Reply to Commission President von der Leyen on unpublished Democracy Treaty

In recent days the European Commission has initiated major changes to the European political architecture. The EU has renounced the need for budgetary independence ('balancing the budget') and is becoming willingly subservient to international financial debt markets for the foreseeable future. It is in the process of re-engineering the entire economy on  the basis of a 'Green Deal' that has enormous implications for every man, woman and child in Europe. 

Are citizens and industries in the deal and in agreement with it? Have they ever been able to discuss this in its integrality, in-depth or in detail? Will it hinder and hamstring Europe's economy while China powers ahead with its coal-fired industries? Why are Europeans paying twice the price for energy compared with the USA? 

The European Commission says it is open to criticism and improvement of these gigantic plans and changes. But is it? Can the people of Europe have any influence on these and other policies? The European Council sets guidelines and plans behind closed doors. Why? The Lisbon Treaty (TFEU art 15) says the councils should be as open to the public as the Parliament. The European Commission, more and more, acts as the secretariat for an oligarchy, off-limits to observation. 

Does the EU listen to the people? Does it listen to small and medium industries? Does it respond to requests to cut spending? 

Judge for yourself!

What is the record? The European Commission has refused for seventy years to publish the treaty on how democracy should work in the European system. The principles are outlined in a treaty that its founder, Robert Schuman, called the Charter of the Community (Pour l'Europe, p146). It was signed by the Founding Fathers, plenipotentiary ministers of the six founding States at Paris on 18 April 1951. The name reflects the Magna Carta that formed the basis for democracy not only in Britain but in the United States of America and elsewhere.

If the European Commission was listening to the people it would have long published this treaty both on its website and in the Official Journal.

It has refused.

In April I wrote to President Ursula von der Leyen about this. I received a reply from an official. I enclose my reply to this and the official's letter.

Feel free to publish these letters. I appreciate your support in the cause of press freedom and proper accountability for European institutions that are supposed to be democratic.

Following is the Commission's letter and my letter to President von der Leyen 

From: David Heilbron Price <davidheilbronprice@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 14, 2021 at 9:42 PM
Subject: My letter of 9 April on the Schuman Declaration and the Charter of the Community

Your ref: Ares (2021) 2498475

                                                                Schuman Project

                                                            David Heilbron Price, Editor   

President Ursula von der Leyen

European Commission

14 July 2021

Dear Madame President,

I am in receipt of the attached letter of 1 July from Dimitri Barua (Assistant to the Director General, Communications) in reply to my letter of 9 April, for which I thank you.  Unfortunately it did not resolve or even deal with the matters I raised: the official publication of the full Schuman Declaration text (not the Proposal) and, above all, the Charter of the Community.

 

These documents, one a governmental Declaration at the origin of European integration and the other a Treaty, are not of mere academic interest but involve the legal basis and in fact the constitutional foundation of Europe and its future. The non-publication of these legal instruments has already led to lost opportunities for prosperity and losses of European funds amounting to millions and, in the case of Brexit, billions of euros. It is not a matter of personal ‘passionate interest’ but acknowledging the legality of documents agreed to and signed by the Founding Governments.

 

I was glad to see the text of the Treaty of Paris on the Coal and Steel Community has been linked to the platform of the Conference on the Future of Europe. This Treaty was long published in the Official Journal and formed the basis for actions in the European Court. 

 

However, the ‘Schuman Declaration’ is mislabelled. The French Government of Georges Bidault decided on a Proposal after Cabinet discussions on 3 and 9 May 1950 (Pour l’Europe, p165).  This is called the Schuman Proposal. Then later on 9 May Foreign Minister Schuman made a Declaration to the public – the Schuman Declaration. This includes his one-page introduction, declaring that the proposal marks the birth of Europe and explaining its worldwide mission of peace.

 

The Schuman Declaration has legal authority and should be published in the Official Journal too. It describes the profound implications of the initiative on a

·      Historical basis (It would bring peace for the first time in several millennia),

·      Geographical: (it was open to all countries including those in the Soviet sphere),

·      Economical: it would bring prosperity as never seen before,

·      Strategic: it announced the creation of Europe as a new entity in world politics,

·      Geopolitical: including its mission to Africa and other trouble spots in need of peace.

 

As for this unpublished first page introduction, I am quite a little puzzled why the Commission made recourse to the 'Robert Schuman Foundation'. The Robert Schuman Foundation is not a depository organisation competent to find the full text of the Schuman Declaration. It makes the same mistake as the Commission. This text can be found at the Centre Robert Schuman at http://www.centre-robert-schuman.org/robert-schuman/la-declaration-du-9-mai-1950?langue=fr and elsewhere. The full text is reproduced in facsimile in the book of the Jean Monnet Foundation, ‘Un changement d’esperance’.

 

Two treaties were signed by Governments on 18 April 1951 in Paris, the European Coal and Steel Community Treaty and the Charter of the Community. The originals of these documents relating to the democratic foundation of Europe can only be found at the French Foreign Ministry, as I mentioned earlier, and as the Treaty of Paris declares in its article 100.

 

Even more importantly, the original of the other signed treaty, the Charter of the Community (Pour l’Europe, p146) is also archived at the French Foreign Ministry. I included html copies of this major, foundational stone of European democracy that I received from the French Minister for European Affairs, Bernard Cazeneuve. It has been on my website, schuman.info , for a number of years. 

Despite my bringing it to the attention of the European Commission a number of times and underlining its importance, it has still not been published by the European Commission on its website or published in the Official Journal.

 

I should inform you that a complaint (number 202101229) has now been introduced with the European Ombudsman about the reluctance of the Commission to publish these key legal documents that are vital for lawyers, politicians, the press and the general public.

 

Madame President, the European Commission as Guardian of the Treaties should have officially published these legal documents during the last seventy years. The course of European history would have greatly benefited. For whatever reason they haven’t. But that is no reason why they should not be published now when the need is great.

 

I look forward to hearing from the Commission about their immediate publication.

 

With my thanks,

 

Yours sincerely,

 

David H  Price

Schuman Project

Schuman.info

 

 

Peace1: Why doesn't Europe divulge the keys to its unprecedented peace?

How did the European Union construct the bases for its longest time of peace it ever experienced? The EU presently outstrips the USA in GDP and global trade.
In May, Europe commemorates the end of WW2 in Europe. Europe was left in ruins, its industries destroyed, its populations decimated by killings and injuries, its economies torn by debts and inflation.
May also celebrates a far more important event. Five years after the end of war, Robert Schuman’s Proposal of 9 May 1950 brought about an unprecedented peace: the means to make war ‘not only unthinkable but materially impossible.’
War, impossible?! That sounded extraordinary in the 1950s. The reality is even more extraordinary today.
Europeans are now living in a 70-year period of peace, longer than any other in all written history – more than two thousand years. The core of today’s European Union composing France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, knew war every generation back to before Roman times. Today, three or four generations have never seen their home towns destroyed, their families killed or such horrors as concentration camps or forced labor.
No one foresaw such a peace. It was not ultimately due either to the Marshall Plan of 1947 or NATO, formed 1948, generous though they were.
In March 1950 the US-based Foreign Policy Association published a report on ‘Europe and the United States.’ It was written and finalised by Vera Micheles Dean, its research director. She made an extensive tour of Europe speaking with government ministers and lecturing on US foreign policy around Europe. This think tank expressed the common opinion:
‘We realise… that the United states, no matter how generously inclined, cannot under the most favourable political circumstances re-establish the economy of the continent on the foundations of 1914 or even 1939. Some of the foundations … have vanished beyond salvaging; others are perhaps not a total loss, but … 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 favourable 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 capitalised on the predicament of western Europe, they did not bring it about.’ Teenage Germans are ‘strongly imbued with Nazi ideas.’
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.
General Lucius Clay, US Military Governor of Germany in March 1949 concluded: ‘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, p. 1063.
Robert Schuman was often a lone voice. His own political party often opposed him. Yet he was convinced as French Prime Minister and Foreign Minister that Europe must use this last chance for peace, others said was impossible. He was not only the designer of the peace, but a shrewd political technician and an impartial visionary for a positive future.
He told the US Secretary of State Acheson before his Proposal that the supranational Community system would produce the greatest period of prosperity since the Middle Ages.
In a world where Europe is increasingly surrounded by war in Ukraine, Georgia, and barbaric violence in the southern Mediterranean, Syria and the Middle East, isn’t it high time we took a longer, harder look at how Europe gained such an enviable peace?
How do the European institutions commemorate ‘Schuman day’ — now proven to hold the key to Europe’s longest peace? They open their buildings to the public and show them their empty offices! What a  way to communicate the moral vacuum of the present political class!

OFFICIAL: The European Commission REFUSES to publish its foundational Schuman Declaration and the Declaration of Interdependence

How many documents are archived for the public on the European Union website?  There were on 7 May 2010 a total of 369,224 documents on the website www.europa.eu.

Question: Which two documents does the Council and the Commission REFUSE to publish?

Answer: The most important documents of all -- the two documents that reveal the ORIGIN and the PURPOSE of the European Commission and the European Council, how European democracy should work and what it means for the future. In fact the European authorities BANNED the documents which are most vital to understand the origin of Europe as it is today and about its future.

On 30 November 2009, I wrote to President Barroso of the Commission, all members of the European Commission.

Dear President Barroso and Commissioners,
Congratulations on your new positions. During the coming months, the 60th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration will take place on 9 May 2010. I hope that the entire Commission will give great thought to the preparations for this major event. The Member States are living through the longest period of peace in more than 2000 years of European history. We are faced with global challenges of the greatest dimension. Europe has to set the highest moral example as it did by creating a Community of peace.

Yet for the last decade or more I have asked the Commission's information services to communicate in publications and on the web the foundational documents of Europe. This includes the FULL text of the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 and the Europe Declaration made and signed by all founding fathers on 18 April 1951 after the signing of Europe's founding treaty. This Declaration of Inter-Dependence is equivalent in importance to America's Declaration of Independence. I have never seen a publication of the Commission where this is printed. Why not?

In this regard, I am enclosing a copy of my latest letter to the Commission's Communications services, who have not yet replied to my August request to publish these foundational documents. I hope that the first thing in office will be for you to publish "the real foundation of Europe" -- to quote from the Declaration at www.schuman.info/EuropeDeclaration.htm

My best wishes for your term in office to build supranational democracy.

On 6 January 2010, I received a reply on behalf of President Barroso and the Commissioners from the Director General of the Communication DG. The Director General says that the Commission and its website DOES publish the full text of the Schuman Declaration.

This is not true. If the Commission does not know what exactly is the Schuman Declaration, if the multiple thousands of officials have not brought this to the attention of their bosses, then the Communication Directorate General  and the Commissioners have not yet got to Square One of Communications.

The Communication DG is one of the largest services in the Commission. The operation runs many sections such as the thousands of staff around the world in the Commission Representations. They provide information to the world's 6 1/2 billion people about what the European Union is, how it was created and why it is important  for the entire globe. The heads of the offices now sport the title of Ambassador, for example, Ambassador of the EU to the United States in Washington.

It also has services to communicate with 'the citizens'. It has its own public opinion polling operation called Eurobarometer. And to be sure that the officials have adequate means to speak for Europe, it provides high tech infrastructure worldwide and 'professional' training for the officials about how to communicate Europe. WHAT on earth is the training service teaching the officials?

It has a system to reply to citizens' inquiries called Europe Direct. And to keep in touch what the press and media are saying it has services on Media Monitoring and then Media Analysis. Its Spokesperson's group is answerable directly to President Barroso. It holds daily press conferences broadcast worldwide on digital TV. Besides that it gives 'off-the-record' briefings to the thousands of accredited journalists in Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg.

On top of that there are services for Research and Speech-writing. The Commissioners should say something that is true, in fact nothing but the truth. It has services for Promotions and Strategy. So why haven't any of these very clever, well-educated and analytical people come across the real origin of the European Community??! Why hasn't any of the thousands of these communications specialists said: "We haven't really EVER published the main FOUNDATIONAL DECLARATIONS of Europe"? Haven't the officials told their hierarchical chiefs: 'The best way to promote Europe is to tell the truth? It is the best strategy because if we get found out telling falsehoods, we will lose any remaining confidence and public trust we may have.' Why have none of the Commissioners explained the founding fathers' concept of European Democracy?

And of course none of these communications experts has produced a document giving Robert Schuman's own explanation of the Schuman Proposal. He should have known best. He managed to get French Government approval for this revolutionary measure. He did it by democratic debate in Parliament, in public meetings and with his fellow ministers. He did it over a period of years when he was Prime Minister and when he was the Foreign Minister. He explained it to the French public on a radio broadcast on 9 May 1950.

Well before this he had explained what is meant by a supranational Community and European Democracy in many speeches in years before the 1950 Declaration. He gave speeches at the United Nations in 1948 and 1949, and major speeches in Strasbourg, London, Brussels and in North America about the principles of supranational democracy. All these speeches were BEFORE 9 May 1950. And he gave scores of speeches afterwards. He was known as the Pilgrim of Europe because he went from town to town, city to city giving many speeches. Thus he explained both before and after 1950 what the new foundation of European democracy was and how it would work.

What does the Commission explain? Nothing.

For the Founding Fathers the Declaration of Inter-dependence of 18 April 1951 was of the same importance as the founding document of the United States of America, the Declaration of Independence. In fact it was more important because it would help stop World Suicide.The leaders of all the founder States of Europe signed the document saying that 'In signing the treaty founding the European Community for Coal and Steel Community, a community of 160 million Europeans, the contracting parties give proof of their determination to call into life the first supranational institution, and consequently create the TRUE FOUNDATION for an organized Europe.'

Of all the 369,224 documents on www.europa.eu would not a NORMAL person think that this was the most essential document to provide for the public? It starts by underlining, in the most authoritative way possible, the plenipotentiary powers of the signatures of the founding fathers acting in the name of the Six royal and presidential Heads of State:

Considering  that world peace can only be safeguarded by creative efforts commensurate with the dangers threatening it;

Convinced that the contribution that an organized and invigorated Europe can bring to civilization is indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations;

Conscious that Europe will not be constructed except by concrete achievements establishing first of all the reality of partnership, and by the establishment of common bases for economic development;

Anxious to cooperate through the expansion of their primary products in raising the standard of living and in progressing in works of peace;

Resolved to transform their age-long rivalry through the unification of their essential interests, and, by the inauguration of an economic Community, to assemble the initial basis for a broader and deeper Community of peoples who had for centuries been opposed in bloody conflicts, and to set the foundations of institutions capable of providing a direction to a destiny that is henceforward shared,

Have decided to create a European  Coal and Steel Community.

The European Commission -- who owe their very existent to this Declaration --  OFFICIALLY refuse to publish it, the foundational Declaration that provided Europeans with the longest period of peace ever known in Europe's history!

Here is the reply of President Barroso and his colleagues from the Communications Director General.

8 January 2010

Subject: Europe's foundational Declaration of Inter-dependence

Thank you for your message of 30 November 2009, which you addressed to president Barroso as well as several members of the current and incoming European Commission. The President asked me to reply on his behalf.

We publish general information on the history of the EU on our website and occasionally in brochures. Our site http://europa.eu/abc/history/index_en.htm contains an overview of the key historical moments to which you rightly attach great importance, including the signature3 of the Treaty fo Paris on 18 April 1951. The site also contains the full text of the Schuman declaration, and has short overviews of the lives and contributions of our key founding figures.

In addition to archives and sites for specialists, declarations such as the one of Inter-Dependence can be found on the website "European navigator" (www.ena.lu). This site is not managed by the EU institutions, but we often recommend it in our communication work as a useful service that provides access to documents about EU history to wider circles that history experts.

Every year Members of the European Commission, DG Communication and its Representations in the Members States celebrate the 9th May. This year these celebrations will also commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Schuman declaration, in addition to offering a moment of reflection on the future of the European Union.

Yours sincerely, etc

If you check on the site Europa.eu you will find that neither the FULL text of the Schuman Declaration or the Declaration of Inter-dependence-- the founding documents of the EU -- is published. The site referred to, when it is working, translates the key term for Community by 'pool'!! That Gaullist term is a derisory approach to democracy. The censorship of the Commission shows utter contempt to democracy. It acts as if it were still a Gaullist-dominated instrument of French policy.

In a world of open communications, no government, nor any international organization can block the truth. If all the Commissioners unite to block the key Declarations that say Europeans must be FREE TO CHOOSE, then other means will publish these foundational Declarations. They can, for example be found on www.schuman.info, which was created more than ten years ago precisely because of this neo-Gaullist censorship. I hope many other electronic sites and publications will make these key documents well-known to counter the Commission's and the Council's anti-democratic policies.

In Europa's section on Democracy Dialogue Debate you will find the page CLOSED with the stamp:

This site has been ARCHIVED on 28/2/2010.

The Dialogue of the deaf is over. Have the ANTI-Communicators archived the Democracy Debate? Dream on!