!

No public mandate exists from the people for the EU budget. The politicians may want to try to fool themselves by this dishonest, underhand window-dressing. It does not fool the public who know that the system is unfair and not transparent for democracy. A system that refuses to discuss democracy and improve what they call democracy is not only suspect, it is obviously not democratic at all. Schuman said the test of a real democracy was the desire to improve itself.

In referendums several nations voted into oblivion a Constitutional treaty. A democratic Europe requires unanimity among free democratic States otherwise it is imperialism. Supranational democracy has to unite democracies not compel them by force. The people gave no mandate to the Lisbon Treaty. Proper referendums were refused.

The politicians disagreed with the people. The politicians in a totally disreputable move brought this rejected treaty back with a new name, the Reform or Lisbon Treaty. Who is trying to fool whom? Without democratic control the Lisbon Treaty is an uncontrollable money machine for the party politicians. It exploits the people who cannot yet escape from the main parties because they always act in coalition, a cartel. The EU budget provides money for their party cadres that they cannot get by honest means at the national level.

This self-deceit has serious effects on the politicians themselves. The underhandedness makes it seemingly impossible for European leaders to listen institutionally to taxpayers. They believe in their own 'smoke and mirrors' that gives them power to thumb their noses at public opinion and even their own script -- the Lisbon Treaty sham.

Supranational democracy could help resolve the euro crisis and set realistic goals for the budget. The politicians however are locked in a vicious downward spiral of declining public confidence, increasing financial black-holes, knowing full well that more democratic accountability will result in them losing control and maybe their political heads too.

In a supranational Community, greed for public money and power is a recipe for disaster.

Euro1 : Why is the European Central Bank President still the politicians' plaything?

Should EU's politicians, in the middle of a great financial crisis, still be trying their old dirty tricks? At the centre of the euro is the European Central Bank. The chief executive, the president or governor, is its guardian. The treaties say that he represents the bank in his or her person. All citizens using the euro have an interest in his integrity, experience and wisdom. This implies that the ECB president must personify the integrity of European money for the European economy and far beyond the eurozone.

How then is the ECB president selected and confirmed in office? Should he be both nominated and chosen by the politicians? Think about the mischief politicians get up to in fiscal fiddles, bribing the electorate for votes and dissembling the statistics. I am not just referring to the Greek and Latin problems of the Mediterranean countries. At the June European Council the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said his country's (previous) government was involved in 'skyrocketing debts' and 'falsified statistics'.

Thus even at the European Council announcement of the ECB presidency, one politician throws the spotlight on the untrustworthy nature of this political class and the disastrous effects they have on sound money policy. Politicians are not the sort of people that can be trusted with the monetary printing press. Non-party guarantees are required for a real democracy. This is why Robert Schuman and the Founding Fathers designated key institutions as being independent and run by independent personalities to ensure democratic freedom of choice.

The main political parties acting as a cartel have tried to take over the democratic supranational Community system by substituting their party members in places designated for non-political organized civil society. Wherever possible in the key institutions they camouflaged their take-over.

A bank should be run honestly based on agreed technical rules, not according to a political ideology or a egotistical whim that 'runs up skyrocketing debts' and 'falsifies the statistics.' The euro was built to stop this. Membership requires discipline -- hands out of the till. There should be a clear demarcation between the European Bank for the euro and politics. We should also emphasize here that all eurozone States must agree by law that the governors of their national central banks must be selected independently. It is not an option. It is treaty law. National Central Bank Governors in the eurozone must be free to act with total independence of the politicians, governments and 'any other body'.

In general governments do not wish to be seen placing as head of their national bank a party hack responsive to party orders. They should advertise the vacant post in the press. They have a separate Statutory Board that selects the most experienced and independent banker for the task.

What happens at the European level -- that is the stratum of big, big money? The politicians think that they can totally discard this rule of independence. A candidate is chosen in secret, maybe in the ultra-secret Euro Group meeting. Who are the members of the Euro Group? They are all politicians. The chosen name is then passed on to the Council of Ministers. Who are the members of the Council of Ministers? Yes, they are all politicians! Then the name is confirmed by the European Council. Who are the members of the European Council. Right again, they are all politicians!

The secretive system of a political cartel is the opposite of what citizens expect in a democracy. Secrecy encourages lying and that encourages speculation. It is now well known that several members of the Euro Group built up and hid 'skyrocketing debts' and colluded in 'falsifying statistics'. A more open, supranational system would calm the markets and encourage trust and growth. Who knows more about the dirty little secrets of all the other Member States than the 27 intelligent men and women of the European Council?

According to the Lisbon Treaty, the same legal requirement of absolute independence applies to the President of the European Central Bank, as it does to the national bank governors. It is all specified with clarity in articles 130 and 131.

The politicians try to wrap the election of the ECB president in language to ensure thick opacity and murkiness. The dirty little political trick is called 'pass the parcel'. The wrapping is a distracting colour that turns the public's eye away from its contents. (It is announced amid many much 'hotter' issues at the European Council.) Who defined the contents? No one can be sure. The parcel has been quickly passed from one committee or council to another. When a journalist asks: where did the parcel originally come from? The one who has it last -- the European Council -- points to the person on his left, a Council of Ministers. But everyone is sitting in a circle and the parcel goes round and round until it stops at the heads of government. These top politicians are most probably the real culprits who wrapped up the contents in the first place. They have the motive, the opportunity and the machinery. They will gain from the crime. Politicians want to control the money supply, the statistics and the definitions of the currency.

The 17 May Council of Economic and Financial Ministers had this to say:

"The Council adopted a recommendation on the nomination on Mario Draghi (Italy) as President of the European Central Bank, to succeed Jean-Claude Trichet...'

Who recommended the candidate? Was it the finance ministers? It does not say. Was it someone else? If they are referring to 'a recommendation' of the Euro Group, why don't they say? And whoever it was making the recommendation, what were the criteria for the choice? When were they published? How did they choose this one person from among Europe's 500 million? There must be a lot of bankers with Wall Street or City experience who would like to apply for the job. Why weren't some honest bankers considered? Did the ministers have a list after a public Call for Candidates in the Official Journal? No one saw the advertisement. If the post of ECB president is paid from taxpayers' money and public funds, it should come under the usual rules for selecting and hiring civil servants. Surely the politicians would not want the public and the markets to think they are involved in political patronage and nefarious nepotism?

If the politicians did not act impartially to choose an independent governor, are we to assume the new ECB president is not impartial and has as a covert task the mission to save the politicians' hides? How can anyone know if the politicians are concerned that a governor shows no favouritism to any Member State? In other words: is his nationality irrelevant? The sole criteria for the appointment should be independence, experience and integrity.

The president should have enough strong character and experience to deal with dire situations where politicians gang up against him to try to bastardize the currency. The ECB president should have metal to resist the politicians. He should not be the politicians' plaything. The new candidate has several stripes against him, deserved or not.

It is educational to recall what happened at European Council in 1998 and the first selection of the governor of the Central Bank. The site of the ECB was chosen as Frankfurt. What has that to do with the choice of governor? A lot in Gallic eyes. The French president of the Republic said that as the ECB was in Germany the governor should naturally be French. (Don't you love the way the French use naturellement?)

But hang about! Aren't there a few more States besides France and Germany. Aren't there a few States who have an economy even sounder than France's? Doesn't France get involved in some dubious monetary practice from time to time?

France did not get its way and Wim Duisenberg, who had headed the pre-euro European Monetary Institute, was confirmed as the first governor. He was previously governor of the Dutch central bank and had ample experience. Before Duisenberg, the EMI was headed by Hungarian-born Alexandre Lamfalussy, a respected economist and international banking adviser, from Belgium.

The Germans, the Belgians and Dutch said NON to the French. They told them that they wanted to have a strong euro. They did not want someone who 'bent' the rules and did not defend the ECB's independence. A nasty fisticuffs occurred. In the end the French lost.

The French declared afterwards that a compromise had been reached. In the margin of the European Council they said that all agreed that (1) Mr Duisenberg could stay on -- but only for a bit and he should resign half way through his 8-year term (2) their named French candidate, M. Trichet, should then take over.

To any rational observer this would fail logic and fairness tests. It assumed that (a) Mr Duisenberg would want to resign and in fact he stayed on rather longer than the French wanted, until November 2003; (b) that M. Trichet would also be around, healthy and capable and hadn't in the meantime wandered off to Wall Street to make a private fortune; (c) that the "gentleman's agreement" (that is the outcome of the European CouncIl wrestling match) would bind the still future European Council with slightly different political wrestlers; (d) that no other candidates from the 25 other Member States would be allowed to place their name forward; (e) there would be no public call for candidates in the Official Journal from all the aspiring European bankers. In other words the heads of government were convinced that this illegality could continue for a few more years.

In the end the French managed to hold this conspiracy together. How? Possibly because it was a political cartel agreement -- held together by party political secretariats. M. Trichet was eventually made the ECB governor. Imagine a private Bank with 27 major shareholders where the CEO was fixed in this way. What an uproar would ensue at the shareholders' meeting. What court cases there would be!

The European Council's 'fix' says more about the secret forces holding this particular political dirty deal together and total lack of free choice in the way the head of the ECB is chosen. It says rather less about democracy and the high-minded principles that should be involved and the financial legalities.

I asked earlier: Who knows more about the dirty little secrets of all the other Member States than the 27 intelligent men and women of the European Council? The figures about debts and fraudulent statistics are coming to light. Yet the European Council is perpetuating the same sort of secret system in choosing the ECB president.

It bodes ill for the public because it is a clear indication of the corrupt nature of EU politics -- even when faced with a horrendous crisis of the euro and the financial future of several Member States.

It is not the sort of behaviour that reassures the markets, the speculators and the private bankers. Only a democratic, supranational monetary system can do that. It will take some time to remedy and solid democratic institutions are needed ... or the Court.

Budget7: How EU's Council of Ministers stole YOUR money in the E Coli scandal!

The Council of Ministers just slid a stealthy hand into your pocket -- and stole a euro. Think about it. Act 1: a score of people die in Germany from E Coli bacteria poisoning. Many more are hospitalized. Curtain for intermission. Act 2, the Council of Ministers quickly doles out 210 million euros of taxpayers' money to many countries around the EU. What happened in the intermission?

Who is to blame for the infection? An authoritative German source says it came from Spanish cucumbers. Let us call this source Herr Schmidt so we do not have to be personal. Many irresponsible people are involved. Herr Schmidt is a minister, an elected democratic representative.

Herr Schmidt says Spanish cucumbers are to blame. The Spanish farmers protest. Nonsense, they say, there is no trace of infection here. To no avail. The market collapses. No one will buy Spanish cucumbers, nor in fact any vegetable or fruit from Spain.

Then under questioning from the press and the agricultural interests, Herr Schmidt retracts his remark about Spain. But it is really a bit late, all fruit and vegetable markets around Europe have been hit. The public does not want to eat them out of fear of ending up horizontal in a morgue.

We now have a European crisis. What should we Europeans do? The Community is built up on the principle of solidarity. So would it not be a good idea to help the farmers from Community funds? In the meantime Herr Schmidt has gone on to blame bean sprouts, also without proof, and, who knows, a meteorite shower of bacteria from space!

But hang on! Who is responsible for the debacle? I would say Herr Schmidt is largely to blame for the scare. He did not say:

'What all consumers should do with all fruit and vegetables is to wash them well and cook them well as required. Bacteria die in boiling water. Wash your hands too! Eat safely like your mother taught you!'

No, Herr Schmidt started to blame an innocent party, causing hundreds of millions of euros damage. If any one is responsible it is Herr Schmidt. It makes better TV to blame and accuse rather than advise people on hygiene. If he was speaking for the German government as an official or employee then the German government -- and their budget -- is responsible too.

So how did the Council react? Does it lay the blame where it lies -- on Germany? No. It decided that all taxpayers in the whole of the European Union should pay for this German mistake. Why?

Like the quick movement of the magician's hands comes this very old trick. It has been done many times in the past. It is called political collusion. They call it Solidarity. They assume the people will be so dumb to think it means solidarity of all the citizens. In fact it is not that at all but solidarity of the political clique acting against the citizen, his money and his rights.

Consider the implications. The politicians are set to blame the citizen and say 'Collectively all the citizens are responsible financially'. That is rubbish. The politicians are responsible for the rumour. The politicians, so-called democratic representatives, do not honestly represent the citizen because they can point to no link of blame between the citizen and the agricultural market loss. In this case most of the citizens' real rights are best represented by consumer groups, taxpayers' associations or economic analysts and health-care groups, not the politicians. That is why Schuman and the Founding Fathers declared that organized civil society, such as these associations, should be a formal part of Community governance.

Financially there is a causal, financial and legal link between Germany, that is Herr Schmidt, bridging (1) the cause of deaths and injuries by E Coli and (2) the collapse of the market for cucumbers and other products across the EU and probably much further afield. There is no link with the taxpayer in the Outer Hebrides and the problem. Why then should a Hebridian crofter pay?

As far as I know, the Scottish crofters had personally nothing to do with it. They did not export lethal E Coli. They did not spread rumours or accuse anyone. Why should anyone in the Hebrides, or Rumania or Bulgaria compensate for a German problem? Why not the real culprit who started an authoritative but false scare?

Notice how the political class in the Council of Ministers defends themselves and takes YOUR money. Very quickly before anyone can reflect, all is decided. No debate in public. They decreed that 210 million euros should be taken from the European budget -- the taxpayers' money -- and be given to those farmers in Spain and elsewhere who were hit by the scare. Did the Council of Ministers ask the citizen? No. Did the European consumer express an opinion through the institution set up for this?

The body that should be defending the citizen and the consumer as well as the taxpayer, the Economic and Social Committee, is asleep on the job. In a supranational Community, democratic debate and legal opinions are required for all financial decisions. That involves governments, organised civil society, regions and the European Parliament. Under de Gaulle the Council tried to short-circuit this system. It is quite illegal and immoral to do so.

E Coli caused the initial problem. The rest is a man-made problem. More precisely, a politician-made problem. It has nothing to do with the weather, a flood or drought. Solidarity can legally be expected there and is welcome to help the hard-pressed farmers. But this case involves a single origin: ministerial 'foot in mouth' disease by Herr Schmidt. There is a clear causal relationship to Herr Schmidt for the real blame.

The Council compounded this problem with a crime. They stole money from the citizen, big time. They took money from all the citizens and gave it to someone else without asking the citizen. They took a euro from your purse or pocket! With 500 million citizens, 210 millions represents practically all the adult wage earners in the European Union. They stole one euro from just about everyone contributing to the European budget.

It is hush money. A bribe for silence. Just consider how unethical this is. What about the EU's neighbouring counties? Many countries, perhaps candidate countries for EU membership, also suffered from a loss of appetite for vegetables and fruits. They could not export into the EU. Many of them also suffered financial losses when all of a sudden the EU citizens said: "No vegetables on my plate and certainly not cucumbers!" Russia blocked its imports of EU agricultural products. Many exports were affected. This caused a problem for EU farmers but also the Russian consumers. They had to pay higher prices. Should the Council of Ministers -- who are very free and easy with other people's money -- send them a subsidy too???

Why, if this 210 millions subsidy was a just and fair policy, did the Council of Agricultural Ministers not spread taxpayers' money much further abroad? Why did they not send European cash around the world to places in Africa, South America and elsewhere -- which also took a financial hit as the German cucumber falsehoods were taken seriously?

The conclusions we should draw:

• Ministers and governments officials whether elected or not should keep their mouth shut on matters they do not understand. (That should save a lot of TV time! Public education about bacteria on TV is lacking.) The job of politicians is not to fill the airwaves with nonsense but to do their job. Sometimes this means keeping quiet. They should hush. The political class must be held responsible for what they say if it causes damage.
• Legal blame should be placed where the fault lies, according to the law. If some one is wronged he has access to the court. Why did the Spanish government not take Germany to Court? Each farmer has the right to take a case to Court in Germany. Now the Council has made a decision, they can also go to the European Court. The treaties say that European Court of Justice in Luxembourg is open for such cases, whether by the individual, an association, another European institution or a government.
• It is not the business of the Council of Ministers to short-circuit due legal process.
• It is not their job to give other people's money to resolve the problem of Herr Schmidt.
• Taxpayers’ money of the Outer Hebrides crofter or the Rumanian farmer should not be used as a bribe. The Council does not have a right, without democratic approval, to use the budget and give it to other governments to dissuade them from taking legal action against Germany or any other Member State in such circumstances.
• The Council should ensure as soon as possible that the Economic and Social Committee is elected on a European basis as a representative body for consumers, producers and workers. A non-party elected body is needed to give democratic legitimacy to any Community decisions so that a political clique is stopped from abusing Community funds.
• Government controls should see to it that irresponsible rumours are not started or if they are by accident, a quick denial should be published immediately.
• The media should act responsibly and not propagate rumours from irresponsible sources. They should analyse what shenanigans the politicians are up to.
• The German government should be responsible both financially and democratically for correcting the spread of rumours that cause Europe-wide or worldwide problems.
• Bacteria are not political. Scientists, not politicians, should determine the origin of E Coli strains. Impartial European scientific bodies should handle the scientific questions.
• The Council of Ministers is not authorized by the citizen to pay out European money to deal with problems that should be handled by national governments according to proper democratic systems.
• The Council of Ministers should investigate how they can recover the money they have wrongly distributed from the citizens' purse for non-European problems.
• The Council should stop acting as if the budget they have before them is their private money. It isn't. It is not to be used for resolving the political embarrassments of fellow politicians.
• And most importantly of all. The Council of Ministers should remember they are only ONE of the FIVE major European institutions that have to be engaged in a real Community decisions. It is not for them to act like a political cartel abusing the public.

The ministers of agriculture in the Council should limit their appearances before the television cameras to one comment:

'Keep your cucumbers clean. In turn we will keep our hands clean!'

Truth 15: EXPOSED! The citizen's most Fundamental Right that Politicians are hiding from YOU!

What is the most Fundamental Right for citizens in any society? You won't find it in the Lisbon Treaty's Charter of Fundamental Rights. It just isn't there. It is far more fundamental than any 'Fundamental' human right in Lisbon's Charter of Fundamental Rights. It's easy to explain its absence. The Charter of the Lisbon Treaty was written or supervised by politicians who did not want citizens to be aware of their most fundamental right.

Yet once upon a time, the most Fundamental political Right was agreed and recognized by politicians ... or rather by real Statesmen. They were the Founding Fathers. Today's politicians are trying to bury that fact. They are trying to blot out all memory that it once was recognized by governments and in treaties.

The Council of Ministers would be horrified if you or any other citizens knew about it! They fear the case against their dictatorial attitudes will be lost -- not only in the Court of Public Opinion. It could be lost and reversed against them in the European Court of Justice! This is also the reason that the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament and the somnabulent Economic and Social Committee refused to recognize the Great Charter was 60 years old on 18 April 2011. It is the reason that the Great Charter of the European Community has never been publicized by the politically submissive Commission.

The politicians and more specifically the political parties want 500 million citizens to forget that they can do far more than just kick them right out of power -- all of them. Elections are not much use if all parties are corrupt or aquiesce to the corruption of others, as a recent case showed. What power does the consumer have if a cartel or a multinational lobbyist is simultaneously subsidizing and wining and dining all the major parties? Political parties are Europe's biggest unregistered lobbyists. They can hide unsavoury lobbying of the powerful, as can goverment ministers. An election only changes one set of faces for the next but the policy bought by an industrial cartel stays the same. The cartel is laughing all the way to the bank.

Because parties have their own agenda, their own ideologies, but also a shotage of funds from the public, they lack public support. It is that distrust between the people and their supposed representatives that the Fundamental Right of the Great Charter addresses. In the People's Democratic Republics of the Soviet era, the people were allowed to vote for a variety of parties but it made not the slightest difference about freeing themselves from the Soviet orbit. Nor did they have freedom of thought, for example in religious matters or anti-Marxist criticism.

Today what is most important is for the citizens to retain the right to decide what type of democracy Europe should have. The major parties form a political cartel of power against the 98 percent of the population who refuse to join a party or even vote. A system run by a political cartel defending their super-privileged power structures is another form of dictatorship.

• It can refuse to recognize any and all national referendums against their proposals (such as the Constitutional Treaty).
• It can refuse to allow referendums in other countries where they know the cause is lost before they start.
• It can call a treaty by another name, refuse to publish the text and force it through parliament because they have a whipping system to ensure party obedience.
• It can then increase their own salaries and expenses without any controls -- such that the 'expenses' are far more than the average wages of ordinary citizens.
• It can hold budget meetings in secret, excluding the press.
• It controls the purse-strings of the budget, jobs, committees and policies.
• It can ignore public opinion. Policies are often simplistic as politicians are unable to deal with the complexity of modern life and all too often they impose ideas at variance with public opinion (who often know better).
• It can contort healthy economic policy to stay in power. Politicians encourage property booms and financial bubbles because they provide instant cash for their State projects. They refuse to balance the budgets preferring to try to bribe voters with money they do not have. The public then pays for the consequences.

In short, the Lisbon Treaty EU is becoming more like the German Democratic Republic of the early postwar period. They had parties called Socialist, Christian Democrats and Liberals, but in reality they were counterfeits controlled by the Communist party of the Soviet Union. The proof is in their deceitful and fraudulent attitudes to referendums.

Today we do not have supranational democracy but intergovernmentalism by a party cartel. What is important, as in 1989, is the right of citizens to change the whole system. And that right to choose and change is not given by politicians -- it is a God-given right -- but it was recognized by governments as a citizens' right at the beginning of the European Community system in 1951. Schuman and Adenauer were aware that the Soviet Union would collapse before the end of the twentieth century.

Choosing the FORM of Democracy is the most Fundamental of all Fundamental political Rights. Not all forms are equal. Each nation, however, has the right to choose its own democratic system. Robert Schuman, the Father of Europe, recognized many different forms of democracy. Unusual for a Frenchman from Republican France, he observed pragmatically that some constitutional monarchies respect democratic practice more than some republican forms of governments. The choice, however, is up to the citizens of each country. The main mission of all is to make each more democratic and fair.

If that is the case for each Member State, then do Europeans have the right to choose how democracy is organized at a European level? Schuman said emphatically: Yes. Furthermore he put that right as one of the first, one of the most fundamental of rights, into the very first agreement of governments right at the beginning of the modern Europe. He got every minister at the Treaty signature ceremony to sign it. It was also presented to the public so that all the parliaments of the six founder States could ratify it. And so they did.

It is called the Great Charter of Europe. It was signed sixty years ago. Isn't it curious that that date was not celebrated by the Council of Ministers?

It was the sixtieth Birthday of the first meeting of the Council of Ministers.

Isn't it amazing that that date was not celebrated by the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Consultative Committee and the Court of Justice?

It was the sixtieth Anniversary of the governmental decision that brought them into existence as INDEPENDENT institutions. How forgetful they are! How ungrateful!

The Community is an act of faith in the solidarity of peoples and nations that are persuaded that the future holds no place for war amongst themselves and corruption that exploits their neighbours and themselves. The Great Charter fundamental right of being 'free to choose' assures the means to clean out corruption from oligarchic and cartel powers.

Maladministration can be addressed to the European Ombudsman. The following is my reaction to the inadequate excuses of the European Commission -- that is supposed to be the Guardian of the Treaties -- as to why they have not published the Great Charter or even the correct version of the Schuman Declaration. It is not just a matter for the European Ombudsman but for European citizens. It is their Great Charter. It is everyone's Fundamental Right that is being challenged and buried.

TO THE EUROPEAN OMBUDSMAN

Schuman Project


Ref: Ombudsman refs 1200/2010/RT and 663/2011/RT

 

Dear Ombudsman,
This is to clarify my dissatisfaction with the Commission's non-reply to the main issues for which I requested a response, together with lack of figures and details of hierarchical responsibility. I have already sent you a copy of my letter back to the Commission DG Communication (also included below).

1. NO financial figures were given about how much was spent on the Schuman Declaration activities in 2010, by which I mean directly relevant Schuman Declaration activities, not cocktails and publicising other people's activities. A comparable case was the 'Together since 1957' programme which had a logo. What activities had a '60 years of the Schuman Declaration' logo or equivalent? What was said, what was published, what was broadcast about how the Declaration and the treaty provided for a peace system that gives present citizens the longest period of peace in more than 2000 years of history?

2. The Commission DG says that the Commission will correct what it has till now wrongly called the FULL text of the Schuman Declaration. It has been clear for half a century it is not the FULL text. The present Commission has for more than a decade facsimile copies of the originals, as I pointed out. The Commission still has not said what it means by FULL text. This needs to be spelt out as it already has its own 'flexible' definition of 'full' -- equivalent to what normal people call 'abridged, uncorrected and incomplete'. I request the Ombudsman to ask for clarification from the Commission.

Nowadays, due to this persistent error of the Commission and other EU institutions, nearly every other private and public publication including school textbooks and academic material, as well as European organisations and political parties, now use the wrong version. How and when will the Commission make the corrections and will it give conferences about it? Will all the institutions signal it widely with a prolonged programme? This situation has arisen because of the wilful Commission action in publishing the inaccurate version, prolonged incompetence in not checking the readily available facsimiles and the authentic sources, and inertia and refusal to reply to many letters and correspondence from the public over the years pointing out the errors. How does it propose to clean up the errors in publications and on the Web?

3. I asked who was responsible for the outright refusal to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the day the Founding Fathers called the 'true foundation of Europe'. The non-answer was 'it was not selected by the institutions.' ! This is an evasive circumlocution. I know, and you will be aware from the absence of even a press release, that it was not only NOT selected but the persons responsible deemed the true foundation of Europe should be ignored to such an extent no one should hear a whisper about it from the institutions. Why? and Who? The Ombudsman should also be aware that besides the daily televised press conferences, briefings on legal, political and other matters, the dozens of daily press releases, the Commission also publishes each Friday a 5 or 6 page 'Calendrier' (CLDR series) of the coming week. It includes all the meetings of the Commissioners for the coming week plus 'previsions' of the main events and meetings for the month. A competent staff instructed to provide diary and anniversary information must have been told by their political masters and mistresses to ignore and omit any mention of what should be the most important date for the existence of the Commission -- the day when governments signed it into existence in the treaty, 18 April 1951.

The circular answer from DG Communication is aimed at hiding political responsibility. It is gross mal-administration because the public, including the tax-payer, is not able to call to account through this anonymity those responsible for misuse of public funds and distorting political influence. Names should be named on money matters and no policy of hiding political responsibility for misleading propaganda should be countenanced by the Ombudsman. The silence and the blotting out of the historical facts about the 'true foundation of Europe ' contrasts starkly with the millions spent subsidizing and campaigning for the false 'Birthday' of 1957 -- a pure fiction, subscribed to by none of the Founding Fathers. A bureaucracy should not be allowed to cloak what is politically or administratively embarrassing on such a serious matter as multimillion euro budgets and public education about European democracy. In this case the political action aims at hiding the legally agreed Human Rights of citizens recognized at the time of the foundation of Europe by (a) Member States (b) the European institutions about to be created and set in action as European governance. Furthermore who, might I ask, was responsible for spending 4 million euros and possibly much more on false propaganda about 'Together since 1957'?

4. The same goes even more for the Charter Declaration on Europe by the Founding fathers. What is the Commission's plan to correct this omission in publications, on the Web and also in the legal databases? How is it planning to make citizens aware that the 'right to choose' about Europe's organisation is fundamental and that the Founding Fathers considered that supranational democracy was the TRUE FOUNDATION of Europe rather than the present deformation of the system (intergovernmentalism)?

5. There are urgent and far-reaching reasons that the 1951 Great Charter should be published widely and be the primary and key part of the legal corpus of the Communities and the present EU. Some of these reasons are given in my letter to DG Communication. The right of citizens enshrined in the Charter goes beyond the 54 'fundamental rights' of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the Lisbon Treaty. In articles 53 and 54 of the latter it is clear that earlier rights such as specified in the Founding fathers' Great Charter are not abrogated in any way. One of the rights in the Great Charter is more fundamental that any of the 'fundamental rights' of the Lisbon Charter of Fundamental Rights. The Great Charter gives all citizens the right to choose how Europe should be organised democratically, describes the initial 5-institution framework to be developed and says it can inspire democratic impulsions beyond its frontiers as a totally new type of foreign policy. It specifies that systems such as the People's Democracies of the Soviet era are not acceptable as Member States of the Communities or the EU. This exclusion requires and provides the means to define democracy more accurately than it is being used nowadays and refine the Community system to make it develop more fairly in the future. The publication of the Great Charter and its legal use are therefore of major importance both for the Courts and for the Ombudsman.

The 1951 Great Charter is a legal document at the heart of European Community and EU law, so defined by Robert Schuman in his writings and the other Founding Fathers. The 1951 Great Charter is a concomitant part of the Treaty of Paris, signed by governments and ratified by all 11 chambers of parliaments in the Six Member States plus a number of other bodies such as economic and social committees of Member States. Like all treaties, all charters and all laws, it obliges the signatory powers and all others affected by it to publish it so that it may be fully applied. In the last paragraph the Charter as a legal document says succinctly:

• that all governments have a public responsibility to interact, explain and interpret in their national contexts,
• that all parliaments and other organisations should be actively participating in public debates to elucidate the supranational democratic principles involved and
• that the European institutions must have the support of public opinion for their functioning and be willing to interact fully within the agreed structures as their service to Europeans for peace and prosperity.

Should you have any questions on the above. please do not hesitate to contact me.

Many thanks again for your service.

Yours etc,