The Old Guard departs. European Council President Donald Tusk leaves and is replaced by former Belgian PM Charles Michel. Jean-Claude Juncker leaves the European Commission and is replaced by former German Minister Ursula von der Leyen.
December 2019 brings new faces to the European Commission, Council, Parliament and Central Bank.
Old problems remain. Europe sleeps in a democratic stupor. Key problems have not been tackled seriously since the days when de Gaulle tried to block all democratic innovations by his empty chair policy.
Some problems have been made worse. European institutions are infested with lobbyists; the public does not know how legislation is made and for whom. Councils are closed to the press. Elections conducted on a fraudulent national basis that gives some electors ten or more votes instead of one voter, one vote.
The euro crisis, the Brexit crisis, the budget crisis are all festering blisters from one virus: lack of trust stemming from the Democratic Deficit.
Let us flag the descent into the depths of the Democratic Deficit.
On 1 December Ursula von der Leyen gave her first speech as President of the Commission. She said:
“Europe is not just a treasure we inherit. Europe is a promise. Europe is future. Europe is something that we all have to build – brick by brick, day by day.“Ten years ago, our predecessors were still discussing whether Europe should have a flag or an anthem. But in these ten years, millions of people have taken to the streets waving the European flag, our flag. And millions have been inspired and moved by the Ode to Joy, our European anthem.”
She was meeting with Charles Michel, Catherine Lagarde and David Sassoli to celebrate the ten years of the Lisbon Treaty.
They are happy to congratulate themselves. They love to wrap themselves around the European flag. But as Frau von der Leyen reminded them, the flag was left out of the Lisbon Treaty. Why?
This is a curious fact. It would be advisable for the self-elected European leaders to ask themselves why.
Without this issue being solved it will be
- impossible to satisfy the European public trust,
- impossible to resolve the Brexit crisis,
- impossible to have a solid European currency fit for the 21st century.
The flag and its origins have been covered over with deceit. Europe cannot be built with crumbling bricks or false foundations that don’t hold the structure together.
Unveiling the reasons why Europeans have this flag will be like peeling an onion of deception and fraud before the eyes of the public.
Do they know what this two-thousand year symbol means? Will they uphold its modern re-introduction and meaning? How, why and when did it become the symbol of Europe?
Follow the Flag to the problem
Why is there no flag in the Lisbon Treaty? Hint. The core issue is the choice between just and fair democracy and sneaky and dishonest politics. What course was chosen?
If the Brussels politicians were honest about the flag, they would be on track to solving the problem of the lack of public trust in the institutions as non-partisan, fair and representative.
Doesn’t it seem strange there should be such a controversy over the flag? Why did the new president Ursula von der Leyen admit that the public was enthusiastic about the flag but it was rejected when the Brussels fraudster folk imposed the Lisbon Treaty on the European peoples?
The Big Cheat
The Lisbon Treaty is a compilation of articles that are almost identical to the unpopular and anti-democratic Constitutional Treaty. Some articles are word-for word the same.
These misconceived and rejected articles were wrapped in the skin of a treaty and the skin changed like a chameleon. The articles stayed the same. The politicians presumed the public would be fooled by this prestidigitation.
First, the set of articles were called the Constitutional Treaty. That was rejected by France and the Netherlands in referendums. Six other countries were set to have referendums in 2005. Most if not all would have rejected the draft treaty.
The UK was on this referendum list thanks to a promise made by successive UK governments. But the referendum on the treaty was abandoned when everyone realised it would produce the biggest NO of them all. A decision was made in the closed-door European Council to stop the UK referendum. Instead, they decided to impose the articles, not only without public support but against it, under a new name.
The ‘Brexit referendum‘ of 23 June 2016 has nothing to do with the legitimacy of the Lisbon Treaty. It tried to fool the people that they have agreed to it when they never did! The Lisbon Treaty is illegitimate as it has already been rejected by the people in France and the Netherlands and free people elsewhere.
Sneaky, dishonest politicians decided in private to re-instate the repudiated articles with a new skin. Why? Because the rotten core of articles gave politicians more power, money and public acclaim as Europe’s leaders. Power to the politicians! Politicians deemed that the refusal of the public was incidental. They could fool all the people all the time.
At first the rotten articles was re-instated as the Reform Treaty. Then in 2007 it was called the Lisbon Treaty. All this cooked up behind closed doors. No public debate. And the treaty was basically the same rejected refuse that the people had already said NO to.
How would the British accept such a monstrosity that would easily be defeated in a referendum? Politicians were told to say that this treaty was not the same as the aborted Constitutional Treaty. Look, they told the British Prime Minister, we have left out the things the British object to. They don’t want a European Super-State. So we have left out the European flag. Someone in England had said a flag must be a symbol of a State!
Really? Are they serious?
And they added, once we package the old treaty in a new wrapper, we will stop UK having referendums … on treaties!
That signposts a dangerous road to tyranny by the Brussels Politburo.
European Anthem
The same trick went for the European Anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Surely only States have anthems and not clubs and associations? Actually no. That was equally dishonest. And if to prove how dishonest they all were, both the flag and the anthem were added as protocols to the Lisbon Treaty.
So everything was back to Constitutional square one. Hunky-dory.
So the two main causes of this fiasco are political dishonesty in Brussels and lily-livered politicians in UK who refuse to stand up for democracy. All are guilty in imposing a treaty they know cannot be acceptable to the public.
Conclusion: the Lisbon Treaty creates a system that is not of the people, made by the people, nor is it for the people. It is for a political clique, a politburo, against popular consent.
Rat out of the bag
It shows that Brussels was dishonest, manipulative and anti-democratic.
Valery Giscard d’Estaing, presiding author of the Lisbon Treaty, published an article letting the rat out of the official bag. The Lisbon Treaty was exactly the same as the rejected Constitutional Treaty. The Brussels politicians are “therefore imposing a return to the language that they master and to the procedures they favour, and in doing so alienate the citizens further,” he said.
No people’s voice. So now all things are fine and dandy. People fooled.
That is the political equivalent to a dishonest second-hand car dealer, painting over the rust to sell a lethal car.
Now we are in the car crash! Brexit, Budget, euro, ‘popularism‘ and so on. Trust is rock bottom. Half the population refuses to participate in so-called ‘European elections‘.
Theft of Flag
So why was the flag a hot topic? Firstly, theft.
The politicians of the EU actually ‘stole’ the flag from the Council of Europe, headquartered in Strasbourg. The flag of twelve stars on an azure field was introduced by the Council of Europe in 1955. Three decades later in 1985 the European leaders in Brussels adopted the flag of what they were calling the European Union.
The least that can be said is that the move was deceptive. Why couldn’t Brussels politicians have their own flag so that people could distinguish between Brussels politicians and Strasbourg, the guardian of human rights, civil liberties and the rule of law. Were the Brussels clique trying to muddy the waters on human rights when it comes to approval of treaties?
Who will stop politicians making a power grab in the EU, if the Council of Europe’s defence for human rights is sidelined and neutralised.? Is it being sidelined? Check the politicians’ record.
All the early treaties were discussed in detail in the Council of Europe’s Consultative Assembly to determine that people’s civil rights were respected. Robert 
Schuman spoke there and explained how the Community system could be the most democratic system ever.
Schuman spoke there and explained how the Community system could be the most democratic system ever.
None of the later treaties were, starting with the Single Act 1986 and the Maastricht Treaty, 1992. The latter was rejected by one Member State.
No appeal was made to Strasbourg about the violation of human and civic rights.
How do you strip a body of its identity? You strip it of its flag and try to replace its function with some other duplicate that is not independent and you can control.
Does anyone today recognise the flag as belonging to the Council of Europe? The Commission did recognise this once, but it said nothing when the fraud about the flag became the major political issue with the UK before the Lisbon Treaty draft was signed. Silence of the Commission as guardian of the treaties made it a co-conspirator.
Yes, the flag does represent all of democratic Europe. The Council of Europe is composed of nations and States. There is no weight to the argument that the flag represents a federal state. The whole idea of removing the article about the flag is a red herring. A few honest words would have resolved the argument of the alleged British opponents.
“This is the flag Britons adopted in the Council of Europe in 1955 to defend Magna Carta rights across the Continent. If you don’t want the flag, deal with the Council of Europe. It has nothing to do with Brussels politicians’ ownership of the symbols.”
Why the flag is important
It is significant that the flag became the separation theme of United Kingdom from Continental Europe. Why? Not because Britons were against what it represented. It was because many Continental powers had rejected and violated its symbolism and fair play. They cheated. They were dishonest.
UK did not have a de Gaulle who seized power and changed the Constitution to please himself. It was not taken over by a bunch of gangsters like the Nazis. It was not occupied by a foreign force that changed laws and customs. In Britain the Rule of Law was continuous. People expect honesty, while many Continentals believe all politicians lie.
The European flag represents all the democratic values and fundamental freedoms, accumulated over centuries, that Britain had stood up for when the parts of the Continent were ruled by tyrants and dictators. Other countries too. Among these are Habeus Corpus, the right of citizens not to be arrested at the whim of governments without a writ and a fair trial, the rule of law, freedom of thought, tolerance of religions, freedom of assembly and conscience.
How does the Flag identify European values?
The Council of Europe was initiated by government action, fired by popular support for democracy after WW2. The proposal came from Robert Schuman’s first government in 1948, itself under attack by insurrectional forces of Left and Right. Schuman was a student of democracy and especially the American and British experience.
A European Assembly and European rule of law was a revolutionary means to help Europeans live in democratic peace and prevent further wars. In July 1948 Schuman’s foreign minister, Georges Bidault, had proposed two institutions: a European Assembly and a Customs Union. The Assembly took form in the Council of Europe. Its statute was signed in London at St James’s Palace on 5 May 1949.
Signatory agreement to the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms was the entrance condition to an association of free, democratic countries where their citizens enjoyed human rights (as compared with the Soviet zone of Europe). Natural law and human rights are clearly values beyond the powers of ideologues like Communist apparatchiks. They condemn tyranny by a supranational Rule of Law. Governments had to sign up to these values. Citizens could appeal to the Convention’s Court in Strasbourg if they were subject to government abuse.
No country in the Soviet zone signed up to the Convention. That would expose the fact that the so-called ‘Democratic Republics‘ or ‘Peoples’ Republics‘ were a sham. Everything was ultimately controlled by a Politburo. No real freedom existed. The Communist Party ruled. But they could not stop free thought.
Member States of the Council of Europe, with Robert Schuman for France, signed the Convention in Rome on 4 November 1950. Where? In the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. Remember the address!
How does the flag embody European values?
The Convention, after some initial reluctance of the British Labour government, was drafted by a British lawyer, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, and a French lawyer and ministerial colleague of Schuman, Pierre-Henri Teitgen, one of the cofounders of the newspaper Le Monde, and twice deputy prime minister. Maxwell-Fyfe had worked as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trial of Nazis after the war. Teitgen had been a member of the French Resistance.
As Teitgen explained, the Convention was designed to stop unscrupulous politicians gradually seizing the democratic levers of power like the Nazi gangsters had.
Presenting the Human Rights Convention to the Consultative Assembly in 1949, Schuman’s colleague, Pierre-Henri Teitgen, said:
‘An honest man does not become a gangster in 24 hours. Infection takes time. In thought and in conscience, he has to let himself be drawn into temptation. He gets used to the fault before he commits it. He descends the stairwell step by step.One day, he finds evil has beaten him and he has lost all scruples.Democracies do not become Nazi countries overnight. Evil progresses in an underhand way, with a minority operating to seize what amounts to the levers of power. One by one, freedoms are suppressed, in one sphere then another.Public opinion is smothered, the worldwide conscience is dulled and the national conscience asphyxiated.And then, when everything fits in place, the Führer is installed and this evolution continues right on to the deadly gas ovens of the crematorium.Intervention is needed before it becomes too late. A conscience must exist somewhere which will sound the alarm to the minds of a nation threatened by this spreading gangrene, to warn them of the peril and to show them that they are committing themselves to a crooked road leading far, sometimes even to Buchenwald or to Dachau. An international jurisdiction within the Council of Europe, a system of surveillance and guarantee, could be this conscience, of which other countries also maybe have special need.’
No doubt Teitgen was aware that Schuman, who believed it was wrong to tell a lie, especially in politics, had refused to compromise on truth when he was a prisoner of the Nazi SS, even at the threat to his life.
What is behind the symbols?
The flag is simple and effective. Why does it have a sky blue field? Why twelve stars?
Vice president of the Consultative Assembly, Robert Bichet, was the rapporteur on the flag. He proposed a design with 15 gold stars on a field of blue. Bichet was a constitutionalist, an activist for a free press, and had been an information minister for PM Georges Bidault in 1946. He had worked with Teitgen on the clandestine press under the Occupation and after the war attended the 1948 Congress of Europe.
The fifteen stars represented the Member States but this was objected to as it included the Saar.
This number was reduced to 12, because as Paul M G Levy the Belgian journalist put it to the Council’s Secretary General Leon Marchal,
‘Twelve represents fulness; there were twelve tables of law in ancient Rome, twelve apostles, twelve sons of Jacob, twelve months of the year, twelve hours in the day, twelve signs of the Zodiac representing the entire universe… Twelve should represent the whole of Europe, whether the Iberian peninsula (then under dictatorships) and those behind the Iron Curtain.’
Marchal told Levy: ‘We have rediscovered the crown of the Woman of the book of Revelation.‘ The reference is to chapter 12 of the biblical book of prophecy. Does this explain the sky blue backdrop?
‘Now a sign appeared in the heavens: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon at her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars.’
Levy records that Schuman supported this design.
Several years later in 1962 the same crown of twelve stars were to be seen shining from the ceiling fresco of the hall of the Palazzo Barberini, the site of the signature of the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in 1950.
The fresco, The Triumph of Divine Providence, was painted by Pietro da Cortona. It shows Providence surrounded by figures representing vices and virtues, good and evil. It includes Good Government banishing War and ensuring Peace.
Good government depends on honesty to the people — something that is lacking in the story of the Flag.
The Lisbon’s Treaty fake Convention of Human Rights.
The Lisbon Treaty further tried to undermine an independent Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Strasbourg. One part of the Lisbon Treaty has the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The very name gives it away as being a fake version of the original.
But this EU Charter is doubly a fake. It is identical to the Charter in the Constitutional Treaty and that was rejected in referendums in France and the Netherlands. So the Lisbon Treaty activists, the politburo, are trying to IMPOSE a Charter on Human Rights by FORCE, against the will of the people. Why? Because it adds a number of so-called rights that are pure political ideology. They are not in the Strasbourg original.
Theft of a name
And while we are talking of thefts, the original name for the Council of Europe was, believe it or not, European Union.
The British objected to this name. So it became the Council of Europe.
It holds the patrimony of Europe in the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. This defines ‘European values‘: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, governments subject to the people, fair trials and presumption of innocence.
Schuman said, the Convention and the willingness of States to adhere to the Convention defines Europe.
What is needed
All Member States of the EU are also members of Council of Europe. That is natural as the Council of Europe was set up by the Founding Fathers to be framework and Human Rights Guardian for the European Community system.
The Court of Human Rights is effective in responding to the appeals of citizens who are abused by national administrations. But is the Council of Europe effective in supervising what is going on Brussels? It has been deliberately sidelined from superintending the fraudulent manoeuvres of Brussels politicians.
What would the Human Rights Court say to someone or some State that complained that the Lisbon Treaty is a replica of the articles that were rejected by referendums of the people?
What would it say to complaints about the state of democracy and civic justice in Brussels? What would it say about the lack of open, transparent government as the bedrock of democracy?
The Founding Fathers such as Robert Schuman wrote that the ‘Councils, Committees and other bodies must be placed under the control of public opinion,‘ Pour l’Europe, p145. How can that happen when the Council, the European Council etc close their doors on the public, much like North Korea, and the Consultative Committees are not elected?
The von der Leyen Commission needs to introduce one thing that is sadly lacking in this woeful catalogue of the history of the flag:
HONESTY.
It will surprise everyone.
They should test the work of the EU’s Commission, the European Council, the Consultative Committees and the European Parliament. Where? Before the Council of Europe and its judges.
The EU Charter in the Lisbon Treaty proclaims:
This Charter reaffirms … the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, adopted by the Council of Europe and the case-law.. of the European Court of Human Rights. (Preamble)
Suggested first case: Can a Charter of Human Rights be imposed by political force, against the expressed will of the people?
Second case: Can the Lisbon Treaty be imposed also by political force, against the referendums of the People of France and the Netherlands, as well as the wishes of six other States, including the United Kingdom?
Mrs von der Leyen we await your support for the true meaning of the European flag!
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