EU leaders pledge to publish Founding Fathers' Democracy Documents, for the first time in 70 years!

Wow! 

For the first time in more than half a century our democratic leaders have promised to publish the documents that reveal how Europeans got their democracy. They show how and why Europeans did not fight another war amongst themselves after WW2. In the course of two millennia Europeans would normally have fought a couple of wars in this last three-quarters of a century.

Now the public should get to know how that carnage was stopped. Thank you politicians! A little late but still welcome.

Emerging victorious from the world war with Hitler’s Nazism and facing a Cold War stand-off with Stalin’s Marxist Socialism, the Founding Fathers of Europe left no doubt about how to build Europe in peace. They wanted a secure democracy, not autocracy.

Documents on how Europeans should develop their democracy were signed and sealed 70 years ago. These are perhaps the most important documents of modern times.

Astoundingly the European institutions have NEVER published some of these vital documents.

Now they will be!

The question of the public’s right to know what the Founding Fathers said about Democracy was raised before leaders of the European Commission, Council and Parliament. The date? The day after the 70th anniversary of the signature of the Founding document initiating the European Community on 18 April 1951. That major anniversary, by any account the key date in European history, was almost entirely forgotten and not celebrated by the politicians.

As if by accident, some politicians held a press conference right after the date that allowed them to meet in peace in Brussels.

On 19 April 2021, leaders from three of the five originating institutions spoke about a Conference on the Future of Europe. The question was put baldly about the long, long cover-up.

Success! They all pledged that they would publish these documents… and more. Guy Verhofstadt of the Parliament, Dubrovka Šuica of the European Commission and Ana Paula Zacarias, Portuguese Secretary of State representing the Council were launching a multi-lingual platform so that citizens could debate the Future of Europe. A major conference will open on 9 May. They also said that they would publish – for the first time – the full text of the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950.

That too has never been published. Instead the European Commission has published a shorter document called the Schuman Proposal and misleadingly called it the Schuman Declaration.

 

The Proposal is the legal instrument of the French government, agreed in Cabinet, that invited the other countries of Europe to join together to form a European Community of Coal and Steel. It made clear they would go to war no more.

 

The Declaration is the speech of Robert Schuman, the French Foreign Minister, to the world’s press that includes this proposal but also describes exactly how momentous and unprecedented this move is in European history. It describes the breadth of the action to be undertaken.

Following this Declaration, six countries sent their best experts in law, government and economics to design a treaty to implement the Proposal. That massive work, changing the destiny of Europe forever, was completed in a remarkably short period of less than a year.

On 18 April 1951, six foreign ministers with plenipotentiary power of their governments signed not one but two documents.

The first was the Treaty of Paris that encapsulated the legal provisions of the European Community and described the five institutions that would manage it, democratically, economically and legally.

The second document is of even more lasting importance. Schuman called it the Charter of the Community, reflecting the eternal principles of human freedom of the British Magna Carta. It has been called the Declaration of Inter-Dependence, reflecting the founding American Declaration of Independence that defined separation from British tyrannical (non-democratic) rule from afar.

The European Community Declaration describes the principles by which democratic nations should join together in a Community. It also describes which nations are unfit to join a democratic grouping of fully working democracies. The Founding Fathers had in mind the fraudulent ‘People’s Democracies’ of the Soviet bloc that did not allow freedom of assembly and thought or the freedom of religion. They also wished to exclude, for the moment until changes were made, Spain and Portugal then under dictatorships.

All these historical documents will be soon available for the public, the press, academics and politicians. The representatives of the three institutions, Council, Commission and Parliament, were also asked to provide a full analysis of how the Founding Fathers’ concepts of European democracy compares with the system we have today.

 

• The original system described how Parliamentary elections should take place under a single statute across all Member States at once.
• Elections should also be held in the Consultative Committee representing organised civil society. Today two consultative committees, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions do not hold elections. Their membership is decided behind the closed doors of the Council. Organised civil society – enterprises, trades unions, consumers in their respective European associations – would have decisive powers in creating European legislation. A fully active Committee of the Regions might have avoided the economic and political disaster of Brexit.
• The European Commission was originally decided by the Member States after each State had nominated a candidate that they considered to be the most impartial and experienced person available. The other States and the public were able to criticise and eliminate any candidate that they thought was beholden to a lobby, an interest group or a political party.

 

While the original treaty was passed with the full consent of the European people, under the watchful eye of the Council of Europe and its Convention of Human Rights, that has not always been the case of the treaties that followed. As Mr Verhofstadt pointed out, the Constitutional Treaty and the present Lisbon Treaty were both rejected in popular referendums in a number of countries.

With the Founding Fathers’ original documents at hand on how to build European Democracy on a solid footing, the debate on the Future of Europe should be able to have an in-depth debate about how Europeans wish to govern themselves.

The full text of the Schuman Declaration is at https://schuman.info/9May1950.htm

The full text of the Declaration of Interdependence / European Charter is at https://schuman.info/EuropeDeclaration.htm

De Gaulle's hand still darkens EU's Happiness

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

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

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



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

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

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

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!