Euro11: Ombudsman condemns European Council cover-up on legality of euro's Fiscal Compact

Maladministration on a grand scale! Who controls multi-billion funds that dwarf the EU’s annual budget by three or four times? Who ultimately controls the multi-trillion stranglehold that the Brussels institutions have on the budgets of national governments in the EU?  Who controls the Bank? Why are such mega projects excluded from Court action for fraud and crimes that the euro crises have already exposed across the whole euro zone?

If you thought some fiddling by MEPs or even small States like Greece, Portugal, Cyprus or Ireland was of concern, take a stiff coffee before reading on.

The European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, has condemned the European Council and its secretariat in the Council of Ministers of maladministration for a cover-up and refusal to provide promptly legal information for public discussion on the  Fiscal Compact Treaty controlling Europe’s multi-trillion euro economy. The documents, essential for a proper democratic debate and consultation were requested two years ago in January 2012.

In spite of the Ombudsman’s ruling, the documents in question have still not been provided.

The Fiscal Compact is an international treaty and has not been signed by two Member States. Both the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom refused. Its relationship to the EU justice system is therefore questionable. For the European Court to act all Member States must have the measures agreed by democratic vote in a European treaty of all Member States. Then all the European institutions have their right to discuss and amend the treaty. The Council, Parliament, Consultative Committees all elected by democratic vote have to have their imput and rights on individual decisions and measures undertaken. The Commission should have clear independence. It should not be treated like a skivvy or slave of the Council of Ministers. It is not their Secretariat! Then the European Court of the EU can make its judgements when their is a complaint from any citizen, organization or State.

Signatories of an international treaty conversely, for example, NATO or the Council of Europe, cannot ask the European Union’s Court of Justice in Luxembourg to make judgements for them.

So what is the status of the Fiscal Compact?

It spends nearly half of its many pages with a Preamble with many indents or tear-jerking appeals of its Europeanness: Conscious of this, Desiring that, Recalling this that and the other of European goals and even institutions. The truth is it is not a part of the European Union or the Community. It is a separate international treaty, fixed up by some politicians in a fix. They have used all the lawyers’ skills and deceits to give a facade that it is part of the European legal system, as best they can. But they can’t. There are two members missing and only treaties inside the Community system embracing all members are EU legal treaties.

How can outraged European citizens or duped Member States appeal if other States do not comply with the Compact’s strictures? What can anyone do if some politicians treat the other States as financial patsies? That is just what the monetary crises in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland and others are all about. The public’s conclusion is obvious. Some politicians are not honest, nor do they act honestly with the people’s money. Money deranges their judgement. They treat it as a slush fund to dole out to people they hope will vote for them. If they can’t get away with it at home or run out of money they tap into the prosperous countries that keep their books in order and have a surplus.

The full title of the Fiscal Compact is Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union. It tries to add additional bandages on the badly conceived and crisis-ridden Euro project.

The euro was made by politicians for politicians, hoping they would get away on a European scale with overspending and hidden financing they had all been doing since the 1970s. Then surprise, surprise, the public found out that the politicians cooked the books, not only in Greece but practically everywhere. In a commercial company that sort of duplicity and malpractice would have been considered criminal. But politicians say it is normal for them. They are only dealing with public money!

No wonder that the politicians’ main scam, the Euro, has experienced only 7 or 8 years of stability and convergent national bond interest rates.  That is a blink of an eye in the lifetime of a solid, stable currency. Why did interest rates explode again? It does not have solid monetary or democratic foundations.

The euro’s worth has fallen to a quarter or  fifth of what its value should be worth against stable stores of value. Its conception and management by the secretive EuroGroup, which is not an institution of the EU, flies in the face of any real Community democracy. A Community currency requires Community democratic control.

The other bandages that the Council politicians concocted in the privacy of their meetings, the European Stability Mechanism and the European Finance and Stability Facility with half a trillion euro and its Mechanism that leverages a few more billion from the EU budget. This created a company in Luxembourg to draw billions of loans and liabilities from international financial markets. Who is this money for? Why, the same States that are already seen as betraying the public’s trust in cooking the statistics and overspending their budgets. In other words the taxpayers will have to pay for any mismanagement in these operations too.

And what do we find in these treaties? Surprise, suprise! We find an assurance by the same politicians that anyone involved in these multi-billion operations, when seen to be obviously guilty of malpractice, is offered total legal immunity from prosecution!

Not only that no document will be available for public scrutiny. No document will be able to be controlled and judged by any court of law whatsoever! This is what the relevant article of the ESM says about its staff and their paper trail:

“ARTICLE 35
Immunities of persons
1. In the interest of the ESM, the Chairperson of the Board of Governors, Governors, alternate Governors, Directors, alternate Directors, as well as the Managing Director and other staff members shall 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. ”

Who are the governors? Why, the politicians! That is a paradise for crooks and crooked practice. It is an invitation to mega crisis.

The Background with my last commentary on this case can be found at Euro10.
The Ombudsman’s judgement on the Fiscal Compact cover-up can be found at
http://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/cases/decision.faces/en/53191/html.bookmark

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!!

Euro9: Should your lawyer, whom YOU pay, protect Euro Treaty fraudsters AGAINST YOU?

Very bizarre things are going on in the financial field with YOUR money at the moment. Governments are trying to raise trillion euro loans on the markets. YOU and the next generations will have to pay for them. What's it all about?

None of this happened before the Lisbon Treaty politicians -- you know the ones who passed the treaty and refused to take notice of any referendums -- decided to create a European currency without any consideration to supranational principles of democracy.

Wouldn't you like to know if it is all legal?

• A short while ago, Luxembourg was considered a bad place, a tax haven. Now politicians have created their own company there to syphon in international liquidity. What on earth are finance ministers doing becoming employees of a Luxembourg finance company? Haven't they a proper day job?
• The politicians created not one but two financial operations all of dubious legal standing, the European Stability and Finance Facility and the European Stability Mechanism. Is it really legal to create such tax-haven operations without the full-hearted consent of the people? After all, it is the people who will pay.
• The politicians then decided to bring in a Fiscal Compact that would, they said, bring discipline where their fellow politicians in the compact had failed in the past. Various countries had cooked the books, fiddled the stats, frauded all and sundry around Europe. Now this very same group that was either guilty in these matters or those who colluded with them or were passive at the fraud, say that this deal will solve all Europe's problems. This fraud has been going on since 1981 when Greece joined. But now, the say, it will all be solved LEGALLY. Are they to be believed?

European financial matters seem all of a sudden so complicated. It would require a high-grade lawyer to really know what's is going on, what's really cooking. Don't you wish you had a good lawyer to analyze all these shenanigans ?

YOU HAVE!! All Europeans have a lawyer who they have already paid for! They have more -- a whole team of lawyers working for them!

The legal team has been hired from your own European taxes. It is YOUR service.

The Legal Services of the Council of Ministers have already produced a Legal Opinion on all this. They can answer all your questions. If politicians in their secretive doings are bringing in dubious treaties that would encourage fraud, what can you do about it?

You can ask them for this Opinion.

The European Financial Stability Facility and the European Stability Mechanism plus the Fiscal Compact treaty were signed in the margins of the Council of Ministers. They were agreed by 17 to 25 Member State government ministers, not the full 27 State membership. That shows they are not conceived as a proper EU or Community treaty.

What should you do? Ask for the Opinion that was given to YOUR democratic representative, your servant.

The Fiscal Compact will affect every man woman and child in the European Union. Ostensibly it is designed to ensure budget balance among governments in the EuroZone. There is a major problem. It won't work. It sounds fierce and strong. It requires governments to follow certain budgetary rules to balance their budgets. This is what they all pledged to do in 1997 at Amsterdam, but didn't. The draft treaty requires States to do so by changing their constitutions or basic laws. But in the end it is the politicians -- meeting in secret -- who will judge whether their chums should be penalized or not. The Court, they say, will also act. The Council tried this before and even when the Court of Justice condemned the profligacy of France and Germany, the politicians just thumbed their noses at the European rule of law. Then the Netherlands and others were having to pay for the French and German overdrafts.

Does this worry you? Ask for the Council's Legal Opinion!

In this new treaty it is not even sure whether the Court will be empowered to act for the non-Community body defined in this draft treaty.

These measures designed to support the euro will only make Europe more bureaucratic and take further power from the citizens and non-political organized civil society of real Community democracy. Further, the euro was built on principles directly opposite from what the Founding fathers said were solid, moral and realistic foundations.

• The euro is not even built on sand.
• It is not build on air.
• It is built on electrons and the groundless wish fulfilment of politicians.
• It is based on what Robert Schuman called counterfeit democracy.

I therefore wrote to the Council on 2 February to have copies of the Legal Opinions about whether the EFSF, the ESM and the Draft Fiscal Compact comes under the European rule of law. This is vital information for everybody.

If the European Court of Justice is not empowered to act, no citizen nor any firm or trade union will be able to take the matter to Court. The Court of Justice will throw out the complaint. It will be as valid as an agreement made by some EU Member States OUTSIDE the EU framework. You cannot expect Member States in NATO or in the OECD taking a dispute between themselves to the EU Court of Justice. It is not competent to act for other bodies. A treaty creating a non-EU organisation of 25 States is not the EU. A complaint must be lodged at the proper court. A French Court won't deal with your parking fines in Romania.

The Council produced a Legal Opinion to discuss this question. If the Court is excluded from the actions of the band of 25, they will lie outside European supranational law. This is anarchy that will only encourage further abuse.

Like many citizens I wanted to see what the lawyers at the Council said. How did the Council reply to my request. Firstly I asked the Press Office to supply me with the Legal Opinions. They said I would have to apply formally through the Information Access web site under Regulation 1049/2001. This takes time -- two weeks MAXIMUM normally. However I did not get a reply until a few days ago.

This is what the Secretariat of the Access Directorate General wrote:

Your request of 2 February 2012 for access to "legal opinions from Council services on the insertion, application and operation of the European Court of Justice in the ESM and ESFS and other euro treaties pacts" has been registered by the "Access to Documents" unit. Thank you for your interest.

The General Secretariat of the Council has examined your request on the basis of Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents (Official Journal L 145, 31.5.2001, p. 43) and the specific provisions concerning public access to Council documents set out in Annex II to the Council's Rules of Procedure (Council Decision No 2009/937/EU, Official Journal L 325, 11.12.2009, p. 35). On 23 February 2012, the time-limit for replying to your application was extended by 15 working days. Having examined the request, the General Secretariat has come to the following conclusion:

The General Secretariat was able to identify only one opinion of the Council Legal Service related to the European Court of Justice in the context mentioned in your request. This opinion is to be found in document 5788/12.

Document 5788/12 is an opinion of the Council Legal Service drawn up in the context of intergovernmental negotiations taking place outside the ordinary institutional framework for a Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union (the "draft Treaty"). The draft treaty has subsequently been signed by 25 Member States but still remains to be ratified. The opinion analyses whether Article 8 of the draft Treaty, conferring jurisdiction on the European Court of Justice as regards compliance by Member States with the so-called "balanced budget rule", is compatible with European Union law. The document consequently contains legal advice.

The aim of the draft Treaty is to strengthen economic governance, including by introducing the abovementioned "balanced budget rule". It was drawn up in a difficult political and economic context and bears directly on the economic interests of the Member States.

Disclosure of the document would undermine the protection of the public interest as regards Member States' economic and monetary policies by making known to the public a comprehensive legal analysis on issues affecting those policies. This is especially the case as the opinion assesses questions linked to the balanced budget rule which is at the heart of the draft Treaty.

Moreover, given the sensitivity of the legal issues dealt with in the document and the high political and financial importance of the draft Treaty there is a real risk of litigation in the future which is likely to involve a Court review of the questions analysed in the Legal Service opinion. If access were to be given to the document in question this would undermine the protection of legal advice by making public an internal opinion of the Legal Service intended for the Member States. This clearly risks affecting the ability of those concerned to defend their position in a possible future case before the European Court of Justice. In addition, such a result could have the effect that comprehensive legal advice is not requested in similarly sensitive situations in the future, thereby seriously affecting the relevant decision-making processes on such issues.

It should also be added that the opinion is very broad in scope as it analyses the possibilities and conditions in general for conferring jurisdiction on the European Court of Justice by agreement.

In the view of the foregoing, the General Secretariat is unable to grant you access to this document, since its disclosure would prejudice the protection of the public interest as regards the financial, monetary or economic policy of the Union or a Member State as set out in Article 4(1)(a), fourth indent, of Regulation 1049/2001.

Disclosure would furthermore prejudice the protection of legal advice in the second indent of Article 4(2) of Regulation 1049/2001. In that regard the General Secretariat considers that, on balance, the principle of transparency which underlies the Regulation would not, in the present case, prevail over the above-mentioned interest so as to justify disclosure of the document and that, consequently, no overriding public interest in disclosure exists.

The General Secretariat has closely examined the document to assess whether certain parts could be extracted as not being covered by any of the above-mentioned exceptions, cf. Article 4(6) of Regulation 1049/2001. However, it has concluded that all parts of the document are covered by exceptions.

According to Article 7(2) of the Regulation, you may submit a confirmatory application requesting the Council to reconsider this position, within 15 working days of receiving this reply .

Yours sincerely,

For the General Secretariat

 

In return I wrote the following reply:

Secretariat, DG F Access
Council of Ministers,
EU

Dear Sir,
Thank you for your reply to my request of 2 February 2012 for the Legal Opinions on the draft treaty for the Fiscal Compact. This is an urgent matter and of great importance to all European citizens as it concerns legislation and a treaty that is presently under consideration by a number of Parliaments of Member States. I first made my request directly to officials of the Council press service but was told that I would have to request the document formally through the web service of the Council. This involved a period UP TO fifteen days before delivery, even though it was an extremely urgent matter.

You state that 'On 23 February 2012, the time-limit for replying to your application was extended by 15 working days.' I would like to point out that this delay was not caused by me but simply that the reply from the Council was not originally executed within the statutory 15 days as required by Community law. I was told by an official on the phone that the Council had failed to respect the deadline. In effect the Council gave itself extra time. I am in no way to blame.

You write that the Council has decided that not a word, not a comma, of any document will be released. This is not acceptable. I request that all documents in full should be released.

As to the substance of your reply I am asking for an immediate release, if necessary following a re-evaluation of grounds of the refusal to supply the Legal Opinions on the draft Fiscal Compact treaty aka 'Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union'. You have identified only one document which you refer to as document 5788/12. I was told by your press office there were at least two.

My reasons are the following:

1. You state: 'Disclosure of the document would undermine the protection of the public interest as regards Member States' economic and monetary policies by making known to the public a comprehensive legal analysis on issues affecting those policies.' The subject matter of the treaty is the stability of the European currency known as the euro. This is a public good. It is difficult to argue that the public should be protected from full knowledge of the stability and legality or otherwise of their own public good. It is in the public's interest to have complete information. Trillions of euros are at stake and any dubious practice should be exposed. That is the public's interest. This ultimate and authentic interest should be protected by having the fullest exposure of the facts. The Legal Opinion should be released.

2. The Legal Opinion deals with the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice which the Treaty attempts to render active in the affairs of a limited number of Member States. That is, a group of governments wants the Court to be able to act in a deal of their own that excludes the entire Community but where the excluded States and peoples have interests that will be affected, perhaps seriously. This is of prime importance, not only to the signatory States but also the EU non-signatory States. It is therefore essential that the document be fully exposed to the entire EU and all its taxpayers and citizens. The rule of law and democracy must not be excluded from the deal. The position of the Court is paramount. Any doubt about the Court's power must be ventilated. The Document therefore needs to be released.

3. You state: 'there is a real risk of litigation in the future which is likely to involve a Court review of the questions analysed in the Legal Service opinion. If access were to be given to the document in question this would undermine the protection of legal advice by making public an internal opinion of the Legal Service intended for the Member States.' This gives the impression that the Member States -- by which you seem to mean the Member States governments who signed the deal -- are somehow at odds with the people of those States. You also imply that those Member State governments are reluctant to expose their acts to the justice of the Court. I am sure that, in a European Community based on the rule of law and in the EU generally, the people and I hope the governments would affirm that justice should be paramount in all actions of government. The Legal Opinion is therefore the common property of both the people -- who pay for the salaries of the lawyers in the Council's legal service -- and only indirectly the governments who only act as intermediaries, agents and servants for the people who pay. This argument provides no ground that the Legal Opinion, presently inside the Council building and on its computers, all paid for by public taxes, should be restricted to the agents and servants of the people and refused to the people themselves. The citizens are the owners of the Opinion. The document should therefore be released.

4. You state that providing me with a copy of the legal advice 'could have the effect that comprehensive legal advice is not requested in similarly sensitive situations in the future, thereby seriously affecting the relevant decision-making processes on such issues.' This is clearly in contradiction with the major principles of European treaties: openness and democracy. Even the Lisbon treaty makes this clear in black and white. The Union is based on representative democracy (TEU Art 10), that the Council and European Council is democratically accountable (Art 10) every citizen has the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union -- including having access to information; and decisions should be taken as openly and as closely as possible to the citizens (paras 1 to 4). Article 11 says that the institutions shall, by appropriate means, give citizens and representative associations the opportunity to make known and publicly exchange their opinions. Legal Opinions about the essential legal structures involving the entire economic and monetary structure of the EU or even 25 Member States must be part of that exchange of opinions. Openness is further emphasized in TFEU Art 15: the Council should 'conduct its work as openly as possible.' This also says that the Council should meet in public when considering draft legislation (para 2). It makes nonsense of this Lisbon treaty, European Law and hard-won democracy if the consideration of any matter that refers to the Legal Opinion should be silenced from the public ear. In a Council open to the public will all direct and indirect references to this secret document be expunged from the airwaves and from the record? The only motive for that is to protect the dubious actions of ministers, not the public. This is ridiculous. The public has a right to know. The document should be released.

5. You state that the Legal Opinion 'analyses the possibilities and conditions in general for conferring jurisdiction on the European Court of Justice by agreement.' By agreement of whom? It is against the principles of democracy and openness that, for example, a dubious practice is subject to collusion among those who are responsible. Access to Justice should not be restricted by those guilty of crooked practice. The EU is presently suffering from a number of cases where the ministers have refused to take warnings about fraud, maladministration and malpractice in a number of Member States. As a result multiple hundreds of billions of euros are being raised in loans to deal with the problem. Future generations will have to pay. The Council's record with the Court also raises the alarm. In 2004, a number of Member States governments were condemned by the European Court of Justice and not only refused to take the action required by the Court but shrugged their shoulders at taking the Court seriously. This sentence in the reply therefore underlines all the more the reason why the Legal Opinion should be provided to the public.

6. As to the substance of the Legal Opinion relative to the jurisdiction of the European Court in the Fiscal Treaty signed by 25 Member States, there are three possibilities.
(a) The draft treaty lies fully inside the jurisdiction of the EU Court of Justice. In this case there is no need to hide the Legal Opinion as it endorses the juridical powers and oversight of the Court in all activities of Member states within the draft treaty.
(b) The draft treaty does not fall inside EU activities and EU law. In this case it is imperative that the Legal Opinion be published immediately so that the matter can be discussed within Member States' parliaments and by the public in general. Otherwise the Council could be considered a party to fraud.
(c) The draft treaty is a dubious construction. In this case it must be borne in mind above all that the Council is not a private organisation. It represents the governments of the people. It is not authorized to act as a cartel of political parties that wink at dubious practice with Community money. Is the Council proposing to go to Court against the people? Is it at war with the justice of the EU Court of Justice? If the draft treaty is of dubious construction then the sooner the Legal Opinion is released the better, both for the people, and the Court and for the Council.

7. You cite Regulation 1049/2001 in two places of Article 4, that you say supports your exemption from disclosure. In fact they do exactly the opposite. They urge that full disclosure must be met.

Article 4 para 1 (a).4. The institutions shall refuse access to a document where
disclosure would undermine the protection of:
(a) the public interest as regards:

— the financial, monetary or economic policy of the Community or a Member State.

Exempting or refusing disclosure of the Legal Opinion would only help monetary and economic policy if it were fraudulent. The integrity of the European Economic system demands the full understanding as to whether the draft treaty falls fully under the rule of law and does not unjustly impinge on citizens' interests. The Legal Opinion should therefore be immediately released so that Parliament and public can understand the legal, moral, social, economic and monetary principles and values on which it is based.

Article 4 para 2.2. The institutions shall refuse access to a document where
disclosure would undermine the protection of:

— court proceedings and legal advice,

unless there is an overriding public interest in disclosure.

An overriding public interest in full disclosure does exist as it it is everyone's interest that the treaty should be solidly, democratically founded and on complete justice and openness. The Opinion does not involve a case of an individual or association or one Member State against another or an institution, the main ground for the article indent. The exemption does not apply as it deals with the framework of law, the legitimacy of the draft treaty. The Legal Opinion should therefore be released immediately.

8. It is essential that the Legal Opinion be released in the present circumstances. A great deal of legislation and a number of treaties are being proposed at the moment in very disturbing and unorthodox processes. Decisions involving sums of money multiple times the whole annual budget of the EU are being arranged in closed door meetings by politicians -- often in the dead of night. The public needs to have a clear understanding of what is going on.

When it comes to this draft treaty, the contents and interaction with the institutions, already under stress and disoriented by non-democratic abuse, are difficult for the average citizen to fathom. It is not clear whether this treaty comes under the Community or EU rule of law. It is also a very technical matter where the citizen needs help in understanding the legal issues.

Failure to disclose is totally against the letter and the spirit of the legislation on democratic transparency. The aim of the transparency legislation is to ensure clear and open democracy, not hinder it. The drafting of the draft treaty was also conducted in abnormal ways. These irregularities should not be compounded by subtle or hidden blocking mechanisms in legal access to the Court of Justice, thus obstructing the right of every individual, association, and Member State of the Union.

It is essential therefore that the Legal Opinions of all the institutions are published in full. As the Council -- or a certain group of Member States who are also part of the Council -- are the prime movers in this operation, the Council services should set the example of openness and expel any suspicion of dubious practice.

I am therefore requesting the immediate release of the Legal Opinion, document 5788/12 and any other document on the draft treaty. I confirm that my name and this reply may be held on the register.

Yours etc,

Schuman.info

I am awaiting a reply. And the Legal Opinion.

Budget 10: The EU Cartel's dirty Trillion-Euro Game of Hide-and-Seek with Taxpayer's money

Did you read about the passionate debate about the 2012 Budget? Did you hear about the how Parliament minutely and forensically interrogated the Commission about taxpayer's money? Did you see how the Commissioner cowered as MEPs tore into the illogicality of its proposals? Did you cheer on seeing the riveting television when Parliamentarians shredded the arguments of Council of Ministers, declaring that they could not raise a cent of YOUR tax money without proper OPEN, DEMOCRATIC REPRESENTATION?

Are you now fully aware about HOW and WHY the EU leaders take European tax from your pocket and HOW MUCH it spends on your behalf and WHERE? Did you see how 27 democratic States of Europe vigorously debated their common budget in the European Union?

NEITHER DID I !!!

The MAIN Debate on the 2012 Budget was IN SECRET! AGAIN!! The doors of the room 5G3 in the Spinelli Building of the Brussels Parliament were closed on 8 November 2011. I asked for admittance showing my press credentials. I also said that I was a journalist. I was asked whether I was part of the Council delegation. I said: No. I was then asked, if I was part of the Commission delegation. I said: No. I was asked if I was with the Parliament. I said: No.

I re-affirmed that I was a journalist and wanted to report about the raising of European taxes and the spending of taxpayers' money. I said it was a matter of the highest public interest. The Guardians of the Door who had a list of those who their bosses wanted to be admitted, refused to let me enter.

The European Union is now deep in the mire of a financial and monetary crisis. Both the finances and the money lack democratic legitimacy. At the heart of these problems is the illicit take-over of what are supposed to be independent institutions by a clique of politicians. Thus an oligarchic clique in Council dictates what 500 million citizens should do and how much they should pay. They also tell them what is good for them, whether they agree or not.

Consider. Who is in charge of the independent institutions?

When asked,

• The Parliament says the meetings on raising and spending taxes should be open.
• The European Commission says such meetings should be open.
• The Consultative Committees don't reply but they have open meetings.
• The Treaties say that all meetings from the initial consideration of tax and all stages about tax legislation should be open.
• Taxpayers demand that all meetings about taxation should be open, fair and just.
• The Council refuses to have open meetings.

There is a simple remedy in all the treaties from the founding treaty of 1951 to the Lisbon Treaty. ASK THE COURT TO DECIDE WHO IS RIGHT. Any national, regional Court or local tribunal where a civil association or even any individual is in dispute over European tax can have its judge ask the European Court for a judgment on the legality of the Council's 'secret taxation' system.

The European finances and the money system are controlled undemocratically by a coalition of the three major parties. Let us call it the Cartel. There is no real democratic Government and certainly no Opposition. The institutional independence required in the treaties is being systematically suspended by the Coup Leaders. The Cartel overrides the institutions.

• The European Commission, which is supposed to be composed of totally independent personalities, is now EXCLUSIVELY composed of card-carrying members of the political parties. They are chosen in secret. No real European is allowed to put his or her name forward. No Call for Candidates is allowed to be published for the posts that are paid for by taxpayers. All 27 States act in undemocratic unison.
• The Council of Ministers, which is supposed to represent national interests in a continuous open debate is now composed of a clique of party politicians who refuse to have proper discussions in the national parliaments or allow referendums. It is very far from its original role of initiating debate in the States with all the citizens that they supposedly represent. It is now a clique designed to stifle and stop debate at home.
• The European Parliament, which is supposed to hold the Commission to task, having the power to fire the Commission for incompetence or dereliction of duty, has become the Chorus for the Commission, now the Cartel secretariat, and other stronghold of the cartel, the Council. When it agreed to the Lisbon Treaty -- without even publishing the full text -- the Parliament gave up its PRIME POWER. The Lisbon Treaty made it impossible for the Parliament to sack the Commission. The Parliament, needless to say, has NEVER had an election according to the specifications of the treaties: direct elections according to a single statute for all Member States, not 27 statutes which favour the Cartel and eliminate other voices of citizens.
• The Consultative Committees, a vital debating and legislating chamber of organized civil society has NEVER been elected on a European basis. Schuman and Reuter (who was responsible for drafting the early treaties) declared the efforts of governments to prevent these elections ILLEGAL.

Who stopped the application of supranational democracy of the treaties? Who blocked a single statute for Parliamentary elections (when the Parliament had the courage to propose it)? Who stopped the Consultative Committees having elections for European organised societies?

The politicians in the Council of Ministers and now the European Council and its unofficial super-Eurogroup.

Why are the doors closed on Budget and Tax discussions? Who shut the doors?

A year ago I wrote to the President of the European Parliament about the closed doors of the Budget meeting of October 2010. I got no reply so I asked the Ombudsman to help.

On 1 June 2011, Mr Buzek replied:

As you know, the European Parliament's policy is one of full openness and transparency in such meetings. Our own plenary sessions are public, as well as, in principle, committee meetings (exceptions to this rule are rare and must be duly motivated). Equally, the Treaty of Lisbon established the principle that Council should deliberate in public on legislative matters.

In the light of these factors, a discussion is currently on-going within the European Parliament concerning the status of conciliation meetings. However, I must draw your attention to the fact that any decision concerning public access to conciliation meetings requires an agreement of all the institutions involved, which has not been reached yet. As you will understand, it is not possible for the Parliament to impose unilaterally an 'open door' policy for such meetings. We will continue to work to find a satisfactory solution...

Comment: The fact that the doors are closed must have the agreement of all those 'democrats' who are attending and are responsible to the public. The public demand open meetings, especially on taking tax and spending tax. Do the 'democrats' lack the courage of their convictions? Who has priority -- their electors or the politician-Cartelmasters in Council? Schuman and the Founding Fathers said the doors of European institutions including the Councils should be open so that the public can control what goes on. The Parliament has had SIXTY years from its foundational session on 10 September 1952 when it first met to resolve this problem of openness. How much more time does it require? Secondly the treaties provide a simple solution. The Court of Justice is empowered to decide on the interpretation of the Treaties -- in particular whether all matters of taxation should follow the same rules on open debates about taxation as all the democracies that make up the EU. The Parliament is empowered to initiate the case.

What happens at budget meetings when the Council is not present? They SHUT THE DOORS TOO. This happened at the meeting of the Parliament leaders and the Commission on the one Trillion euro multi-annual Budget for 2013-2020. It was held in Parliament on 29 June 2011, on the sixth floor of the Spaak Building. Paul-Henri Spaak, the first president of the European Parliament would have shot up bolt upright in his grave!

The supposedly democratic institutions want one TRILLION from Taxpayers -- but they were not going to tell them why, how they would go about it or whether there was any collusion between two institutions to do a dirty deal against the citizen!

Is the Council to blame for the secret Tax and Budget meeting when it is absent? Why was the meeting of the Commission and Parliament closed to the public? It is time for the so-called Democrats to clean up their act. It is the unseen hand of the Council that shuts the door -- and pulls the strings.

On 4 July 2011, I therefore wrote again to President Buzek.

Schuman Project
www.schuman.info

Dear President Buzek,
Thank you for your reply of 1 June 2011 to my letter of November 2010 concerning the exclusion of the press and the public from the Budget Conciliation Meetings in October and later on. (Ombudsman case 661/2011/RT) You mention that the Parliament's policy 'is one of full openness and transparency in such meetings' as the Budget. I am pleased to see your re-affirmation of Parliament's responsibility towards the public -- which is written into the treaties. The idea of a Parliament holding secret sessions is a contradiction of its purpose. Any exceptions must be reasoned with irrefutable logic, be properly motivated and democratically agreed and underpinned by law and jurisprudence. There should be no hint of political expediency. The principle must be that the public is also the partner of any democratic institution.

Because of past corruption, financial misappropriations and abuse of Wine Lakes, Meat Mountains and infrastructure funding scandals, the Lisbon Treaty spelt out clearly, as you say, the 'principle that the Council should deliberate in public on legislative matters.'

However I am at a loss as to why Parliament sees any question about the necessary public presence at the conciliation meetings. Nor do I understand why public access must stop when the Council acts contrary to what Parliament is convinced is the Treaty law for Europe. Public access and democratic debate is the paramount principle, not the whims and fancies of Council. Surely Parliament is an independent institution according to the law of the treaties and has been since the first session of the assembly on 10 September 1952 -- nearly 60 years ago.

You write that 'The status of the discussion in Council is a matter for which the Council, not the Parliament, is responsible'. Surely the reverse applies equally. The Council must respect the laws of the Treaties and rules of Parliament. If as you say the Parliament is convinced of the legality of its case, it should not hesitate an instant to defend the rights of the public, especially when a meeting takes place inside a building of Parliament, where you, Mr President, and the Members are legally sovereign.

Public access to meetings considering the collection and use of the citizens’ own money should not be in dispute anywhere. It should certainly not be a matter where Council bullies Parliament or any other body. If there is any doubt about the right of the public and the press to attend a meeting about their own money inside the independent European Parliament, there is a simple remedy in all the Treaties since 1951. The Parliament can ask the Court of Justice for an opinion on the interpretation of the treaties and validity of acts under article 267 TFEU and elsewhere. Any tribunal throughout the entire EU can do the same.
I would like to know why this has not been done.

The second question relates to Budget meetings where the Council did not play any part. On 29 June 2011, I was also excluded from the Budget meeting of the Parliament and the Commission. Why? The Parliament was considering the Commission's proposals for the Trillion euro multi-annual financial framework. It is huge money from the public's pocket. All political parties were represented at the meeting and their reaction was of primary public interest and concern. Article 15 of Lisbon Treaty TFEU states that all matters concerning the consideration of budget and legislation should be open to the public. I spoke to a member of Mr Barroso's Cabinet who was also present inside the meeting but he was unable to explain to me the reason for the press exclusion from the point of view of the Commission. On his recommendation I am therefore writing to you for an explanation.

In this case, blame for the exclusion cannot be sloughed off on the Council. The Commission says it is the Parliament’s responsibility.

The treaties and the jurisprudence state clearly that openness and consultation are required for legislation. The secrecy, the hidden political reactions and the refusal to consult the public throw in doubt the legality of previous 'legislation' because it is based on unjustly excluding the public presence and refusing proper consultation of the public and taxpayers in particular. Money cannot legally be taken from a taxpayer's pocket in a manner where the taxpayer is excluded from understanding how an exclusive group who will benefit highly from his money are proposing to seize it, what their first proposals are and the reactions among them. This is especially important when it comes to European matters involving vast sums, massive planning, specifics of revenue collection and taxation and principles of budgetary operations. It is all the more illegitimate when exclusion is decided by a coalition of people all holding party membership cards. They all have similar ideological motives. Party membership represents only about 2 percent of the population. The vast majority of electors refused to vote for any of the parties in the elections. The trend of party support is also continually downwards. It is this small but strong and persistent cartel of party members who refused press and public access in the Council and the Parliament. This is unjust.

Non-party political Civil Society and Organized Civil Society has now been excluded from the institutions where they used to be active in the Commission and in the Consultative Committees (which have legal rights about legislation). Tax and budget decisions are now exclusively made by party politicians contrary to the letter and spirit of the treaties. The Commission is also exclusively occupied by politically active national politicians whereas the original treaties say they should be independent, not maintain their occupation, paid or not, nor take instructions from any organisation or government. The result is that legislation lacks democratic legitimacy.

I am therefore asking you to also reply to the following:
1. The EP should make access for the public and the press permanently available via a physical presence inside the committee room and also for others via the internet and radio and television links.
2. It should ask the Court of Justice to review the legality of the previous acts where the budget discussions were held in secret, contrary to public interest and the Lisbon Treaty and other treaties. Public consultation, debate and democratic openness are legal requirements. The longer it is before this review is made, the more serious the outcome could be. A local or national court or tribunal in the EU will eventually ask according to article 267 for a European Court judgement, opinion or ruling determining the legitimacy of all such alleged legislation including the budgets under the Lisbon Treaty. The most chaotic outcome should be avoided.
3. The EP should, where possible, hold these same Budget meetings again in public so that they can be considered legal and so the public can be aware of the issues and discussions involved in the Budget and expenditures. The public needs to have an opportunity to object to any secret deals among party members and communicate their own opinions to their representatives. After all it is the public’s money that is being discussed. It is not the private funds of the political parties.
4. The Commission, Council and Parliament should review and propose how organized civil society in a properly elected Economic and Social Committee and other such consultative committees with a legal mandate can contribute to the budget proposals. The Founding Fathers intended and the treaties allow that the Consultative Committees should be elected among all registered European associations – as is presently the case in the Council of Europe. Direct elections for the European Parliament under a single mandate were also foreseen and legitimized in the treaties of Paris, 1951 and Rome, 1957 but this took decades to be even partially realized.

Mr President, I look forward to receiving your reply.

Many thanks for your help.

Yours etc,

Not having received a reply in the subsequent months, I have now written again asking for a reply.

Budget9: Is the EU Budget Illegal? You and any tribunal can ask the European Court!

Can a Parliament and any other allegedly 'democratic institution' ban the public and journalists from their meetings? Do they have the legal right? Once they have shut the doors, can they then make a deal to IMPOSE a budget on taxpayers who are not present? Is its secretive procedure LEGAL? If it is not, is the budget illegal, void and invalid?

In October to December 2010, the  Council, Parliament and Commission held a series of meetings on the 2011 Budget. The public and journalists were banned from setting foot in any of the meetings. A guard was put on the door. Only people on a special list were allowed to enter. On the agenda was the means to collect and spend around about 130 Billion euros defined in their 2011 budget. At the meetings were the Belgian Prime Minister and others representing the Council. The meetings included the President of the European Parliament and a score of his MEP colleagues and the European Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski, responsible for the Budget.

What did they get up to? We know that the Commissioner accused the politicians of behaving like a 'kindergarten'.  It was not an edifying spectacle. Each side claimed the budget was their toy.  Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski characterised the whole affair as ‘self-centered and egoistical'.

Whose toys, or rather, whose money were they arguing over? It was the group that was refused entry to all the meetings -- the public.  The politicians did not only refuse to include them, they banned them outright. The political 'leaders' did not deign to have any REAL representative of the people from whom these 'democratic' leaders were about to extract their Billions! No member of the press was officially allowed to observe and report the politicians' infantile behaviour.  No outsider was invited who would criticize this dangerous clique's discrimination and predatory action against the citizen.

I call these political juveniles 'dangerous' because they follow the pattern of President de Gaulle and others who refused to have open Council meetings that Robert Schuman said was essential. In the secrecy of the Council of Ministers, they created a vast pattern of corruption for votes with their Wine Lakes, Meat Mountains, faudulent, regional infrastructure projects that never happened.

The next generation of politicians did not open the doors either. They paid huge amounts of European taxpayers' money to party comrades in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, winking at the money that disappeared into boltholds and their subsequent fraudulent statistics. Those monetary falsehoods are now being exposed as Europe falters on the edge of a euro collapse.

The politicians today are committing similar immoral acts against European citizens in their secret sessions. Their arrogant offences would not pass in most of their home parliaments where a national press has free comment. Don't they think that secret budget discussions in Brussels must be wrong? Or do they just think: 'If we can get away with it here, why not?' They now want economic governance, another term for cartel dictatorship of their parties, by their parties for their party cartel.

Then in June 2011, not content with this trivial amount of hundreds of billions of euros, the European Commission proposed that a TRILLION euros should be levied from the European public, industries and workers. It is to be a combined seven-year plan. The public need not worry their silly, little heads over watching this unsavoury performance every year. It would be done in one quick stroke!

The Commission said it would speak about it to the people's representatives, the European Parliament. And so, the European Parliament quickly closed the doors on the people and the press! What happened behind closed doors? How did the party leaders react to this further money grab from European citizens? Did they rub their hands with delight? Did they yell 'Sock it to the public! We will bleed them dry!' We do not know the facts because the press was thrown out!

Why? Why did these very privileged people -- all of them obviously considered themselves very privileged  -- feel it necessary to impose secrecy? Why did they ban the public? Why did they ban the press?

What is common with all these people?  What unites those who have the only say-so in the European budget? They are all card-carrying members of political parties. Isn't that normal? NO it is not. They will tell you it is. Don't believe them. The European Community had a much more balanced democractic system where non-political civil socity plays an important part.

These 'closed-door politicians' represent ... what and whom exactly? Those in Nazi Germany were told the true German party members were those who decided matters for them. In fact they were kleptocrats and gangsters, stealing from the people. Those in Communist-controlled East Germany, Czechoslavakia, Poland and Hungary were told: 'The Worker's party is in charge!' Those in Mao's Communist China said the Party must control not only the Budget but every aspect of life.

Some systems banned non-Aryans, others businessmen, or capitalist running dogs from entering their 'parliaments' when deliberating the budget. All these diverse systems had one thing in common. They did not like a free press.

Are Europeans free? Those in control in the EU all have party cards. They are a tiny minority. All party card-holders amount to about one in fifty of the entire population.  And the parties are increasingly unpopular. In the European elections more people who can vote refuse to vote for any of them. The majority in the EU is not the parties but an entity called 'None of the above' that should appear on the ballot.

At one stage in history party affiliation had some importance. Now they nearly all act together in a continuous coalition or a cartel of parties. It makes no difference who the electors vote for, they get the same result -- more expenditure and luxurious padding for the parties. When corruption is exposed, confidence in the parties plummets again. Public support has been declining for decades.

Yet this small but powerful cartel plans to extract more and more money from the other 98 percent of the population. They are all generally in favour of having more projects and subsidies which they feel will buy them support. These bribes are just tax money being returned diminished under new conditions set by the political parties. For themselves they want nothing but higher salaries, more assistants, help for friends in the same party wherever they are, expansion of agencies and dubious employment initiatives such as the 'External Action Service', overseas aid which corrupts and anything else that supports the ideologies of the parties.

Now consider if the European leaders were all identified with another small group. What if the Commission, Parliament and Council were composed entirely of  Freemasons? What if they were all Catholics or Jews or Shi'ite Muslims or Europeans of Chinese origin? What if they were all paid up members of the FBSS, the Fraudulent Bankers' Speculation Society? What would be the public's reaction if the controlling class in the European institutions all believed in Ju-Ju?

It is obvious that the secret and secretive control of the budget by any one tiny group raises questions of motive and propriety. When they close the doors the public would immediately presume that they are making some underhand contributions of tax money to the furtherance of Ju-Ju. No moral person would allow himself to get into  such an dubious situation and be enthusiastic to keep the ban on outsiders and the press. A well run parish or tennis club would ensure their meetings would always be open. Are the EU's leaders moral? They have no qualms about secret sessions on the budget. They insist on them.

The party cartel who seized control of the institutions have included those bodies which the treaties say should not be political. What should the citizen do if the public remain banned from budget meetings because they do not have a Ju-Ju membership card?

Should the citizens ask for a Ju-Ju card? Or would they ask: Is it legal? Is the Budget legal? Is the discrimination against the citizen legal? What can we do about it?

We can go to Court! But how?

The Founding Fathers, you will be happy to know, put adequate safeguards in the Treaties. If any institution feels that another is not acting democratically according to the treaty, there is a recourse. That institution can take the other to the European Court of Justice.

But what if all the main institutions are in cahoots? What if all the leaders of the main institutions are all members of Ju-Ju and they ban anyone who isn't?

Don't despair! The founding Fathers provided a powerful solution. They said that any citizen who feels that he or she is being discriminated against can go to the European Court. And it won't cost a cent more. If the European institutions bring in legislation -- such as the Budget -- and the citizen feels it is unjust or discriminatory, then he can go to any local court or tribunal in the land and have redress.

If it is a matter of paying taxes and the citizen refuses to pay European taxes, then the citizen can explain to the judge that the European tax is unjust because it was decided in secret without democratic control. As part of the case the judge is then allowed and encouraged to ask for an opinion of the European Court of Justice, to see whether it is so and whether it is legal. The citizen should cite article 267 of the Lisbon Treaty which reproduces the article from earlier treaties.

A few hundred million citizens can do this. So can all companies, trade unions and consumer groups of civil society.

Article 267 states:

The Court of Justice of the European Union shall have jurisdiction to give preliminary rulings concerning:
(a) the interpretation of the Treaties;
(b) the validity and interpretation of acts of the institutions, bodies, offices or agencies of the Union;
Where such a question is raised before any court or tribunal of a Member State, that court or tribunal may, if it considers that a decision on the question is necessary to enable it to give judgement, request the Court to give a ruling thereon.

The service of the European Court is open. If not today, then maybe tomorrow an individual or an association will bring a case complaining that raising taxes without the knowledge of citizens and in secret meetings is illegal.

The judges would be sure to check Article 15 of the Lisbon Treaty. It was added by civil society group specifically because of M. de Gaulle's bad habits. It states:

In order to promote good governance and ensure the participation of civil society, the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies shall conduct their work as openly as possible.

The next paragraph is especially relevant:

The European Parliament shall meet in public, as shall the Council when considering and voting on a draft legislative act.

There are few legislative acts as important as the Budget.

If the Court agreed that

   
• consultation with citizens is pre-requisite for any legislation to pass,
   
• a minority cannot oppress the majority,
   
• all legislation must be conducted in the open from the first consideration to the final vote,
   
• the press must be allowed access to report any political chicanery,

then the law in question could be annulled on any one of these grounds. The whole of the EU budget and all its programmes would be thrown into confusion until it could be sorted out.

That recourse to justice can happen at any time, by any citizen or association. For the cartel it is like a time bomb that will one day explode against them.

It would be far better for the Parliament and the Council to begin to act like democratic institutions TODAY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The conclusions we should draw:

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

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

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