Nobel3: EU Council's brazen Nobel Expo Fraud: General de Gaulle originated Europe's peace!!

At the December European Summit, the political leaders announced an exhibition with a brazen propaganda falsification about Peace in Europe. It contradicts what the Nobel Foundation said that the EU and its forerunners had brought ‘more than six decades of peace‘.

That apparently was a great shock for Europe’s leaders! On 10 December 2012 the Nobel Peace Prize  was awarded to  the EU and received in Oslo by Mr Herman van Rompuy of the European Council, Mr Barroso of the European Commission and Mr Schulz of the European Parliament.
All of them had simply ignored or rewritten their history. It was too dangerously democratic!

• The European Commission did not celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its first meeting on 10 August 2012.
• On 11 September 2012 the European Parliament did not celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its first assembly under the presidency of Paul-Henri Spaak. It did not get any mention even though the EP was in session in Strasbourg. Mr Barroso gave his State of the Union speech. He passed over that event in silence and that Spaak created a special assembly to form a European Political Community, exactly 60 years before. (It was sabotaged by Gaullists.) Mr Barroso announced the logically impossible goal of a Federation of Nation States. Meanwhile in the Paul-Henri Spaak building in Brussels, cracks in the ceiling of the parliamentary hemicycle put it out of action for more than a year.
• The Council of Ministers did not celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its first meeting on 8 September 2012.The Council initially met on 18 April 1951 at the signing of the Treaty of Paris and the Great Charter. Both required all future developments of this supranational Community to be based by the ‘free will of the people.’ De Gaulle buried this Charter. Who knows about it today?

The official website of the Council still falsely announces that the European Union began in 1958 — the date of the seizure of power of General de Gaulle. How is it that the Schuman Proposal was made on 9 May 1950 and brought about a democratic system with five independent institutions? How long will the Council try to out-Goebbels the Nazi propaganda chief by repeating lies?

Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Thorbjørn Jagland said peace in Europe was built by means of :

‘a binding commitment. It had to build on human rights, democracy, and enforceable principles of the rule of law. And on economic cooperation aimed at making the countries equal partners in the European marketplace. By these means the countries would be bound together so as to make new wars impossible. The Coal and Steel Community of 1951 marked the start of a process of reconciliation which has continued right to the present day.’ He was referring to supranational values like honesty, anti-corruption measures, openness, public debate about tax and budget and truth.

Released at the European Summit, the Council’s official brochure for the Nobel Peace Prize celebration is a gross perversion of history and truth. It distorts how Europe’s peace suddenly happened — when everyone expected continuous war for the future. The brochure announces the exhibition ‘The European Union working for peace‘ that opens on 18 December to 15 February.

Who made peace in Europe possible?
General Charles de Gaulle !!! His photo dominates the brochure. De Gaulle???

• Yes , the same French autocratic General who wanted Spain’s autocrat Generalissimo Franco to join the Common Market and excluded democratic Norway, Ireland, Denmark and the UK! It also excluded Cyprus and Malta who had applied.
• Yes, General de Gaulle who blackmailed by the ‘Empty Chair policy‘ the other Member States to accept a Common Agricultural Policy where European secretly subsidized French farmers above all. The Council shut its doors firmly closed to the taxpayers. It created the present unacceptable ‘package deals’ system of the Lisbon Treaty were the European citizen is milked without any democratic right to refuse.
• Yes, de Gaulle who refused in 1959 the European Parliament’s demand (and Robert Schuman’s as its President) to end to the Parliament’s odyssey and have a single seat for Europe’s institutions in Brussels.
• Yes, de Gaulle who hegemonicly tried to seize the levers of power through the 1961-2 Fouchet Plan. His French policy was to dominate all the other countries as the only A-Bomb power and UN Security Council member. Schuman wanted equality of Member States. (Paul-Henri Spaak denounced the plan, declaring that ‘Europe of tomorrow must be a supranational (democratic) Europe.’)
• Yes, de Gaulle who after his outrageous attacks on Community Europe had a mass resignation of Europhile, democratic ministers in 1962. In reaction de Gaulle formed the Franco-German axis with the 1963 Treaty of Elysee, to the protest of the Europeans including Jean Monnet and Walter Hallstein and numerous other Franco-German deputies. They insisted on an anti-Gaullist preamble. Two months later on 29 March 1963 the European Parliament reaffirmed its attachment to ‘A supranational and democratic  Community based on the equality of rights of the Member States provided with its own institutions independent of the governments.’

Of all the leaders of Europe, the real Founding Fathers, the Council chose a photo of de Gaulle, who opposed the Founding Fathers like Poher, Rochefort, Mollet, Pleven, Monnet, Spaak, Bech, Luns, van Zeeland and so on. Adenauer opposed de Gaulle at first and all his anti-European and anti-Nato policies but eventually submitted to his wily politics because he wanted to tie BRD Germany to the West and avoid the reunification with the Soviet-dominated DDR. However de Gaulle wanted to create a DDR-style Gaullist Politburo in the Council of Ministers to dominate West Europe. We have it still today.

De Gaulle is shown shaking hands with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in January 1963. No other names are mentioned. So the Great French Autocrat must be responsible for making ‘war not only unthinkable but materially impossible‘. Is the Council now openly declaring it is the Bastion of Gaullism? Who wrote this nonsense? Obviously not a 68-ter with a functioning memory who was involved in the anarchic riots in France that nearly brought the country to total impotence at de Gaulle’s autocratic, paternalistic ways. Paternalism or autocracy treats all other citizens as children. De Gaulle tried to bring the same anarchy to Europe so that he could divide and rule.

Supranational means that politicians should be honest and that the people should be free to choose as defined in Europe’s Founding Charter. Thanks to the Gaullists in the French Foreign Ministry this European Charter was buried and lost in the archives for sixty years.

Why is de Gaulle singled out in the Council’s extraordinary affront to history? Few people as much as Charles de Gaulle opposed the Community system that brought peace in Europe — the supranational Community system. Here’s what de Gaulle told Alain Peyrefitte, his confident and Minister of Information, about his secrets aimed at destroying the European Community.
In July 1960 — after the signature of the Treaties of Rome in 1957 — General de Gaulle told Peyrefitte:

‘Alfred Fabre Luce has just written that now that the French have shown the proof over the last two centuries that they have been incapable of governing themselves, supranational integration is going to allow the Germans to teach them organisation and discipline. All that is monstrous! Monstrous!’

When he conducted Peyrefitte to the door, General de Gaulle asked him to write a policy paper on the practical means to stifle supranationality. He explained that his policy so far to emphasize nationalism through the Pan-Europe movement (emphasizing a utopian Federation of Nations) was not succeeding. He needed greater means to activate and feed the major newspapers with more powerful anti-Community (that is anti-democratic) propaganda.

Peyrefritte  said: ‘It entails precisely creating situations where we can only get out of them by raising the dose of supranationality‘ (that is improving democracy at a European level).
De Gaulle replied: ‘That’s what we don’t want! That won’t do. That would be gross stupidity. Of the two treaties of Rome, I do not know which of them is the most dangerous! The Treaty on Euratom is worse that useless. — It is pernicious. I ask myself if we should not denounce it openly. And then there is the Common Market. It is a customs union, which can help us, provided that we realize a common agricultural policy, which is not instituted there, and several other common policies, which are not even mentioned.

Thus Europe got one of its great scandals of intergovernmental corruption: the Wine Lakes,  Meat Mountains, and the useless infrastructure projects  that were paid for by the European taxpayer to help de Gaulle garner in French voters to his party. No wonder the Greeks and others were so keen to join the same corrupt deals.

De Gaulle continued: ‘But the Common Market also includes (democratic) pretensions, that they call ‘supranational potentialities‘ (European democracy) which are not acceptable for us. ‘Supranationality that’s absurd! Nothing is above the nations, how then can nations decide together! The pretensions of the Commissioners of Brussels who want to give orders to the governments are ridiculous! Ridiculous!‘

De Gaulle thus showed himself to be a man of vision — a vision of returning to the nineteenth century of national conflict, the unstable ‘balance of power’ politics trying to crush opposing powers and resulting inevitably in bloody warfare. He wanted to put a stranglehold on Western Germany against what he called the Anglo-Saxons and the Soviet Union. He was willing to compromise European defence by kicking NATO headquarters out of France (that Schuman had arranged) and sabotaging the 1952 European Defence Community and the Council of Europe and its Human Rights system. For all these postwar achievements, Europeans owe a great deal to Robert Schuman.

Peyrefitte suggested that they make the supranational democracy inoperable in the two treaties of Rome but also attack the Treaty of Paris of the Coal and Steel Community — which had an even stronger dose of supranationality.

The Coal and Steel Community aimed at creating a strong, competitive energy and steel industry was eventually dropped after 50 years of service. Today we see Europe’s steel industry in catastrophic decline and the whole continent blackmailed by energy cartels with a vicious ulterior foreign policy motive. In those days oil was sold for around a dollar a barrel. Today it is priced at anything from 100 to 147 dollars!Today Europeans are calling again for Coal and Steel Community institutions to save industries from oblivion!

What a man of vision de Gaulle was!

Peyrefitte prepared a policy for de Gaulle about the practical means to stifle supranationality. His policies were pursued by de Gaulle including the Fouchet Plan to turn the European Commission into a Gaullist secretariat.

Unfortunately for de Gaulle and Peyrefitte, due to a clerical error, one of his texts was released to pro-European members of the Liberal faction in the European Parliament. A scandal broke out.
When Georges Pompidou presented his first Gaullist government to the French National Assembly he was met with stiff opposition. This is how Jean Legendre, deputy from Compiegne, hammered the policy to delight of all the deputies except the Gaullist UNR party. He said:

‘Mr Prime Minister we don’t know your ideas but we know those of Alain Peyrefitte who kindly sent us a note two years ago. In this he explained how the policy was to ‘deactivate the federal potentialities of the treaties of Rome‘ and to ‘chloroform Euratom‘. Well let me tell you, these ideas are exactly contrary to ours! We want to activate the federal potentialities of the treaty of Rome! We want supranationality! We want the United States of Europe! We will fight you if you try to damage it in any way!’

Peyrefitte said the UNR were in consternation as all the other benches gave this speech thunderous applause.

So it is with some public incredulity that the European Council and Council of Ministers dared to impose the history that illegitimately brought them massive corruption against the citizens of Europe. The financial crisis has brought Europe to the chasm of ruin today. The politicians need to learn supranational values like openness and honesty. The Council and the European Council should be open for all to see what goes on and the Commission should be composed of honest men and women who refuse to have any membership of political parties as the treaties insist. Instead, intoxicated still with Gaullist techniques over the years, the Council can not even discern the lies it has been spouting from the truth it has to present as real history.

‘For over six decades,’ says the brochure, ‘the European Union and its forerunners have contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe and beyond.’ Who and what were the forerunners? No idea!

According to the brochure, wars suddenly stopped because they kept recurring and World War II demonstrated the need for a new Europe’ !

Apparently all  it took was for General de Gaulle shake hands with Konrad Adenauer!
The Council has lost all credibility. This is an additional reason why the Nobel Prize should not have been awarded to an organization that denies its own history. They are as short-sighted as they are corrupters of facts and tax.

And where does the exhibition on peace take place? On a corner between the Council and the Commission buildings on the Robert Schuman Roundabout!!

Nobel2: Why the EU should not be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

Was the Nobel Prize Foundation wrong to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union? Yes. The prize should have gone long ago to the European Community and Robert Schuman. On 9 May 1950 he presented the idea and convinced the French government to initiate the Great Experiment in Peace. The EU has distorted the supranational democratic principles of the European Community that brought peace. It changed it into intergovernmentalism.

IF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY HAD NOT BEEN CREATED EUROPE WOULD HAVE BEEN BROKEN AGAIN BY AT LEAST ONE WAR, MAYBE TWO!!! The Community made war not only unthinkable but materially impossible. The US Marshall Plan that gave generous aid to Europe did not do that. Instead US diplomats worried when it was coming to an end that this reconstruction aid was helping start the industrialization that would bring another war. NATO the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was signed on 4 April 1949. Its key article was largely fashioned by Robert Schuman. Yet NATO did not bring peace to Europe. Schuman made that clear. After NATO was formed US|diplomats still foresaw war in Europe as inevitable.

Before the Schuman Proposal creating the European Community, the outlook for Europe was WAR.  Perpetual war every generation, not perpetual peace, was the near unanimous voice of the most experienced diplomats and think tank analysts. They foresaw that the European Continent would remain a battlefield for the future.

Economic reconstruction does not bring peace. The Marshall Plan  did not change the attitudes of hatred and the desire for revenge. It did not bring peace. It merely rebuilt national industries, many of them at the origin  of national economic rivalries. Tariffs were built up to prevent the entry of goods from neighbouring European countries. They preferred to trade with USA. These imports provoked a major shortage of dollars. The reconstructed industries merely provided the means for each country to build up their war industries. That is not surprising as it may seem today. European countries had been doing just that for centuries: recovering from war, waging war or preparing for next war.

Industrial power merely reinforced economic nationalism and divisive ideologies. EUROPEANS HAD GONE TO WAR EVERY GENERATION SINCE BEFORE THE TIME OF THE ROMANS.
The Americans in early 1950 admitted that they could do NOTHING to prevent Europe becoming a war zone again and again.

Look at this extract from the US-based Foreign Policy Association report on Europe and the United States. It was written and finalized March 1950 by Vera Micheles Dean, research director, FPA. She made an extensive tour of Europe speaking with government ministers and lecturing on US foreign policy around Europe.

“We realize … that the United States, no matter how generously inclined, cannot under the most favorable political circumstances re-establish the economy of the continent on the foundations of 1914 or even of 1939. Some of these foundations, as already noted, have vanished beyond salvaging; others are perhaps not a total loss, such as the resources of colonies of southeast Asia, but their intrinsic value is greatly diminished, and their future contribution to the continent’s economy remains in doubt.

“No power on earth can remedy Europe’s impoverishment as a result of two world wars. The only remedy one can recommend for the future would be the avoidance of conflicts so costly in terms of human values and material wealth. Whatever we do, Europe will sooner or later have to adjust itself to a radically altered world economic situation and face the fact that the singularly favorable position it enjoyed during the five centuries following the discovery of the Indies and the of the New World and the conquest of the colonies in Asia and Africa is now drawing to a close. While the Russians and the Communists have capitalized on the predicament of western Europe, they did not bring it about.”

She further observed that teenage Germans are ‘strongly imbued with Nazi ideas and, at best, apathetic towards democracy, which for them is associated with the rule of conquering western nations.’

The same conclusion was reached by the annual conference of US ambassadors in Europe in 1949. They considered European solutions as ‘pipe dreams’ and their ‘golden goose’ of the Marshall Plan was being sacrificed to various forms of nationalism. They were keenly aware of Soviet designs on Germany especially the industrial Ruhr.

This is the conclusion of General Lucius Clay, US Military Governor of Germany in March 1949.
“I repeat what I said in a cable a few days ago. We have lost Germany politically and therefore it really does not matter except that history will prove why there was World War III. No gesture can we make to draw Germany westward so why do we spend money on Germany. Thank God I will be out of it soon … “   (Papers of General Lucius Clay, vol 2, p1063.)
Emphasis added.

The Supranational Community, the centre of the 9 May 1950 Proposal of Robert Schuman changed the whole future of Europe. It created a new destiny. Today the EU has the largest GDP at 17.5 trillion dollars, equivalent to USA plus Canada plus India.
Today Europe is living in the LONGEST PERIOD OF PEACE in more than TWO THOUSAND YEARS.

The supranational system provides a means to turn States on the brink of war into a prosperous and thriving Community.
The present EU has abandoned much of the democratic principles of the Community. As proof can be cited the fact that nowhere else in the world have European leaders succeeded in creating a system that ‘makes war not only unthinkable but materially impossible‘ Do they know how it happened in Europe? Since the time of de Gaulle and his secret intergovernmental ‘package deals‘, Europeans have reneged on promises of European democracy. Instead they created a so-called ‘European Union’ that reduces the Community idea and places power in a closed-door European Council.

• The EU has not even established Europe-wide parliamentary elections under a single statute that was required in the treaty sixty years ago!
• It has not agreed to elections to the Consultative Committees like the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of Regions. These are still the national playthings of the governments in Council, not European bodies. They should represent Europe-wide associations of enterprises, workers and consumers according to the original agreements with goverments.
• The European Council makes its deals behind closed doors — just like the DDR writ large. The DDR, the German Democratic Republic was a psuedo-democracy, run as a puppet by the German Communist party and the Sovi8et Union.
• The politicians of the EU have hidden for sixty years the great Charter of the Community that says the Community should be developed on supranational principles and that no decision should be made without the full-hearted agreement of the people.
• Instead governments and eurocrats shamelessly ignore referendums that say the people do not agree with the fraudulent treaties such as the Constitutional and Lisbon treaties.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize and the burgeoning financial crises of the intergovernmental method are a clarion call for all Europeans to reassess Plan D for Democracy.

Jihad6: EU should not be fooled by UN's pro-Hamas distortions

Israelis and Gazans have agreed a ceasefire on 21 November 2012. Apart from several Gazan rockets it is generally holding. That shows that WHEN IT WANTS TO the Hamas regime in Gaza is able to control the other terrorist groups. Thus the escalation of missiles towards Israel over this entire year and before is part of official Hamas policy.

The European Community was founded on a Compact that said that it should follow supranational values like TRUTH. That applies to the EU’s foreign policy as much as its internal affairs. The European External Action Service should take note!

Article 2 of the Hamas Covenant declares it is the military arm of the Muslim Brotherhood aimed at worldwide Sharia law with ‘death for Allah the highest aspiration‘. It has global aims and is the largest Muslim organization in the world. Article 4 says it is a part of a secret movement and Article 7 says it is a world movement aimed at the armed conversion of the world to its brand of jihadist Islam. This article says it goal is the destruction of all Jews and Zionists.

Do you believe them? They name their missiles after ‘Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam, whom they describe as a martyr. Are you sure, is the External Action Service convinced,  that Hamas forces men, women and children to die as human shields to cover their evil? ‘We desire death like you desire life,‘ they say.

Will Hamas keep to this agreement and stop all future violence? If it doesn’t, how will Europe be hit? What about the Iranian involvement that threatens Europe’s drug of predilection — OIL?
As of November 20, 2012, the number of rockets and mortars fired at Israeli civilians from Gaza for 2012 stood at over 2,000. More than three million Israelis live within range of rocket and mortar attacks that have been going on for years. They live in and near bomb shelters. No other democracy in the world would tolerate such attacks.

In a recent barrage of several hundred rockets, more than one hundred fell short and exploded in the Gaza strip itself.  What was the damage, wounding and deaths caused by them? You don’t know? You will not find out from Hamas, as it is a terrorist group. Nor from the United Nations, which supposedly isn’t. Hamas and other terrorist groups fire missiles especially from its civilian areas and use the population as human shields for black propaganda purposes, should Israel strike back. Those Gazans who are killed by Gazan missiles are either too unimportant to be recorded or attributed to Israeli action.

You will not learn the facts from the United Nations. They do not tell us that, by its carefully targeted air attacks, Israel has destroyed nearly all of the Iranian Fajr rockets that the UN was supposed to prevent coming into Gaza. Fajr rockets were aimed at Jerusalem (which some Muslim Brotherhood colleagues of Mr Morsi want to be the capital of Egypt) and Tel Aviv. The United Nations has betrayed the mandate that the nations of the world recorded to return Israel to Jews and Israelites that was agreed after World War One.  Instead it is now dominated by politicians and ideologues who speak about ‘Palestine‘ (a nation that NEVER existed in modern times) and the rights of so-called ‘ Palestinians‘ who identify themselves to each other as Arabs from Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

On the border between Egypt and Gaza, the European Union has ‘observers’ at the Rafah crossing on the Philadelphi route used by smugglers and terrorists. What are these EU observers telling the public about the smuggling of powerful Iranian missiles into the Gaza powder-keg?
What do you know about a situation that might bring not only the Near East but Europe into flames? Is the EU doing its job or is it following the dishonest lead of the United Nations — silence on anything that might put the terrorists of Hamas into a bad light? According to an Arab journalist, there are some six hundred millionaires in Gaza, made rich on such exploitation. Hamas receives its heavy cut of all this illegal trade.

The United Nations is supposed to be provide impartial information. But does it? Has it become so close to Hamas, a terrorist organization, that it fears to criticize the deaths caused by its suicidal and anti-Israel policies?

Below is my letter to Mr Matthias Burchard, Director to the EU of UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, responsible for the Arab refugees in the area who refuse to be resettled.

Thank you, Mr Burchard, for this report on the situation in Gaza.

As a journalist, like many others, who try to understand and analyze the situation in Gaza, I and my colleagues will find this sort of report one-sided. For example there is no mention of the total number of rockets and missiles launched at Israel from inside the Gaza strip. Two only are mentioned aimed at Tel Aviv. No internal problems related to Gazan missile production and launching of Iranian missiles inside Gaza are mentioned.

The United Nations is supposed to represent all its Member States. That must include Israel. A number of Jews and Arabs who were refugees under UNRWA were successfully integrated into Israeli society. That was many years ago but it indicates that UNRWA is not meant to be a pro-Hamas, one-sided propaganda vehicle.
But even if it were only representing the inhabitants or the Hamas regime of Gaza etc UNRWA should give a balanced view of the news. Journalists can find out what is going on by viewing or reading the news or subscribing to other sources such as the one from The Israel Project which shows the massive stockpiling of arms in Gaza and use of human shields by the Hamas regime. These are major humanitarian problems. I include one report below.

Over the time that I have been receiving UNRWA reports there has been no information about the smuggling of rockets and Iranian missiles into Gaza, nor about their launching nearly a thousand recently. No mention  is made of the fact that Israel is maintaining electricity supplies to Gaza and also supplying food and consumer goods, when it could easily cut these off, given the Jihadist or ‘militant’ missile attacks.

Thus the credibility of UNRWA and the United Nations is undermined by such one sided reports. I hope that you will endeavour to provide more balanced information in the future.

Regards,
David Price
Editor,
Bron Communications

November 17, 2012 Contact: TIP Press: press@theisraelproject.org Main Office Phone Number:   202-857-6644  Iran-backed Hamas has turned hospitals, homes, schools, and mosques into military bases loaded with snipers and weapons. Dozens of videos show how they use Palestinian civilians for human shields and Palestinian residential areas as depots.  We’ve embedded five videos below. Click on the photos to go straight to the videos, or click on the link below to go to TIP’s YouTube collection on Hamas’s war crimes. Terrorists firing Rockets from Civilian areas in Gaza (YouTube / http://is.gd/bkNTAb ) Hamas hides behind civilians and shows it on Palestinian TV (YouTube / http://is.gd/XXoTYn ) Hamas – Human Shield Confession (YouTube / http://is.gd/kV5o9K ) Hamas Hides Fajr-5 Rocket in Underground Launch Site in Gaza ( YouTube / http://is.gd/ulsKDS ) Human Shield – Cynical Use of Children ( YouTube / http://is.gd/OgUAFg ) TIP’s Collection On Hamas’s Human Shields The Israel Project is a non-profit educational organization that provides factual information about Israel and the Middle East to the press, policy makers and the public.

Below is UNRWA REPORT
UNRWA Room DC1-1265 United Nations | New York, NY 10017 US

UNRWA 24-hour update as of 16 november 2012 at 15:00 situational overview GAZA: FACTS AND FIGURES • 1.2 million refugees • 8 refugee camps • 12,000 staff • 245 schools for 225,000 students • 21 health centres • 12 food distribution centres for more than 800,000 refugees • Living under a tightened land and sea blockade since 2007 • Shattered local economy URGENT FUNDING NEED • Food assistance: USD 4.8 million The Israeli military operation continues for the second consecutive day. Widespread Israeli air strikes have been taking place for the past 24 hours. Over 60 Israeli Air Force (IAF) raids, with over 100 missiles fired, accompanied by very loud explosions, were reported for the period 01:00hrs – 07:20hrs only. A ground operation has not been launched. UNRWA is ready and prepared should the humanitarian need dictate a response. Militants have continued intensive rocket and mortar firing into southern Israeli territory, including two rockets fired into the area of Tel Aviv for the first time since the Gulf War. The streets in Gaza appear to be almost empty with a very small number of vehicles or people. People are limiting movements to a minimum, and whenever possible also avoid places that have been repeatedly targeted. Shops are mainly closed with the exception of some food stores, and bakeries are crowded with people stocking up on supplies. Waiting time at bakeries is up to one hour. It will become clear tomorrow whether the closure of the shops is linked to the security situation or to the fact that both yesterday and today were official holidays. There is great concern among the population about shortages should the current situation last or get worse. Police reminded vegetable sellers to keep prices down, as there were reports about some of them using the emergency situation to raise prices. Reports say that the tunnels at the Egyptian border were closed last night. However, large amounts of flour, 200,000 litres of diesel, and 100,000 litres of industrial fuel for the Gaza power plant have come in today through the tunnels for the de facto authority’s stores. No large-scale displacement has been reported and there is not yet any need for the provision of emergency humanitarian assistance. So far, displaced people are able to find shelter with friends and family. Displacements are mainly due to damage done to houses and apartments caused by nearby air strikes. No large-scale displacement has yet been reported and there is not yet any need for the provision of emergency humanitarian assistance. Concern over the availability of fuel for the population has been reported. unrwa’s response As the security situation escalates, UNRWA is ready to respond. As in the past, displaced refugees and other civilians in Gaza are likely to seek shelter in UNRWA schools across the Gaza Strip. The Agency and its staff are ready to provide assistance as required.  DOWNLOAD REPORT Given the security situation, wherever possible UNRWA health centres will operate as of tomorrow morning. Health teams are ready to provide emergency assistance, including establishing temporary or mobile clinics in the eventuality of large-scale population displacements. UNRWA’s main pharmacy and health centres have sufficient medicine and vaccinations in stock. As the largest UN agency in Gaza with the largest number of beneficiaries, UNRWA is hoping to augment its existing supplies of non-food items for distribution to refugees and other civilians as necessary. UNRWA distributes food aid to more than 800,000 refugees in Gaza and is currently in the middle of a food distribution cycle (October to December). The Agency food stocks are therefore plentiful. However, any food that is distributed as an emergency humanitarian response measure to a displaced population will need to be replaced to cover the food needs of the current number of poor Palestine refugees in Gaza. UNRWA is also currently facing a funding shortfall of USD 4.8 million, which is needed by next week to complete the procurement procedures for the distribution of food aid scheduled to take place from January to March 2013. security The security situation in Gaza remains critical. Widespread air bombardments from Israel across the Gaza Strip and large-scale rocket and mortar fire from Gaza into Israeli territory is causing Palestinian and Israeli civilian casualties. For the first time since the first Gulf War, rockets were fired into the area of Tel Aviv.  A three-hour-long ceasefire was arranged during the visit of Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil to Gaza and came into force at 09:00. Only sporadic air strikes and rocket firing were reported during that time. Military activities resumed after 12:00. challenges encountered The Department of Safety and Security and the UN Access team organised an NGO convoy with six expatriate workers to leave Gaza this morning. Once again, the crossing point on the Palestinian side (Arba Arba) was closed by the local authorities. Erez crossing was open until 13:00 and ready to allow the expatriate workers through. Despite the co-ordination efforts, the convoy did not manage to leave Gaza today. unrwa casualties No reported casualties from UNRWA staff in the reporting period, though an UNRWA teacher was killed by an Israeli air strike on 15 November. An eight-year-old UNRWA student, Fares Al Basuni, was killed at his home in Beit Hanoun. unrwa installations On 14 November at 21:25, an Israeli air strike hit an open area northeast of Rafah, causing minor damage to Al Naser Health Centre. On 14 November at 17:45, an Israeli air strike hit an open area southwest of Nuseirat Camp, causing minor damage to UNRWA’s Nuseirat preparatory girls’ school. On 14 November at 21:15 an Israeli air strike hit an open area northwest of Nuseirat Camp, causing damage to an UNRWA vehicle. On 16 November at 04:05 an Israeli air strike hit an open area, causing collateral damage to the UNRWA’s Japanese Health Centre in Khan Younis. On 16 November at 05:40 an Israeli air strike targeting a civil administration building, belonging to the Ministry of Interior in Tel El Hawa, southeast of Gaza, caused collateral damage to UNRWA Zaitoun girls’ school. crossings Rafah crossing is open as usual. Kerem Shalom was closed on 15 November due to the security situation. On 16 November, Kerem Shalom was closed as usual. Erez crossing was open until 13:00 for those walking across. However, local authorities in Gaza did not allow expatriate workers to leave Gaza.

UNRWA Room DC1-1265 United Nations | New York, NY 10017 USA

SUPRA2: After 60 years France releases Europe's Foundational Charter of Supranational Democracy

The foundation stone  of European Law and Democracy has been revealed at last! Below is a copy of the key institutional document of European democracy that politicians have refused to publish for decades. It may not have been seen for SIXTY years. Now it needs to be fully integrated into European codes of Law and jurisprudence.

On 18 April 1951 the the Europe Declaration was signed by all the representatives of the six founding Member State Governments of the European Community. It creates the Foundation of a New Europe which made 'war not only unthinkable but materially impossible'. It provided a path as it says to create a new common destiny so Europeans could look forward to a peaceful future both of prosperity but also be forced to resolve peacefully common problems together and, despite the corruption and perversities of human nature, arrive together at moral and ethical solutions.

 In his book, Pour l'Europe (p146), Robert Schuman called it the great Charter of Europe's Community. After its signature and that of the Treaty of Paris founding the European Community for Coal and Steel, it was then placed for safekeeping in the archives of the French Foreign Ministry at the Quai d'Orsay, Paris.

It contains the pledge of European Governments that all European Community future Treaties founding new Community organizations, all Acts and Laws arising from them would follow certain principles. This includes such things as supranational values, like honesty, justice and truth. It pledged that all citizens would have to give full democratic agreement to any future developments.

General de Gaulle was no friend of the European Community and tried to destroy it. The Europe Declaration of Interdependence may have been buried in the archives at this time. It contains the word de Gaulle hated: SUPRANATIONAL, meaning that dictators would find no place in a democratic Community of democratic Member States. He wanted to replace the independent European Commission searching out the common good and just solutions with a secretariat subservient to his own political views (Fouchet Plan and the crisis of the Empty Chair).

Democratic politicians in other countries together with democrats in France fought off this plan for Gaullist hegemony of the Continent.   Yet politicians after de Gaulle never published this foundational document, nor developed the Community's democratic institutions to any great extent. Referendums were avoided or simply disdained.

The Community's democratic and supranational principles have been ignored in recent developments including the construction of the euro. This is based on economics of national currencies strung inadequately together by international agreement of politicians, not the people. The Community system envisages a European Currency controlled by a properly elected European Parliament under a single electoral statute and organized civil society in a fully elected Economic and Social Committee.

 After being hidden in the archives of the Quai d'Orsay for sixty years, ignored and kept secret from the public by politicians, this Foundational Declaration has now been released by the French Government, following a request by the Schuman Project. It is now published on its site www.schuman.info/CharterQdO.htm

     

Supra1: Supranational values create the 'Grand Bargain' of Europe, not party oligarchs or markets.

The former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for a ‘Grand Bargain’ to set Europe on the right track. Part of his idea, said Mr Blair, speaking in Berlin at the Council for the Future of Europe on 29 October 2012, is the election of the President of the European Commission.

‘My feeling is that the only way, ultimately, confidence can be restored is with a fully comprehensive set of measures that convince markets and public alike that the fundamental issues have been overcome.’

The first major mistake of this analysis relates to the true foundation of European construction. It is a supranational institution.

• It is not based on pleasing the markets.
• Europe cannot be built on money like the euro (even if it were well-constructed and it isn’t).
• Nor can it be built on commercial activity (even if the EU is the largest commercial power in the world, equivalent to the USA, Canada and India).
• It cannot even be built on some ideological concept of democracy. (Ideology means part truth).

Putting the Commission into the hands of politicians by elections, organized and controlled by political parties, is completely wrong. It would exclude 98 percent of the population who are not members of political parties. It is the road to disaster. It violates the most elementary principles of Human Rights. A fairer, more just and honest idea is required.

Europe must be founded on truth and the search for truth. Truth can be arrived at by experience, examining one’s conscience and investigation. That is the only realistic basis for a sound society. Experience tells us that politicians should not be given absolute control, that their  declarations should be examined by ordinary citizens and interest groups in non-political representative bodies. Their conclusions should be published and examined conscientiously by all the public.

That is because all human beings have a tendency to corrupt and putting known corrupters in charge of anti-corruption is to corrupt the system absolutely.

Appeasing corruption is no formula for resolving the present crisis, nor for the future. AT THE MOMENT POLITICIANS ARE FAR TOO KEEN TO OBSCURE CORRUPTION RATHER THAN EXPOSE IT AND CORRECT IT.

European integration can only be founded on values like fairness, justice and honesty. Schuman called these supranational values because, in the past, empires, federations and confederations have collapsed because of violation of justice and the rule of law. Science properly founded on correct premises is a supranational value, said Schuman. Its results were true in antiquity (even if not always recognized). It is true today. As Schuman learned in his university days, justice decided in the court systems of ancient societies tended to follow similar rules to modern justice. Societies also failed when, as contemporary critics observed, corruption replaced justice or when sexual depravity became commonplace. Today lack of trust in politicians does not justify giving them more powers.

It is true that Europe needs to defend itself externally from predatory and dangerous powers that would like to exploit its disunity. That idea is not new. Schuman said that precisely in his address to the United Nations General Assembly in 1948: ‘Europe must unite to survive.’ Europeans have fought each other for thousands of years and disunity is more natural than unity.

What is important for us now is how the foundation based on supranational values can be developed. These values form the basis for European democracies. They arose from Christian basis of our civilization but also present in other successful societies too.
Should Europeans fear the future? Should they chase after the chimera of exploitative wealth?

Mr Blair says: ‘The 21st Century case for Europe is based not on war or peace but on power or irrelevance. A 21st Century with China and India that in time, as GDP and population size realign, will become vast economic and political powers.’

Where this analysis is wrong is that ALL civilizations will fail if they cannot handle the problem of corruption. This is true not only for China, India and Europe but also for Russia and other rising, populous states including the super-rich but corrupt oil powers of the Middle East. What is relevant is building on a sound foundation, not coveting immoral and unethical practices that seem to bring instant wealth. Peace, which Europe gained by the Community, can continue to bring vast improvement in technical and moral progress, when the real keys of the supranational system are  honestly applied.

Where Mr Blair makes a further fundamental mistake is to ignore the fact that a Grand Bargain has already been made. It is the politicians too often who are responsible for not holding to it. Take for instance the European Commission. Mr Blair says it should be elected. That sounds fair. But it is not what the Grand Bargain of 18 April 1951 to put an end to war made actually says.  Electing the President would throw the whole procedure into the hands of the political parties who have a near monopoly of putting up candidates. It would reinforce the party political control of the institutions. Within the main political parties a small group of party officials decides on who should be candidate. Thus the whole process puts the presidency of the Commission into the hands of party machines and a few apparatchiks who decide.

This is an oligarchic system and has great dangers. It does not oppose antidemocratic attitudes of fellow politicians. The European Council would reinforce its undemocratic meetings of all and everything in secret. The ultra-secret Eurozone group would cook up lawless schemes to bilk the public of trillions of euros. No democratic control is possible. The Commission becomes fully complicit in any corruption. The independence of the Commission from governments, and from political parties and from any commercial, industrial or other interest group, is fundamental to the Community system.

The word ‘supranational’ appears twice in Europe’s founding treaty and in subsequent treaties like the European Political Community and Defence Community.

This proposal of Mr Blair is directly opposite to what the original Grand Bargain entailed. So what was the Grand Bargain of 18 April 1951?  It provided a way to end war between Member States. It created FIVE mutually independent institutions to safeguard this bargain and to build the future. By separately analyzing and then cross-checking the proposal of an impartial Commission (alone able to propose legislation), the most democratically fair bargain could be struck to provide the basis for European laws, taxes and budgets.

1. The European Commission must be (a) INDEPENDENT and (b) represent Europe not national interests or in fact not be tied to any interest group at all. The Commission must be impartial. Therefore the selection of the future Commissioners must be made by a process that would avoid political corruption or the election of those representing special interests.

2. The Commission should be in permanent dialogue with a consultative body representing Organized Civil Society. These Consultative Committees should be elected equally from three lists of European professional organizations representing workers, consumers and entrepreneurs. There should also be elections for the Committee of Regions and the Euratom Committees. These Consultative Committees have full powers in the preparation and supervision of all European legislation.

3. The Council of Ministers should be held in OPEN sessions. There should be no taxation without full and appropriate debate both inside the Council and also in the national parliaments.

4. The European Parliament should be elected according to a single statute for all the territory of the European Union. There should no longer be 27 national elections where the government parties bias the rules in favour of their own political parties. (Under the Lisbon Treaty the Parliament gave up its prime weapon for democracy — the ability to sack the Commission.)

5. The Court of Justice should be composed of impartial judges who are open to all tribunals and courts for their ruling on the interpretation of European law.

The most solemn part of the Great Bargain of 18 April 1951 was that no European measure should be brought in WITHOUT THE WHOLE-HEARTED AGREEMENT OF THE EUROPEAN PEOPLES. It is called the Great Charter of Europe, its Declaration of Interdependence.

This is not what has happened in Europe recently where we have seen treaties brought in by secretive cabals of politicians, meeting in the dead of night in European Councils. These treaties are not OPEN nor are they agreed freely by the people. They are as legitimate as the measures brought in by the Politburos of the so-called ‘People’s Democracies’ of the Soviet era. Worse, the politicians went ahead even though, in the few referendums that the politicians permitted, the public of several nations pronounced decisively against them. Then the politicians changed the system so that no further referendums would be permitted, especially in the founder States who knew exactly what abuses had been committed by de Gaulle and others!

The Great Charter said that the Community was the TRUE FOUNDATION of an organized Europe. It was declared as the first instance of a supranational organization in the world. It was a Community of peoples (not political groups). It set as prime condition that the people must be ‘FREE TO CHOOSE’. The first measure of renewing the Grand Bargain is to republish this Great Charter. It is the first Statute of European Law.

Mr Blair said: ‘I bear the scars of participation in the Amsterdam Treaty, the Nice Treaty, the – Laeken process culminating in the Lisbon Treaty and the 2005 EU budget negotiation, when the UK held the Presidency –  the most difficult negotiation I participated in, (even including the Northern Ireland peace agreement.) Many of those here today bear similar scars! ‘

The politicians are likely to get many more scars until they learn their lessons about the real foundations of European democracy.

Euratom2: Alfred Nobel, the Peace Prize and Robert Schuman

The awarding today of the Nobel Prize for Peace is a great recognition of the most prominent peace-making system the world has seen. Europe has experienced the longest period of peace in its more than 2000 years of history.

It is also ironic. The Nobel Prize Committee recognized the six decades of peace that should be celebrated this year as the European institutions began their work in 1952.

But WHY did none of the European institutions themselves celebrated the 60 years and the 60th Anniversary!!

The European Commission did not celebrate the sixty years of its entering in function in August 1952.

The Council did not recognize or celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of its first session after the signature of the Europe’s first treaty coming into force. Nor did it celebrate the signature of the European Community Treaty of 18 April 1951!

The European Parliament did not celebrate the first session of the democratic Assembly of the European Community under the presidency of Paul-Henri Spaak.

Secondly, Why has the EU not fully developed the EURATOM Community — the means to create a powerful non-proliferation instrument that would prevent nuclear bomb technology turning the world into flames. Robert Schuman whose Proposal created the European Community the core of the present EU, said in 1949 that he was inspired by some aspect of the Nobel Dynamite trust to make sure that such powerful materials should not be misused. Explosive materials such as dynamite owed its existence to coal tar chemistry. These explosives were far more powerful than gunpowder used up to the beginning of the First World War.

Schuman's first Community, the European Coal and Steel Community created Europe's FIRST SINGLE MARKET in coal and steel products. This made the secret production of weapons of war 'not only unthinkable but materially impossible'. He provided the most democratic means to run the Community, but this requires that the politicians properly apply the treaties. For example the politicians still need to agree on having fair elections.

Let us hope that the European institutions will now begin to examine their past histories and reverse the disastrous political decisions that reject Community principles.

Euro10: The Commission to skivvy for an above-the-law, non-EU, 'tax haven' company?

Grave defects in THREE current treaties and agreements will affect your money and Democratic structures across Europe — for the worse. The European Council is trying to force through unethical and undemocratic treaty proposals. It aims to create the European Finance and Stability Facility/Mechanism (EFSF), the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), and the Fiscal Compact (TSCG). They will radically change your life and all Europeans. It is giving short shrift to democratic debate either in national parliaments, the European Parliament and trying to stifle public debate.

It took ten years to force through the irresponsible Lisbon/Constitutional Treaty against the expressed will of the people, asserted in referendums and public opinion. Now it is trying to do the same in one year with three treaties that are not even properly subject to the European institutions — and the European Court of Justice. Each treaty pushed through against public opinion and court battles produces ever decreasing political legitimacy and plummeting public trust.

It is highly dangerous. Why? Because the treaties abandon common values of Democracy of Member States. They subvert supranational principles about how to create a sound money in a Community composed of many and varied economies of 27 States, each with their own history.

ONLY a Community system with proper elections and independent institutions can safeguard a Community currency. Wishful thinking of politicians telling each other not to be too greedy and corrupt will not work. It will end in a deeper crisis.

Will politicians succeed in destroying sound money by their shenanigans behind closed doors? Will the Commission be turned into a toothless secretariat? Should politicians ‘task‘ it for their own dubious purposes? Or should it be INDEPENDENT?

Would you agree that government ministers,

• some of whom have been accused or shown to be guilty of fiddling the books,
• fraudulently breaking European law,
• undermining the currency,
• being involved in political corruption,
• or knowingly colluding with those who do so in secrecy

should HAVE LEGAL IMMUNITY FROM COURT ACTION? Should all their staff be:
“immune from legal proceedings with respect to acts performed by them in their official capacity and shall enjoy inviolability in respect of their official papers and documents. ”
Politicians have created a fraudulent EURO that ignores the Community democratic rules. Their aim was to hide national fraud behind a European cloak — without democratic control or proper elections.  If they were again involved multibillion euro fiddles, why should they be above all Courts of Law? Does anyone have a guarantee that politicians will always be moral and never make any mistake? Democratic control and the Law are there because politicians can be immoral and often make mistakes.

Do you think the public should have a say before this legal immunity of the political class is applied? Should the legal framework be decided by those who have previously been found guilty of wasting billions of taxpayers’ money? Should LAW be INDEPENDENT of Government, especially those who control the budget?

The concept of a supranational and democratic Community demands that the Commission must be independent and composed of universally accepted fair-minded individuals. Their task is to PROPOSE to politicians measures that will be to the benefit of all Europeans. When politicians and government ministers want the Commission to be their secretariat acting at their dictates, the idea of Community is turned upside down. It is hegemonic rule by a Council Politburo. In the past the Commissions were almost entirely non-political. The European Commission was created so that politicians could not turn Europe into a zone of corruption and warfare. Corrupting the Commission and making all members colluding fellow politicians is to place the fox in charge of the chicken-house and all the EU budget too.

What do YOUR lawyers, paid for from your taxes, the Council’s own  lawyers, say about these bizarre and extraordinary proposals?

The Council refused my request to see the Legal Opinion of their Legal Service on the following non-Community innovations: the EFSF (European Finance and Stability Facility), the ESM (European Stability Mechanism) and the Fiscal Compact (the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union), TSCG and similar matters. I appealed, reminding the Council that it was both URGENT and of major financial importance, and needed for democratic debate.

After the longest delay possible according to the Freedom of Information Regulation 1049/2001, the Council again refused. I therefore introduced a complaint to the European Ombudsman (0862 /2012).  The Council again refused to supply documents paid for by the tax-payer and vital for a democratic debate on what exactly is happening on the Euro crisis. The so-called rescue mechanisms cost multiple times the annual budget of the EU. The crises involve politician-generated frauds and Treaty-busting overspends. Now the politicians expect the public to have politician-generated solutions, legally secure as a sieve. They will waste oodles of money for generations to come.
The following is my reply to the Ombudsman, awaiting his decision.

Council’s Refusal to supply Legal Opinions on the EFSF, ESM and Fiscal Compact.
Please refer to my earlier correspondence with the Council.
The Council has chosen only to reply about the Fiscal Compact, the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the EMU.

My reply is in three parts:
(A) The lack of sensitivity and sense of proportion of the Council/European Council to democracy in monetary matters, given its huge financial and democratic importance;
(B) Legal position – the refusal to show a Legal Opinion is in violation to the treaty articles and European court judgements. The Council position is untenable and hypocritical because parts of the legal Opinion have already been published by some Parliaments. Publication is normal and required in any civilized democracy. Legal opinions must be published for democratic debate.
(C) I also ask the Ombudsman to investigate if other Legal Opinions exist for the ESFS Agreement and ESM treaty, by hiding them in other contexts. The ESM treaty for example gives legal immunity from Court action to the staff of the ESM and tax-free status for staff. This is a highly controversial matter given the number of governmental frauds exposed during the euro crises. The ESFS Agreement results in a private company in Luxembourg, ‘tasking’ the European Commission, a tax-paid, EU civil service in the public sector, ‘to perform certain duties and functions as contemplated by the terms of the Agreement’ (Preamble 3). Is the Commission a public or a private body?  The Agreement is contracted according to English law and may be dealt with by Luxembourg Courts, although the position of the Commission to act or complain remains dubious as it is considered a skivvy of the Company and only Member States are mentioned in legal action (Art 16). Has the Commission become the private secretariat of a Luxembourg company?

A. Importance of the issue.
1. Practically unlimited amounts of money is involved. Public liability to irresponsible politicians’ action is at stake. A group of countries but not the whole Community of 27 Member States is proposing to implement monetary innovations that represent a budget of FIVE or more times the entire EU budget without proper discussion or control through the EFSF and ESM with dubious control through the Fiscal Compact. The proposed solution lacks adequate democratic supervision. It involves ministers setting themselves up in a private company in a location that many of them previously denounced as a tax haven and subject to utmost secrecy about banking transactions.

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 31 July 2012
France and Italy favour giving the ESM “virtually unlimited firepower” via ECB liquiditySüddeutsche reports that a number of eurozone member states, including France and Italy, as well as leading members of the ECB Governing Council, favour granting the eurozone’s permanent bailout fund, the ESM, a banking licence – which would give the fund “virtually unlimited firepower” beyond its projected 700 billion euro via an open credit line at the ECB. Handelsblatt cites the ECB’s former Chief Economist Jürgen Stark as saying that “an ESM with a banking licence would be a clear violation of European law.”
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/schuldenkrise-in-europa-eu-staaten-wollen-euro-schutzschirm-ohne-limit-1.1426870

2. Anti-democratic procedures and obscurity adopted by governmental leaders. The subject was discussed at what was a mixed meeting of EU heads of Government and States plus a Eurozone meeting of these leaders (which does not have legal status in the treaties.)
In this case it is not clear who is in charge. Is it the European Council, the Council of Ministers or a grouping of government ministers of the Eurozone? The latter, the ‘Eurogroup’ is an informal group according to the treaties. It is not a decision-making body.
3. Legal obscurity. Only the full Council is regarded as an institutional body for legal decision-making. Thus any decisions taken by the Eurogroup are legally dubious.
4. The euro is in crisis, we have been told, for the last several years. Now politicians say it is urgent and the new arrangements must be done rush, rush, rush. All this while the legal status is highly dubious. This tactic is unworthy of democracies and more common of tin-pot dictatorships trying to fool the public.
5. The European institutions and European national governments have a responsibility to act fairly, lay their cards on the table and take the public into their confidence as the leaders are supposed to be representatives of the public. Legal Opinions are owned by the taxpayers.
6. The EU leadership is presently in a critical low of public confidence, mainly because of lack of accountability of the EU budget, lack of proper accounting procedures where the EU budget has failed to be signed off.  TRUST in the EU leadership has fallen to the lowest level EVER, 31%. http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb77/eb77_first_en.pdf
The European Union and Communities and intergovernmental conferences have institutions that are there for democratic discussion once information is supplied. The draft treaties have to be discussed for safeguards in national parliaments and other democratic fora before ratification.
7. The politicians – whether of the Council or the Eurogroup – have shown great reluctance to present relevant information to the public. I asked Council press officers on 30 January for the Legal Opinions. They did not have them to give me. Instead I was forced to ask via the website, which is more suited to historical archives than news journalism.
8. The response of the council is mechanistical lacking any sort of sense of urgency, proportion or public responsibility. It involves obfuscation and denial rather than democratic accountability, given the enormous sums of money and political implications involved.
9. Political leaders refuse to open a debate on this multi-billion matter. MEP Francis Wurtz said recently ‘It is not because votes in the Council are supposed to be public, or that debates in Parliament are obviously public, that democracy is safe. Everything possible is being done, not through negligence but as part of a strategic design, to avoid feeding understandable information to the man in the street and to avoid a debate on public ideas, in other words genuine grass-roots democracy. You just have to look around you! Speaking on TF1 on 9 September, François Hollande discussed the crisis and the budget, but he did not say a word about the treaty.’

B. Legal position

a. Turco Case. European Court of Justice 1049/01 PRESS RELEASE No 43/08 , dated 1 July 2008
Judgment of the Court of Justice in Joined Cases C-39/05 and C-52/05 Sweden and Turco v Council and Others
THE COURT AUTHORISES, IN PRINCIPLE, ACCESS TO LEGAL ADVICE GIVEN TO THE COUNCIL ON LEGISLATIVE QUESTIONS
The transparency of the legislative process and the strengthening of the democratic rights of European citizens are capable of constituting an overriding public interest which justifies the disclosure of legal advice.
Mr Maurizio Turco said later: Democracy and the Rule of Law are based on publicity of the laws and of the decision-making process, hereby including all acts (proposals, amendments, discussions, votes, legal opinions, reports, etc) that are examined and contribute to the determination of a decision having effects on citizens. The EU, as well as Italy, has to guarantee these fundamental principles that allow for citizens to get closer to institutions and to participate in public life, following the principle that it is necessary to have the possibility “to know in order to deliberate“.

b. In’t Veld Case. European Court of Justice Sophie in’t Veld vs the Council
It was the General Court’s judgement in Case T-529/09 to annul the Council’s October 2009 decision insofar as it refuses access to the undisclosed parts of the requested document (11897/09) other than those that concern the specific content of the envisaged agreement or the negotiating directives and considers overall that both the Liberal MEP and the Council were “partially unsuccessful” in their endeavour. The parties will have to settle between themselves what can be disclosed.
Ms in’t Veld – who earlier this year drafted a report for the parliament’s civil liberties committee calling on MEPs to reject the EU/US agreement on the data transfer of flight passengers – described the ruling as “a step forward for transparency in Europe” which establishes a precedent that “negotiations on international agreements are not automatically exempt from EU transparency rules.”
Other ECJ judgement reinforce this requirement for the Council to share Legal Opinions. Publishing opinions is not only a treaty obligation, it is an obligation for democratic debate (TFEU #288) and elsewhere already cited in my correspondence with the Council.

c. Part of the Legal Opinion has already been published!
It is ridiculous and hypocritical to refuse access to any part of the Legal Opinion of the Fiscal Compact (TSCG). I have not been able to check what has been published in all 27 Member States but the following relates to the UK. The UK House of Parliament Library (UKHPL) Research Paper 12/14 of 27 March 2012 prints a number of extracts.
“Council Legal Service Opinion
On 26 January 2012 the Council Legal Service issued an Opinion on the compatibility with EU law of draft Article 8 and related preamble recitals, based on the fourth treaty draft. The Legal Service answered four questions:
1. Can the procedure foreseen be described as a dispute settlement mechanism between Member States?
A Member State considering that another Member State had not complied with mutually accepted treaty obligations “is enough to be regarded as a genuine dispute between them” if one takes action against the other. The initiators are Member States, not the Commission, and the Member States could be in breach of their obligations under international law if Court not seized. “There is no convincing reason not to regard Article 8 as a clause that aims at settling disputes between Contracting Parties, which are Member States of the European Union”.
UKHPL research paper adds
N.B. Paul Craig disagreed with the Legal Service view that the Commission was not directly involved in bringing an action before the Court. A negative report from the Commission would trigger a mandatory obligation on one/more Contracting Parties to bring the recalcitrant state to the Court: “The reality is therefore that the Commission is still ‘bringing’ the action”.
2. Can the clause be regarded as a “special agreement”?
Member States can establish in advance “a mechanism that may be made use of, in predetermined conditions, if a dispute happens” but only if the “speciality” criterion is fulfilled. Article 8 fulfils this criterion because it refers specifically to violation of Article 3(2). The Court is limited to reviewing the transposition only of the balanced budget rule, to be accomplished according to a defined legal framework and precise timetable. Therefore, Article 8 conforms to Article 273 TFEU because it “merely anticipates possible incidents of which the nature, the limits and the time of occurrence are known with a relatively high degree of precision at the time of its conclusion”.
3. Do the issues to be brought to the Court relate to the subject matter of the Treaties?
The provisions Contracting Parties adopt must give legal effect to rules that apply within the framework of the “revised Stability and Growth Pact” (Council Reg. 1466/97, as amended by Reg. 1175/2011). This is in line with implementing EU policies, e.g. to strengthen EMU and “conceptually and practically inseparable” from EMU as established by the EU Treaties. “Therefore, although as such the control of the adequacy of national measures transposing rules established outside the Union is not an EU law issue, the assessments required would necessarily involve consideration of problems of EU law and must for this reason be regarded as ‘related to the subject matter of the Treaties’”.
4. Does the Court have jurisdiction to impose “sanctions” on Member States following an agreement between them to have recourse to Article 273 TFEU?
Article 273 TFEU does not exclude the capacity of the Court to impose penalties, but the capacity must be explicit in the dispute settlement clause as it cannot be presumed, as must the procedures, since they differ from Article 260 TFEU. Imposing financial penalties does not alter the nature of the Court’s responsibilities because Article 260 TFEU empowers it to impose sanctions. Article 8(2) therefore does not introduce “an element alien to its existing practice”. Although the violations here are not of EU law, they are closely related to EU law (see note 3 above). Also, it is the Member State(s), not the Commission, which asks the Court to impose penalties, which “does not significantly affect the conditions in which the case will be treated by the Court nor the exercise of its powers”. Article 8 “broadly anticipates the framework that will apply to the norm” when the substance of the new treaty is incorporated into EU law within five years of entry into force, “while being entirely compatible with the legal basis of Article 273 TFEU” before that time.
The Research Paper adds the following:
Craig did not think the Legal Service opinion was the end of the story, as the questions of principle and legality remained unanswered:
The issue of principle presented above nonetheless remains relevant, even if the consent to the use of the EU institutions by non-signatories to an agreement such as the SCG was unequivocal and even if there was no external pressure. This is because the issue of principle in paragraphs 1-6 above is not dependent on whether particular Member States at particular times are willing to allow it to be circumvented.
For Craig the proposition that institutional powers granted under the EU Treaties or EU law could simply be “cut and pasted” into a different, non-EU treaty was “not legally or politically tenable” and “The fact that an EU institution has power pursuant to the Lisbon Treaty or EU legislation to do certain things, cannot per se legitimate use of an analogous power pursuant to a different Treaty”.

The UKHPL research paper adds:
Arrangements for legal procedures under Article 8 TSCG
At the signing ceremony on 2 March, signatories agreed an annex to be attached to the minutes of the signing ceremony on the arrangements for bringing a matter to the Court of Justice under Article 8(1) TSCG. The Annex clarifies that an application to the Court will be made by the Trio of Presidencies as set out in Annex I to Council Decision 2009/908/EU of 1 December 2009 (assuming there are no criteria which would exclude any of these three States, in which case the applicants will be the former Trio of Presidencies), in close cooperation with all Contracting Parties. Technical and logistical support and costs will be provided by the Contracting Parties linked to the case in question. Sub-section 6 provides that, on the basis of the Commission’s assessment that a State Party has failed to comply with the Court’s judgment, “the Contracting Parties bound by Articles 3 and 8 of the Treaty state their intention to make full use of the procedure established by Article 8(2) to bring the case before the Court of Justice, building upon the arrangements agreed for the implementation of Article 8(1) of the Treaty”.”

My Conclusions

1. I initially asked for Legal Opinions on the ESFS Agreement between Euro Member States and EFSF Société Anonyme of Luxembourg, the ESM treaty and the Fiscal Compact. I am surprised that the Council says that it has found only ONE Legal Opinion related to the Fiscal Compact and nothing for the EFSF, the ESM treaties. This contradicts what I was told. I would ask the Ombudsman to investigate the matter to see if the Council or some of the Member States, acting separately from the Council as an institution, have indeed asked any Legal Services of any description to provide Legal Opinions and are hiding these by a form of words. For example the ESFS is not a fully Community or EU framework. Yet it takes the Commission (EU civil service) as its servant, says that English law applies and that Luxembourg Courts may be used for disputes (Art 16). The issues are serious. The ESM treaty gives complete legal immunity to its staff in their actions (articles 32,35) and is able to set its own tax rates (arts 5, 35). This is more than disturbing given the nature of the Euro crises. Government frauds, statistical fixing and other matters, which would be prosecuted as crimes in private companies, have been uncovered.  Government action must be under control of democratic supervision and the law.
2. The Fiscal Compact involves a great deal of taxpayers’ money and its use, and should involve multiple democratic controls. For this reason any Legal Opinion must be made public. So should any other legal opinion relating to pseudo-European bodies or companies.
3. The Fiscal Compact Legal Opinion has at least in part been published by the UK House of Parliament Library and may have been published in part or in full by other democratic institutions. The refusal of the Council to publish it is contrary to ECJ judgements and normal democratic practice. Furthermore instead of publishing the document/s right away it has used the prolongations to refuse in the most uncooperative, undemocratic way possible.
4. The information requested is urgent and necessary as it is apparent that the governments refused to follow the Community-based guidelines to create a Single Currency given in the Werner Report. They have sought to use European institutions to hide fiscal and monetary irresponsibility in their own governmental systems as is apparent from the crises in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, France and also Germany etc. The timely production of this information is necessary for a wider debate on the future of the Euro.

USE1 Why a 'Federation of Nation States' is a NONSENSE and a FRAUD!

European Commission President Barroso, in his 'State of the Union' speech to the European Parliament on 12 September 2012 called for a Federation of Nation States. Was he confused or just ill-informed? His proposal was to try to solve the EU's politician-generated woes, both falling trust in politicians and skyrocketing debt mechanisms mortgaging future generations.

On 18 September Mr Barroso repeated this call for a Federation of Nation States to a German audience of his political party, the EPP. We can say that this silly idea of a federation was no slip of the tongue. It is a ploy, a distraction.

I call as witness to my case an eminent lawyer, twice prime minister of France, and its longtime foreign minister. Robert Schuman made a lifetime study of democracy before he proposed Europe's first Community based on supranational principles and universal values. Schuman called such ill-defined, emotional talk of a federation of nation states an illusion.

In his May 1949 Strasbourg speech he called for a supranational union and gave cogent reasons why this great scientific experiment in supranationality must succeed. He cited a thousand year history of such unrealistic ideas of federations and concluded they were all 'a utopia'. This analysis was made in one of the greatest speeches on European unity of the postwar years.

Why is the concept of such a Federation not only a nonsense but also a political fraud? The simple answer is that: No federation in the world has anything similar to to an independent Commission. The suggestion to change the European Community system into a Federation would therefore involve elimination of the European Commission. Mr Barroso's spokesperson assured the press that Mr Barroso is not suggesting that. He is keen, she said, to retain the supranational character of the Commission.

That underlines the FRAUD that the politicians are trying to perpetrate. It is impossible to have a Federation and a SUPRANATIONAL system at the same time. I say this on the highest authority -- that of the initiator of the supranational system for Europe, Robert Schuman. This is how Schuman defined the three terms Confederal, Federal and Supranational. The first two terms follow the definitions well known in international law, in which Schuman was a world-renowned specialist.

No other term (but supranational) is able to express as well the significance of the new idea that it is necessary to explain, in distinguishing it from all the traditional terms of juridical categories. The supranational is situated at an equal distance between, on the one hand, the international individualism of States which consider their national sovereignty as untouchable except for occasional and reversible contractual obligations; on the other side, Federalism of States which submit themselves to a Super-State doted with its own territorial sovereignty.

The supranational institution, such as our Community, represented by the High Authority (or Commission) does not possess the characteristics of a State, but it retains and exercises certain sovereign powers. It is independent as regards the national Governments within the limits of the Treaties; this independence is irreversible as is the transfer of competence of which it is the source.

The Treaty confers on the Community its own function; it does not exercise it as a delegation for the States that adhere to it. The Commission (High Authority) is not responsible to the Governments, but to the institutions of the Community (such as the Assembly and the Court); the Declaration of 9 May 1950 already spoke of these 'means of appeal' against decisions of the High Authority.

The vague concept of Federation of Nation States was raised by a previous Commission President Jacques Delors more than a decade ago. But he warned then of ideas of reducing democracy by pushing for qualified majority voting of politicians 'against the will of the people'. But that is exactly what has happened since then when the politicians chose to ignore the referendums of several Member States who voted soundly against such measures in the Constitutional /Lisbon Treaty. Mr Delors warned then that it would lead to 'big trouble'.

The 'BIG TROUBLE' has arrived with a vengeance. That is because since the time of de Gaulle, politicians refused to have proper elections for the Parliament and the Consultative Committees. And to this day, sixty years later, NO SUCH ELECTIONS HAVE EVER TAKEN PLACE. De Gaulle and many other national politicians were happier cutting deals behind the closed doors of the Council, than organizing the elections required in the treaties.

Democratic control would only hamper their autocratic ways. Democracy is useful, for example, for controlling budgets and overspending. Politicians are nowadays trying to borrow five to seven times the EU's annual budget to prop up the misconceived euro. Meanwhile trust has plummeted to historic low points, not only for politicians, but in the EU and also in the European Central Bank, which is bending the rules to buy government debts and offering to substitute it with 'fresh' inflation-ridden euros from a central printing press.

That mistake was obvious to the experienced Founding Fathers such as Robert Schuman and Paul-Henri Spaak. Both had to deal with problems of monetary stability after WW2. It was why they said that a supranational Community approach, not a federation, was essential. Nowadays few politicians know or it seems want to know how the Community system is supposed to work. It has FIVE democratic institutions.

Some of these same politicians want to reduce that to three main ones Council, Commission and Parliament plus a host of other groups which have nothing to do with a democratic Community system, which are called institutions in the Lisbon Treaty! Thus the Court of Auditors is considered an institution! The Council became 'more equal than the others' and now controls the Parliament by selecting its president, and turning the Commission into a Secretariat and restricting it to buddies having party cards.

In a real Community system the accounts are properly balanced and the money is supervised carefully by the five institutions and there is no need to call some accountants in as a separate 'democratic' body! Having frozen (temporarily) elections in some of the institutions, the politicians of Delors generation created a single currency without the proper democratic competences and checks. Hence the trillion euro manipulations of the ESM and ESFS are discussed and decided in secrecy, far from the public's eyes.

Why do I call the jelly-like Federation of Nation States a FRAUD? Firstly, a federation of nation states means nothing. Some States are Republics and many are monarchies. If Mr Barroso was serious, he would have explained how he was going to be the emperor who would rule over such monarchies as the British Queen, the Belgian King, not to mention the Scandinavians, Spanish and the Grand Duke plus the French, German and other Presidents.

Secondly, Schuman said we should be aware of the danger of politicians who expand the bureaucracy and create a COUNTERFEIT democracy. That is exactly what a Federation of Nations States is. It has no real meaning and cannot be defined in terms of responsibility and competence. It cannot be defined as to how the politicians can be SACKED.

Thirdly, if Mr Barroso were sincere about real democracy he would as representative-guardian of the treaties have reminded the Parliament that they had not once in the sixty year history of the Parliament had an election in conformity with the principle in all the treaties that elections should be under one statute for all Member States. There should not be 27 statutes where each biases the results in favour of the government parties. What a strange coincidence!

Fourthly, the proof that this is a fraud and an attempt at counterfeit democracy is clear from last week's events. On Wednesday 12 September 2012 we had the theatre of the Commission President speaking to the European Parliament in Strasbourg that has forgotten its history and purpose. The Commission still vaunts itself as being 'Guardian of the treaties'. It is there to see the Treaties are remembered and respected. The 'Guardian' did not even remember when it first met as a College! 

  We have the spectacle of the European Parliament that does not recognize that 11 September 2012 was the sixtieth anniversary of the first meeting of the European representative body. Its president then was Paul-Henri Spaak, after whom the Parliament has its main building named in Brussels.

The day following this unmarked anniversary, the President-Guardian of the Treaties, Mr Barroso came to speak to them about the need for democracy and a Federation. Did he mention that they should be celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of European Democracy? Not a word. The silence remains deafening. Of all 753 MEPs, not one got up to mention the fact. Why? Simply because all the heads of the main political parties made it clear that this was not acceptable.

Do you know why? After the first assembly of the Community met under the dynamic leadership of Paul-Henri Spaak, he created an enlarged Assembly called the Ad Hoc Assembly with some members of the Council of Europe. They were tasked to draft the European Political Community, a democratic system based on supranational principles.

Schuman refers to this European Political Community treaty in the same passage cited above. The legal term 'supranational ' appears in the very first article. So are both the Commission President and all the MEPs ignorant or less than sincere? Anyone who really wanted democracy would have recalled the early principles of supranationality that was designed to bring to Europe the most democratic, fair and just system that had been conceived.

Fifthly if this approach to a new democracy were sincere, the Commission would have reminded Europeans, like Schuman did, that the Great Charter defined the principles up on which any Community of Europeans must be built. Instead to my knowledge the Commission has yet to publish this Great Charter. It refuses to publish this foundation of European law! For Democrats who wish to understand the principles which notably say that no treaty can be put into effect without the full acquiescence and support of the peoples, they can read the original French or the English translation on www.schuman.info.