Brexit Letter: Why the sadness?

“Damage Control” That is the first priority in the EU’s guidelines.  The terms for the negotiations on Brexit were announced in Malta on 30 March by European Council President Donald Tusk. Everyone is damaged.

That at the face of it, seems an extraordinary negative reaction to what apparently the British people have decided.

Where’s the joy?

On receiving the six page letter from UK Prime Minister Theresa May on 29 March, Mr Tusk said: “There is no reason to suppose that this is a happy day, neither in Brussels, nor in London.”

Why no joy?

It is difficult on the either side of the Channel to find a rational explanation. What are Britons going to gain by Brexit?

The British government or even the British pro-Brexiteers have not yet produced a list of the enormous assets they have found in their utopian Brexit Land. Others say it is a Dream Land.

What has been exposed before negotiations start is a list of commitments that must be paid for, a legal jungle for transposing European legislation into British law, a paucity of real trading alternatives and above all an absence of any real plan by the Brexiteer ministers for the future.

What is the healthy path for the future? It is neither Whitehall’s bumbling obstinacy of extreme exitism, or Brussels opaque politics of closed doors and secrecy.

The clue is in the phrase of Mrs May:

“The values we share as fellow Europeans”

What are they? Do they have their core in trade and merchandising? Are the main European values centered in enrichment and profits like the long-gone societies of Carthage and Tyre?

Clearly not. Europeans boast first of all about their freedoms. Freedom to trade is some way down the list after

·         Freedom of thought,

·         Freedom of expression,

·         Freedom of Assembly and other

·         Freedoms such as owning property.

Without freedom to own property there can be no freedom to manufacture or trade.

It is also clear that some of these European values are lacking on both sides of the Channel.

Firstly look how the British voted. In the 1975 Referendum they voted enthusiastically to join the European Community. Recently they voted again tepidly in the 23 June 2016 referendum to leave the system now changed into a “European Union”. That is not the same as a democratic Community.

They sensed their freedoms were being violated. Which freedoms? Freedom to trade? No. They wanted to be free of two areas of autocracy. Geographic areas.

However painful it is to say it, these two culprits are: Whitehall and Brussels.

British Governments had behaved disgracefully. The political parties of various hues had colluded in changing the treaties against public opinion. They promised the public referendums at each of the many stages. They refused to deliver on all subsequent occasions.

This 23 June 2017 referendum was not about the treaty change. It was a referendum about exasperation.

“Are you not really exasperated enough about the Governments’ lack of good faith?

“Will you let the Government get away with it?””  

Britons expressed a growing sense of frustration at their governments, both Labour and Conservative who changes to Schuman’s Community system into something radically different. The promised referendums at each stage never came -- from the early deformations of Maastricht to that of the totally unacceptable “Constitutional Treaty“ of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. Then they were forced to swallow the same unacceptable, rejected treaty under the name of the Lisbon Treaty.  

Brussels should not be smug about this. The Brussels “System” is the source of these frustrations. The British and other seemingly democratic countries were seduced by the neo-Gaullist system in Brussels. Public decisions are taken in private, in secret and with the collusion of what de Gaulle hoped but never achieved. 

This first additional anti-democratic instrument is the European Commission turned into a political Secretariat. De Gaulle tried to do this in 1961. The scheme was called the Fouchet Plan. It was resisted by strong democrats like Joseph Luns of the Netherlands and Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium. They exposed the folly of a sort of Politburo secretariat, supposedly based on international cooperation, but in reality dominated by France and Germany against the smaller powers. They insisted that the Commission be impartial, non political and follow supranational role as an Honest Broker for all European citizens and interests. 

The second is the European Council, what de Gaulle called the Summit. It was at the summit de Gaulle sat as the only Head of State and autocratically directed everything from its peak.

De Gaulle’s interests where not Europe’s interests. Nor were they even France’s interests. He was opposed ferociously by European-minded Frenchmen and women.

Party interests are not European interests. The interests of 28 governments meeting in secret are not European interests. They are governmental interests. Europe comprises the interests of citizens and associations of citizens. Associations are not usually party political. And then there are the interests of individual citizens.

The job of the Commission and the institutions is to conciliate all these interests, honestly. That is why the Community has five institutions.

Community Europe has been blocked. Instead Europe is dominated by de Gaulle’s second invention, the Summit.   

The meetings of the heads of Government keep secret what has been going on behind closed doors. They have a flock of spokespeople who spin the decisions to the frustration and growing distrust of the public. Witness the discordant parties springing up across Europe. UKIP was just one of these but sprang from the democratically fertile soil of Britain. Brexiteers populate the main government parties too.  

It would save much money on the European budget if all these Council spokespeople were eliminated. How? Simply introduce video cameras into all these institutions. Illegal or intrusive? No. The treaties require it.

“Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies shall conduct their work as openly as possible.” Lisbon TFEU article 15.

That way Brussels and Whitehall could trade political dishonesty for honesty. They would rebuild trust in Democracy among Europe’s saddened citizens.   

De Gaulle's hand still darkens EU's Happiness

The American Declaration of Independence famously gives as a ground for seeking democratic freedom that all citizens were endowed by their Creator with natural rights. Among them were Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Happiness — or the freedom to pursue of it — could therefore be considered as a good indicator of the health of a democracy and a free society.
The 20th of March was declared by the United Nations the International Day of Happiness. It presented a table based on a survey of the world’s happiest countries.

The world’s happiest – and saddest – countries
Happiest	Least happy
1. Norway	146. Yemen
2. Denmark	147. South Sudan
3. Iceland	148. Liberia
4. Switzerland	149. Guinea
5. Finland	150. Togo
6. Netherlands	151. Rwanda
7. Canada	152. Syria
8. New Zealand	153. Tanzania
9. Australia	154. Burundi
10. Sweden	155. Central African Republic

It is based on asking a simple question to 1000 people every year in more than 150 countries.
“Imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top,” the question asks.
“The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”
The average result is the country’s score – ranging from Norway’s 7.54 to the Central African Republic’s 2.69. But the report also tries to analyze statistics to explain why one country is happier than another.
It looks at factors including economic strength (measured in GDP per capita), social support, life expectancy, freedom of choice, generosity, and perceived corruption.
Europe did well. And so it should because, thanks to the Schuman Declaration and the first European Community that it engendered on 18 April 1951, Europe has become a zone of peace. It is living in the longest period of peace in all its history.
What is shocking from the table is that, among the first four countries, only one — Denmark — is a Member State of the present European Union. All the other three: Norway, Iceland and Switzerland, have refused in votes or referendums to become Member States of the present EU.
This should be considered a Warning Signal to Brussels. While many States that are struggling to exit from autocracy and corruption are willing to join the EU, those of the most democratic States do not think that Brussels is democratic enough.
The present leadership has discarded Community principles for a mish-mash of political opportunism called the European Union. The Community system that brought peace was based on a completely impartial European Commission. Today it boasts it is political. That means political in the wrong sense — party political. One Party, the EPP, the European People’s Party, has control not only of the presidency of Commission, but of the European Council and that of the European Parliament.
Any thinking person can see that is unhealthy. Just replace the EPP with another called the People’s Party — the Communist Party — designed to tell people what is best for them.
Power tends to corrupt. It is dangerous for any one party to control all the levers of power — especially the Commission which is supposed to be non-party political and an Honest Broker for Europe.
Europe’s Founding Fathers did not design any of these institutions to be under the thumb of one party. The European Council did not exist in the original Community Model.
It is a Gaullist idea. In 1961 Charles de Gaulle invented the idea of a Summit of Heads of State and Government to rule Europe as a secretive Directory. As the only Head of State present, de Gaulle himself would direct Europe with his own autocratic power. It was his scheme to keep OUT the British with their Mother of Parliaments and persistent obsession with democracy. In 1963 de Gaulle vetoed the UK’s first application to join the Communities. It was the first of many such vetoes against UK.



Robert Schuman, the founder of the European Community project, had a concept of Democracy that was more sympathetic to the principles of the American Founding Fathers.
Over the years by the introduction of the closed door European Council and insistence that discussions in the Council of Ministers and the EuroGroup system should be secretive Europe has moved nearer and nearer to de Gaulle’s model.
The Commission was asked:

“Does the European Commission have any suggestion how European Union Member States could become higher in this scale of happiness?”

The European Commission Spokesman replied: “The answer is No”.

Europeans 'March on Rome' Wrong Time, Wrong Place, Wrong Map!

My message to all Europeans meeting in Rome on 25 March 2017:

Wrong Time, Wrong Place, Wrong Map!

The leaders received this message: 

” Today European institutions have fallen into a crisis of trust, disunity and confusion of policy.
Europe arose from the initiative of 18 April 1951 when six war-torn States signed a Compact of Destiny in Paris.

Signature of Treaty of Paris and Great Charter April 1951

It created the democratic institutions of a European Community. Democratic principles were that day defined in the great Charter of the Community. By rendering “unthinkable and materially impossible” a seemingly inevitable world war exploding for a third time from European soil, this compact saved, not only Europe but the world from ruin. Instead of war, Europeans planted the seeds of an unprecedented peace. It stimulated decades of growth and prosperity.
Today Leaders of the EU need to review and renew those high principles of a supranational Community. They should agree on applying them for the 21st Century.
This renewed compact is necessary to confront current crises and future challenges. It acknowledges the wisdom of our ancestors. It recognizes our responsibilities to future generations.
To help citizens regain full confidence in those institutions so that they rightfully represent and reliably serve Europe’s citizens, Europe’s leaders must re-focus on that original compact. They should then ensure they are fulfilling the letter and spirit of existing articles of the treaties.
These all stipulate:

• a single pan-European election for Parliament under a single statute.
• Doors in the Councils and Committees should be wide open to the public and the press.
• The European Commission should be reduced to around a dozen members so that it acts, not for lobbies, but impartially as an Honest Broker for all European individuals, nations and interests.

Confidence and trust are the reward free citizens give to open and honest government.”

1957 marked the signature of Europe’s second and third treaties. It also marked de Gaulle’s take-over of France. He wanted to “chloroform” or destroy the European Community system to establish an autocratic control of the European Continent. In this plan the United Kingdom would be excluded. He bamboozled the Germans into paying for the Common Agricultural Programme at the expense of all other Europeans and their democratic rights.
All the deals were made by an autocratic Council of Ministers meeting behind closed doors and excluding the public and press.
Are Europeans still being fooled by de Gaulle?

EU White Paper's Fake History says Peace "just happened"!

Counterfeiters and fraudsters. That’s what Robert Schuman called tricky European politicians who abused their powers.

“Nothing is easier that for political counterfeiters to exploit the illusion of good principles. Nothing is more disastrous than good principles badly applied.”

Today we have a product that fits in that category of fraud: The EU’s White Paper on the Future of Europe.
How can any citizen prove it is fake?
1. The 1957 treaties of Rome do not mark Europe’s Birthday.
Clue: The Common Market means money. Politicians like money. But money had nothing to do with the birth of Europe! It is an old trick. President Barroso tried it ten years ago.
In his Forward, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker starts by saying

“On 25 March 2017 leaders of the European Union’s Member States will stand united in peace and friendship in Rome. That alone is an achievement that many would have thought unthinkable when the six founding Member States agreed on the Treaties of Rome 60 years ago.”

This is Fake History. It is a ham-fisted attempt at a Fake 60th Birthday of Europe. A schoolchild should know it is historically incorrect. The author got “facts” wrong. It is deception.
Firstly “Peace and friendship” were not generated by the Treaties of Rome.
Peace. What did the Common Market do for peace? It is a customs union. Bismarck used the concept of a customs union to declare war on France and rob its iron ore and other riches of Alsace-Lorraine.
Secondly, ask: “Would those at the signing ceremony in Rome in 1957 have “thought it unthinkable” to have peace and friendship?” Obviously not. Why? Because they had already created a peace-enhancing compact years earlier. Those who signed the Rome Treaties (Schuman was not one of them) recognized a miracle. They were already experiencing lasting peace. It had been achieved with the 1951 Treaty of Paris. This peace-making treaty made possible the second and third European treaties at Rome.
Proof?
The very first words of the first treaty in 1951 are:
“Considering that world peace can only be safeguarded by creative efforts commensurate with the dangers that threaten it;”
The unnamed author of this White Paper deception clearly understands, consciously or unconsciously, that he is writing a lie.
One clue is in the word “unthinkable”.
Why is this important? Because it is a word rarely used in relation to treaties. However, Robert Schuman used this word in relation to the launching of the European Community in 1950 – when in fact diplomats, think tanks and the military were preparing the public for what they considered to be an inevitable war with the Soviet Union. It would be a war in which the position of Germany was still ambiguous. Would it support the West? Would it lean to the Soviets in order to unite with Communist East Germany, the DDR? Would it try to play off both sides to its own advantage?
On 9 May 1950 Robert Schuman declared that his Plan would

“make war between France and Germany not only unthinkable but materially impossible.”

He succeeded. Immediately after the creation of the European Community, the signature of the Charter of the Community establishing the Rights of all its citizens to Freedom of Choice, and the functioning of the European Coal and Steel Community, he confirmed that the Community of coal and steel with its innovatory system of democracy had made war impossible. Impossible not just for a few years but for the long term – perpetual peace.
2. Misuse of Schuman’s quote
The Schuman Declaration, the Schuman Plan, the European Coal and Steel Community are not mentioned anywhere in the White Paper. After Mr Juncker’s Forword, one quotation of Robert Schuman is made and then all that follows tries to contradict it!

“Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.”

Schuman showed that public opinion both national and European must agree with each step for unity. He created the first European Community which provided a working example of the democratic five institutions. He read out the same day of 18 April 1951 the great Charter of the Community. This declared that all citizens of the Community must be free to choose in accordance with the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms that had just been signed.
Each step involved the creation of a new Community that had to be agreed by all democratic States. The Economic Community or Common Market was just one of these. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Euratom, signed in Rome the same day, was another. Other sectors need such democratic control but are, due to the malfeasance of politicians, lacking them.
So what is the politicians’ fake for the Community? The reader has only to turn the page to find out. It is the plan of the Italian Communist, Altiero Spinelli to create a federation, not composed of steps but driven by a highly party political central government!

Would Schuman have approved Spinelli’s federation? No. In his speech of 16 May 1949, he analyzed a series of such immature federation follies from Abbé de St Pierre of 1308, Rousseau, Kant and Proudhon. His conclusion as a realist politician? He plonked them all with Thomas More and his fiction called “Utopia”. None would work practically. Neither would Spinelli’s. The governments binned his draft treaty.
Yet the White Paper spends much wasted space on this. And how much space is given to the innovatory concept of a supranational Community that actually produced the longest peace in more than 2000 years? Nothing. The White Paper tries to indicate that this extraordinary pace arose from hazard and “false starts”!

“Our troubled past has given way to a peace spanning seven decades,” it says.

Whaaaat! “given way to”! If only the Middle East knew how this peace could happened so easily. Europe’s politicians would be hard-pressed to define “supranational” and “Community Method”.
3. Options with no democracy.
The White Paper ends up by giving five options about how the Brussels autocracy should define its future policy. They are all pretty useless. Why? Because there is not a word about democratic accountability. The authors seem to be totally oblivious that Europe is in an existential crisis of trust. This is not just about Brexit. When the British threatened to leave Brussels treated the news with scarcely concealed glee and demands to do so immediately.
Brussels should ask itself: Is democracy going to be improved when the British leave, and Mme le Pen and other anti-Brussels politicians sit in the European Council? Brussels is closing its eyes and ears. But the people are Europe are not.

EU's White Paper on Europe's Future fails Basic Democratic Test

Democracy? What Democracy?

The day before the European Commission’s launch of a White Paper on the Future of Europe, the European Commission was asked directly about Democracy. Its main responsibility is enhancing democratic accountability in Europe. Robert Schuman, the founder of modern Europe, defined democracy in a way that makes it the best definition yet. He defined European Democracy on 18 April 1951 with the Great Charter of Europe and the first Economic Community Treaty, the treaty of Paris.
The Commission failed the democratic test.
It also fails its elementary history test as it thinks Europe was born with the Treaty of Rome in 1957. The 60th anniversary of Europe occurred in 2011, as I wrote in an Open Letter to the then Commission President Barroso.
‘Enhancing democratic accountability‘ was promised in the Five President’s Report, 2015 on Deepening Economic and Monetary Union. The Brussels leaders had already taken unprecedented powers, overturning referendums against the Constitutional Treaty (and renaming this corpse the Lisbon Treaty). They overturned other referendums, as in Greece and told old-established democracies to vote again in their referendums because the No vote was unacceptable. They parachuted a former Commissioner to become a Prime Minister in Italy. They replaced another country’s by a banker.
Enhancing democratic accountability? Some would say ‘Nothing but PR chaff‘. But what is the opinion of the Commission? It avoids the issue.
The Brussels leadership does not seem to get it. Europeans have lost trust in Brussels. For them Brussels Democracy is heading for the cliff.
The White Paper gives options, but no democratic option. Democracy is not about setting different options that government politicians choose. It is not about governments choosing. It is about people choosing. And first of all the people must choose who their leaders are.
It says we, the Politburo, are in power. All that is needed is for you to choose whether we will do a lot of things you do not like or just a few.
Here’s the test. If the Brussels Politburo is really democratic it will point to the record it has achieved in improving democracy. If it is a bunch of autocrats, they will not.
What are the great achievements can the EU claim in two years?
The Chief Spokesman was asked:

“Two years ago the Commission adopted the Five Presidents’ Report. This said that in the first stage of {deepening Economic and Monetary Union} there would be “enhancing European democratic accountability.” Since then we have had the rise of what one might call anti-Brussels parties or “popularist” parties as some people might call them. And we had the Mother of Parliaments, the United Kingdom, rejecting what “democracy” is in Brussels.
Can you give us some positive developments that have happened that have enhanced democratic accountability?”

 
He was unable to come up with any positive measures. “I don’t see the centre of gravity of the question,” the Spokesman said, adding unconvincingly that “if you want me to reiterate that Europe is about democracy, then yes, I am happy to say so.”
The reality is quite different. Brussels is under siege by anti-Brussels political parties, not only in the UK but in nearly all the Member States. They object both nationally at the attitudes of governmental “main-stream” parties and Europe-wide at Brussels closed-door autocracy.
Worse.

When the UK, the Mother of Parliaments, is so fed up with Brussels autocracy that a nation-wide referendum gave notice to quit the “European Union”, the Brussels clique, its Politburo, only seems to rejoice. Within hours of the vote result being announced, four presidents (Commission, Council, Parliament and European Council) issued a statement.
It said: “We now expect the United Kingdom government to give effect to this decision of the British people as soon as possible, however painful that process may be. Any delay would unnecessarily prolong uncertainty. We have rules to deal with this in an orderly way. ”
The Brussels Politburo failed to take the situation seriously. The core of the problems is Brussels itself. The politicians there do not follow even the most elementary articles of the treaties, never mind “enhancing them”.
While avoiding to catch my eye for the usual immediate follow-up question, the Spokesman eventually relented at the end of the press conference.

Question: “The White paper will talk about options. One option that is in all the treaties is that there should be a Europe-wide election for the European Parliament. Is this going to be in the White Paper?”

Answer:

“The election for the European Parliament does not have to be in the White Paper because it is a reality since 1979.”

Not true. The present system of 28 national elections to Parliament is fraudulent on several accounts. The actual treaty article 136 of EEC or 108 of Euratom said:

“The Assembly shall draw up proposals for elections by direct suffrage in accordance with a uniform procedure in all Member States.”

The politicians had refused any sort of elections up to 1979. Some parties like the British Labour party boycotted the European Parliament because it was not elected but was chosen by party chiefs without the voice of the people. When the politicians were forced by the Courts to have elections, they did so with great reluctance … and a pair of scissors.
They cut out the end of the sentence about a uniform procedure. They agreed to one election for each State under quite different rules for each set by the government parties.
Thus the Assembly/Parliament moved from Cronyism Mark One to Cronyism Mark Two.
Anyone who knows what the treaties say — and we hope the Commission’s Spokespersons’ Group are aware of the most basic principles — should know that elections ought legally to be:

• under a single Statute, not 28 national Statutes,
• for the whole European Union, not 28 separate territories,
• and for all the European citizens not just those with national IDs to be counted separately,
• that a voter should have ONE vote not up to the equivalent of a dozen, as happens now.

The original democratic principles of the European Community system includes:

• elections to the European Parliament,
• elections to the Consultative Committees that control European laws affecting the economic, social and regional life of citizens. These are the bodies the Founding Fathers saw as being instrumental to manage the European Currency and also various aspects of the economy including Migration.
• the means to refuse potential members of the Commission, who are not of sufficient sterling character and impartiality. All candidates should be refused if they they are obviously biased or partisan (members of interest groups, political parties, national representatives). They should be refused if they are without sufficient character or experience to withstand the influence of lobbies, whether national or global.
• all meetings of the Councils that discuss, debate or decide such laws should be open to the public and press.

Until the Commission publishes a White Paper on legal and proper elections to the European institutions, Brussels will continue to be classified as an autocratic Politburo system, not a democracy.