Euro10: The Commission to skivvy for an above-the-law, non-EU, 'tax haven' company?

Grave defects in THREE current treaties and agreements will affect your money and Democratic structures across Europe — for the worse. The European Council is trying to force through unethical and undemocratic treaty proposals. It aims to create the European Finance and Stability Facility/Mechanism (EFSF), the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), and the Fiscal Compact (TSCG). They will radically change your life and all Europeans. It is giving short shrift to democratic debate either in national parliaments, the European Parliament and trying to stifle public debate.

It took ten years to force through the irresponsible Lisbon/Constitutional Treaty against the expressed will of the people, asserted in referendums and public opinion. Now it is trying to do the same in one year with three treaties that are not even properly subject to the European institutions — and the European Court of Justice. Each treaty pushed through against public opinion and court battles produces ever decreasing political legitimacy and plummeting public trust.

It is highly dangerous. Why? Because the treaties abandon common values of Democracy of Member States. They subvert supranational principles about how to create a sound money in a Community composed of many and varied economies of 27 States, each with their own history.

ONLY a Community system with proper elections and independent institutions can safeguard a Community currency. Wishful thinking of politicians telling each other not to be too greedy and corrupt will not work. It will end in a deeper crisis.

Will politicians succeed in destroying sound money by their shenanigans behind closed doors? Will the Commission be turned into a toothless secretariat? Should politicians ‘task‘ it for their own dubious purposes? Or should it be INDEPENDENT?

Would you agree that government ministers,

• some of whom have been accused or shown to be guilty of fiddling the books,
• fraudulently breaking European law,
• undermining the currency,
• being involved in political corruption,
• or knowingly colluding with those who do so in secrecy

should HAVE LEGAL IMMUNITY FROM COURT ACTION? Should all their staff 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. ”
Politicians have created a fraudulent EURO that ignores the Community democratic rules. Their aim was to hide national fraud behind a European cloak — without democratic control or proper elections.  If they were again involved multibillion euro fiddles, why should they be above all Courts of Law? Does anyone have a guarantee that politicians will always be moral and never make any mistake? Democratic control and the Law are there because politicians can be immoral and often make mistakes.

Do you think the public should have a say before this legal immunity of the political class is applied? Should the legal framework be decided by those who have previously been found guilty of wasting billions of taxpayers’ money? Should LAW be INDEPENDENT of Government, especially those who control the budget?

The concept of a supranational and democratic Community demands that the Commission must be independent and composed of universally accepted fair-minded individuals. Their task is to PROPOSE to politicians measures that will be to the benefit of all Europeans. When politicians and government ministers want the Commission to be their secretariat acting at their dictates, the idea of Community is turned upside down. It is hegemonic rule by a Council Politburo. In the past the Commissions were almost entirely non-political. The European Commission was created so that politicians could not turn Europe into a zone of corruption and warfare. Corrupting the Commission and making all members colluding fellow politicians is to place the fox in charge of the chicken-house and all the EU budget too.

What do YOUR lawyers, paid for from your taxes, the Council’s own  lawyers, say about these bizarre and extraordinary proposals?

The Council refused my request to see the Legal Opinion of their Legal Service on the following non-Community innovations: the EFSF (European Finance and Stability Facility), the ESM (European Stability Mechanism) and the Fiscal Compact (the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union), TSCG and similar matters. I appealed, reminding the Council that it was both URGENT and of major financial importance, and needed for democratic debate.

After the longest delay possible according to the Freedom of Information Regulation 1049/2001, the Council again refused. I therefore introduced a complaint to the European Ombudsman (0862 /2012).  The Council again refused to supply documents paid for by the tax-payer and vital for a democratic debate on what exactly is happening on the Euro crisis. The so-called rescue mechanisms cost multiple times the annual budget of the EU. The crises involve politician-generated frauds and Treaty-busting overspends. Now the politicians expect the public to have politician-generated solutions, legally secure as a sieve. They will waste oodles of money for generations to come.
The following is my reply to the Ombudsman, awaiting his decision.

Council’s Refusal to supply Legal Opinions on the EFSF, ESM and Fiscal Compact.
Please refer to my earlier correspondence with the Council.
The Council has chosen only to reply about the Fiscal Compact, the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the EMU.

My reply is in three parts:
(A) The lack of sensitivity and sense of proportion of the Council/European Council to democracy in monetary matters, given its huge financial and democratic importance;
(B) Legal position – the refusal to show a Legal Opinion is in violation to the treaty articles and European court judgements. The Council position is untenable and hypocritical because parts of the legal Opinion have already been published by some Parliaments. Publication is normal and required in any civilized democracy. Legal opinions must be published for democratic debate.
(C) I also ask the Ombudsman to investigate if other Legal Opinions exist for the ESFS Agreement and ESM treaty, by hiding them in other contexts. The ESM treaty for example gives legal immunity from Court action to the staff of the ESM and tax-free status for staff. This is a highly controversial matter given the number of governmental frauds exposed during the euro crises. The ESFS Agreement results in a private company in Luxembourg, ‘tasking’ the European Commission, a tax-paid, EU civil service in the public sector, ‘to perform certain duties and functions as contemplated by the terms of the Agreement’ (Preamble 3). Is the Commission a public or a private body?  The Agreement is contracted according to English law and may be dealt with by Luxembourg Courts, although the position of the Commission to act or complain remains dubious as it is considered a skivvy of the Company and only Member States are mentioned in legal action (Art 16). Has the Commission become the private secretariat of a Luxembourg company?

A. Importance of the issue.
1. Practically unlimited amounts of money is involved. Public liability to irresponsible politicians’ action is at stake. A group of countries but not the whole Community of 27 Member States is proposing to implement monetary innovations that represent a budget of FIVE or more times the entire EU budget without proper discussion or control through the EFSF and ESM with dubious control through the Fiscal Compact. The proposed solution lacks adequate democratic supervision. It involves ministers setting themselves up in a private company in a location that many of them previously denounced as a tax haven and subject to utmost secrecy about banking transactions.

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 31 July 2012
France and Italy favour giving the ESM “virtually unlimited firepower” via ECB liquiditySüddeutsche reports that a number of eurozone member states, including France and Italy, as well as leading members of the ECB Governing Council, favour granting the eurozone’s permanent bailout fund, the ESM, a banking licence – which would give the fund “virtually unlimited firepower” beyond its projected 700 billion euro via an open credit line at the ECB. Handelsblatt cites the ECB’s former Chief Economist Jürgen Stark as saying that “an ESM with a banking licence would be a clear violation of European law.”
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/schuldenkrise-in-europa-eu-staaten-wollen-euro-schutzschirm-ohne-limit-1.1426870

2. Anti-democratic procedures and obscurity adopted by governmental leaders. The subject was discussed at what was a mixed meeting of EU heads of Government and States plus a Eurozone meeting of these leaders (which does not have legal status in the treaties.)
In this case it is not clear who is in charge. Is it the European Council, the Council of Ministers or a grouping of government ministers of the Eurozone? The latter, the ‘Eurogroup’ is an informal group according to the treaties. It is not a decision-making body.
3. Legal obscurity. Only the full Council is regarded as an institutional body for legal decision-making. Thus any decisions taken by the Eurogroup are legally dubious.
4. The euro is in crisis, we have been told, for the last several years. Now politicians say it is urgent and the new arrangements must be done rush, rush, rush. All this while the legal status is highly dubious. This tactic is unworthy of democracies and more common of tin-pot dictatorships trying to fool the public.
5. The European institutions and European national governments have a responsibility to act fairly, lay their cards on the table and take the public into their confidence as the leaders are supposed to be representatives of the public. Legal Opinions are owned by the taxpayers.
6. The EU leadership is presently in a critical low of public confidence, mainly because of lack of accountability of the EU budget, lack of proper accounting procedures where the EU budget has failed to be signed off.  TRUST in the EU leadership has fallen to the lowest level EVER, 31%. http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/eb/eb77/eb77_first_en.pdf
The European Union and Communities and intergovernmental conferences have institutions that are there for democratic discussion once information is supplied. The draft treaties have to be discussed for safeguards in national parliaments and other democratic fora before ratification.
7. The politicians – whether of the Council or the Eurogroup – have shown great reluctance to present relevant information to the public. I asked Council press officers on 30 January for the Legal Opinions. They did not have them to give me. Instead I was forced to ask via the website, which is more suited to historical archives than news journalism.
8. The response of the council is mechanistical lacking any sort of sense of urgency, proportion or public responsibility. It involves obfuscation and denial rather than democratic accountability, given the enormous sums of money and political implications involved.
9. Political leaders refuse to open a debate on this multi-billion matter. MEP Francis Wurtz said recently ‘It is not because votes in the Council are supposed to be public, or that debates in Parliament are obviously public, that democracy is safe. Everything possible is being done, not through negligence but as part of a strategic design, to avoid feeding understandable information to the man in the street and to avoid a debate on public ideas, in other words genuine grass-roots democracy. You just have to look around you! Speaking on TF1 on 9 September, François Hollande discussed the crisis and the budget, but he did not say a word about the treaty.’

B. Legal position

a. Turco Case. European Court of Justice 1049/01 PRESS RELEASE No 43/08 , dated 1 July 2008
Judgment of the Court of Justice in Joined Cases C-39/05 and C-52/05 Sweden and Turco v Council and Others
THE COURT AUTHORISES, IN PRINCIPLE, ACCESS TO LEGAL ADVICE GIVEN TO THE COUNCIL ON LEGISLATIVE QUESTIONS
The transparency of the legislative process and the strengthening of the democratic rights of European citizens are capable of constituting an overriding public interest which justifies the disclosure of legal advice.
Mr Maurizio Turco said later: Democracy and the Rule of Law are based on publicity of the laws and of the decision-making process, hereby including all acts (proposals, amendments, discussions, votes, legal opinions, reports, etc) that are examined and contribute to the determination of a decision having effects on citizens. The EU, as well as Italy, has to guarantee these fundamental principles that allow for citizens to get closer to institutions and to participate in public life, following the principle that it is necessary to have the possibility “to know in order to deliberate“.

b. In’t Veld Case. European Court of Justice Sophie in’t Veld vs the Council
It was the General Court’s judgement in Case T-529/09 to annul the Council’s October 2009 decision insofar as it refuses access to the undisclosed parts of the requested document (11897/09) other than those that concern the specific content of the envisaged agreement or the negotiating directives and considers overall that both the Liberal MEP and the Council were “partially unsuccessful” in their endeavour. The parties will have to settle between themselves what can be disclosed.
Ms in’t Veld – who earlier this year drafted a report for the parliament’s civil liberties committee calling on MEPs to reject the EU/US agreement on the data transfer of flight passengers – described the ruling as “a step forward for transparency in Europe” which establishes a precedent that “negotiations on international agreements are not automatically exempt from EU transparency rules.”
Other ECJ judgement reinforce this requirement for the Council to share Legal Opinions. Publishing opinions is not only a treaty obligation, it is an obligation for democratic debate (TFEU #288) and elsewhere already cited in my correspondence with the Council.

c. Part of the Legal Opinion has already been published!
It is ridiculous and hypocritical to refuse access to any part of the Legal Opinion of the Fiscal Compact (TSCG). I have not been able to check what has been published in all 27 Member States but the following relates to the UK. The UK House of Parliament Library (UKHPL) Research Paper 12/14 of 27 March 2012 prints a number of extracts.
“Council Legal Service Opinion
On 26 January 2012 the Council Legal Service issued an Opinion on the compatibility with EU law of draft Article 8 and related preamble recitals, based on the fourth treaty draft. The Legal Service answered four questions:
1. Can the procedure foreseen be described as a dispute settlement mechanism between Member States?
A Member State considering that another Member State had not complied with mutually accepted treaty obligations “is enough to be regarded as a genuine dispute between them” if one takes action against the other. The initiators are Member States, not the Commission, and the Member States could be in breach of their obligations under international law if Court not seized. “There is no convincing reason not to regard Article 8 as a clause that aims at settling disputes between Contracting Parties, which are Member States of the European Union”.
UKHPL research paper adds
N.B. Paul Craig disagreed with the Legal Service view that the Commission was not directly involved in bringing an action before the Court. A negative report from the Commission would trigger a mandatory obligation on one/more Contracting Parties to bring the recalcitrant state to the Court: “The reality is therefore that the Commission is still ‘bringing’ the action”.
2. Can the clause be regarded as a “special agreement”?
Member States can establish in advance “a mechanism that may be made use of, in predetermined conditions, if a dispute happens” but only if the “speciality” criterion is fulfilled. Article 8 fulfils this criterion because it refers specifically to violation of Article 3(2). The Court is limited to reviewing the transposition only of the balanced budget rule, to be accomplished according to a defined legal framework and precise timetable. Therefore, Article 8 conforms to Article 273 TFEU because it “merely anticipates possible incidents of which the nature, the limits and the time of occurrence are known with a relatively high degree of precision at the time of its conclusion”.
3. Do the issues to be brought to the Court relate to the subject matter of the Treaties?
The provisions Contracting Parties adopt must give legal effect to rules that apply within the framework of the “revised Stability and Growth Pact” (Council Reg. 1466/97, as amended by Reg. 1175/2011). This is in line with implementing EU policies, e.g. to strengthen EMU and “conceptually and practically inseparable” from EMU as established by the EU Treaties. “Therefore, although as such the control of the adequacy of national measures transposing rules established outside the Union is not an EU law issue, the assessments required would necessarily involve consideration of problems of EU law and must for this reason be regarded as ‘related to the subject matter of the Treaties’”.
4. Does the Court have jurisdiction to impose “sanctions” on Member States following an agreement between them to have recourse to Article 273 TFEU?
Article 273 TFEU does not exclude the capacity of the Court to impose penalties, but the capacity must be explicit in the dispute settlement clause as it cannot be presumed, as must the procedures, since they differ from Article 260 TFEU. Imposing financial penalties does not alter the nature of the Court’s responsibilities because Article 260 TFEU empowers it to impose sanctions. Article 8(2) therefore does not introduce “an element alien to its existing practice”. Although the violations here are not of EU law, they are closely related to EU law (see note 3 above). Also, it is the Member State(s), not the Commission, which asks the Court to impose penalties, which “does not significantly affect the conditions in which the case will be treated by the Court nor the exercise of its powers”. Article 8 “broadly anticipates the framework that will apply to the norm” when the substance of the new treaty is incorporated into EU law within five years of entry into force, “while being entirely compatible with the legal basis of Article 273 TFEU” before that time.
The Research Paper adds the following:
Craig did not think the Legal Service opinion was the end of the story, as the questions of principle and legality remained unanswered:
The issue of principle presented above nonetheless remains relevant, even if the consent to the use of the EU institutions by non-signatories to an agreement such as the SCG was unequivocal and even if there was no external pressure. This is because the issue of principle in paragraphs 1-6 above is not dependent on whether particular Member States at particular times are willing to allow it to be circumvented.
For Craig the proposition that institutional powers granted under the EU Treaties or EU law could simply be “cut and pasted” into a different, non-EU treaty was “not legally or politically tenable” and “The fact that an EU institution has power pursuant to the Lisbon Treaty or EU legislation to do certain things, cannot per se legitimate use of an analogous power pursuant to a different Treaty”.

The UKHPL research paper adds:
Arrangements for legal procedures under Article 8 TSCG
At the signing ceremony on 2 March, signatories agreed an annex to be attached to the minutes of the signing ceremony on the arrangements for bringing a matter to the Court of Justice under Article 8(1) TSCG. The Annex clarifies that an application to the Court will be made by the Trio of Presidencies as set out in Annex I to Council Decision 2009/908/EU of 1 December 2009 (assuming there are no criteria which would exclude any of these three States, in which case the applicants will be the former Trio of Presidencies), in close cooperation with all Contracting Parties. Technical and logistical support and costs will be provided by the Contracting Parties linked to the case in question. Sub-section 6 provides that, on the basis of the Commission’s assessment that a State Party has failed to comply with the Court’s judgment, “the Contracting Parties bound by Articles 3 and 8 of the Treaty state their intention to make full use of the procedure established by Article 8(2) to bring the case before the Court of Justice, building upon the arrangements agreed for the implementation of Article 8(1) of the Treaty”.”

My Conclusions

1. I initially asked for Legal Opinions on the ESFS Agreement between Euro Member States and EFSF Société Anonyme of Luxembourg, the ESM treaty and the Fiscal Compact. I am surprised that the Council says that it has found only ONE Legal Opinion related to the Fiscal Compact and nothing for the EFSF, the ESM treaties. This contradicts what I was told. I would ask the Ombudsman to investigate the matter to see if the Council or some of the Member States, acting separately from the Council as an institution, have indeed asked any Legal Services of any description to provide Legal Opinions and are hiding these by a form of words. For example the ESFS is not a fully Community or EU framework. Yet it takes the Commission (EU civil service) as its servant, says that English law applies and that Luxembourg Courts may be used for disputes (Art 16). The issues are serious. The ESM treaty gives complete legal immunity to its staff in their actions (articles 32,35) and is able to set its own tax rates (arts 5, 35). This is more than disturbing given the nature of the Euro crises. Government frauds, statistical fixing and other matters, which would be prosecuted as crimes in private companies, have been uncovered.  Government action must be under control of democratic supervision and the law.
2. The Fiscal Compact involves a great deal of taxpayers’ money and its use, and should involve multiple democratic controls. For this reason any Legal Opinion must be made public. So should any other legal opinion relating to pseudo-European bodies or companies.
3. The Fiscal Compact Legal Opinion has at least in part been published by the UK House of Parliament Library and may have been published in part or in full by other democratic institutions. The refusal of the Council to publish it is contrary to ECJ judgements and normal democratic practice. Furthermore instead of publishing the document/s right away it has used the prolongations to refuse in the most uncooperative, undemocratic way possible.
4. The information requested is urgent and necessary as it is apparent that the governments refused to follow the Community-based guidelines to create a Single Currency given in the Werner Report. They have sought to use European institutions to hide fiscal and monetary irresponsibility in their own governmental systems as is apparent from the crises in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, France and also Germany etc. The timely production of this information is necessary for a wider debate on the future of the Euro.

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.

EURO8: Why the present EURO soup will FAIL and inevitably a NEW EURO will be born

Even if all the plans of the December European Council are passed into law, one outcome is certain: the Euro as presently designed will fail.

Even if all 27 Member States joined the Euro and tried to stay within the guidelines of the Stability and Growth Pact, one thing is certain: the Euro as presently constructed will fail.

Even if all the Member States scrupulously adhered to the Six Pack, with close inspection of national accounts by the European Commission, the Euro as presently conceived will FAIL.

Yet the vision of a European currency is not only reasonable. A solid European currency in a single market is inevitable. One day Europe will have a strong, single currency. It will be far stronger than anything yet discussed behind the closed doors of the European Councils and the hyper-secretive EuroGroup, now the main body dictating the guidelines for the European currency and the economy. The EuroGroup is a non-institutional body of the European Union and not subject to democratic control.

The Euro was badly designed from the start. It does not confirm to supranational principles -- open Community democracy. It is not based on a single supranational standard agreed democratically and enforced by law.

While the measures taken by the heads of government at the European Council to ensure fiscal responsibility -- including a new intergovernmental treaty -- might be useful to prevent and predict fiscal irresponsibility at the national level, they are insufficient. They place the instruments again in the hands of the governments and the politicians. These are the same ones who fiddle the books, overspend and then ask for 'understanding' from fellow politicians and chums. The cartel-like approach of the Council provides NO independent arbiter for the citizen to ensure fairness and justice.

"Nothing is easier for political counterfeiters than to exploit good principles for the purposes of an illusion; and nothing is more disastrous than good principles badly applied." So wrote Robert Schuman (Pour l'Europe, p70).

What the politicians did was at a certain time baptise their national currencies the EURO but there was no repentence from fundamental monetary sins. From a European point of view its politicians are still immature and unwashed. How can I say that? The unwillingness of politicians to study revolutionary supranational principles has led to this disaster. Governments still continued their old way -- with deficits, government-induced inflation and budget overspending. Changing the name of national currencies to the EURO did not effect anything fundamental in the honesty of their governance systems. They counterfeited a European currency made up of a soup of their own inadequate currencies.

The public is not convinced by this renaming fraud. "Drachma, you are now a Euro. Lira you are now a Euro. Deutschmark you are now a Euro."

The markets are not convinced by this renaming fraud.

And now the politicians are beginning to realise that the jig is up. Everybody has found this conjuring trick out. The most deceived are not the markets or even the public, but the politicians themselves, some of whom are still deceiving themselves. They are only starting to wake up because of a series of law cases coming up about monetary fraud and corruption in high places.

The inability of politicians to install a proper European currency -- when such a currency was clearly needed -- has been thrown in sharp relief by the present crises exacerbated by hostile external forces and the dollar sub-prime political frauds and banking meltdown. Europe's crises are their own fault, the fruit of wilful blindness and refusal to deal with Europe's main problem over decades. Their mistakes are not lethal. Speculators are wrong. Breaking the present Euro will not break the European Community system. It will outlast the avarice or ignorance of any group of politicians.

The politicians constructed a currency based on some of the worst aspects of old politics -- that have always failed in the 2000+ years of European history. They counterfeited money. A little cheating, they said, won't be noticed. In the past governments shaved the edges of silver and gold coins. Today they do it electronically via inflation and overspending. They have no gold, no silver, no paper, just electrons. Now they are chipping the edges off the electrons.

Many politicians want to do this coin-clipping to help their economies. Some think they have a right to cheat to catch up with the stronger and more honest Member States.

The politician-creators of the Euro refused to apply supranational principles to an opportunity foreseen in the founding treaty requiring a supranational currency. Instead they made a soup of their own currencies and it has no solidity. They hoped against experience and history that it would work. It hasn't. They had an opportunity after the Euro's launch to reform the foundational structures. Instead they made the lax principles looser and ignored legal obligations and Court judgements. They undermined the European Commission and refused democratic obligations of the treaties and the citizen's rights of the Declaration of Interdependence (which they still refuse to publish!).

The founder-politicians and subsequent politicians can't see how they can run an economy without shaving edges off the currency. Yet they want to have a single market and that works best with a single currency. They had the arrogance to think they knew best. Experience has now shown they didn't.

Firstly, let us examine the present inadequacies. In the past the political chums turned their eyes away as other chums indulged in fraud and overspending -- even though they knew the consequences ate into their own economies. The Greeks were involved in frauds for decades, but so was France under de Gaulle and practically all the others.

Some like the Dutch complained so loudly that at one point the Commission even took the culprits to Court -- for breaking the Stability and Growth Pact. In the early days of the Euro in 2004 -- before the Lisbon Treaty --the Commission still had pretensions of being 'Independent' and the 'Guardian of the Treaties'. It wasn't entirely taken over by party politicians and national representatives. After much cajoling the Commission took the Council to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg because of open violation of the Stability and Growth Pact.

The biggest culprits against the Stability and Growth Pact were France and Germany. The Court made its judgement against the Council. What did the Council do? It laughed in their face, saying it was up to them if and how they would interpret the Law.

Today the questions Europe's citizens and democrats should ask are:

• What has changed nowadays? If the Court came up with a similar judgement, would the politicians in the Council again thumb their noses at the judgement? The answer is probably, Yes. They would make a fudge AGAIN. But it is questionable if the rule of law and the Court would play a part. The penalties foreseen in a non-Community international treaty cannot be placed before the Court of Justice of the Communities or the EU. This form of 'solution' shows that the Council is acting like an illegal Cartel of power and despises the rule of law.
• Would a legal case even be raised against a State? Probably not. Today the Commission is stuffed with politicians who quite shamelessly vaunt their party political loyalty. There are no Commissioners representing non-party citizens. They are all chums of the same people who violate European law.
• Would the States influence the Commission to stop any exposure of manipulated statistics or hidden overspend, unrealistic assessment of inflation or other economic indicators? Probably Yes. Anyone who did so would not have his or her mandate renewed and be subject to vilification as a betrayer of the national interest. (That is why the Founding Fathers required in treaties that the Commission should not be composed of national representatives.)
• Would the Commission turn a blind eye if they saw that the national banks or international banks on their territories were using as deposits worthless derivatives? What if the banks had again collected as assets something like bundles of sub-prime mortgage loans -- which common sense tells you are largely worthless -- but the credit rating agencies label as AAA? What if again the national governments would smile from ear to ear at the new revenues coming in from a property bubble or a dot com boom? Would the Commission's party politicians call them out and say 'You are living in Dreamland. This is unreal. This is pure cheating. You are colluding with fraud and hype.'? The Commissioners are nominated by States whereas the fundamental supranational principle is that the Commission should represent the overall European good and any direct communication or instruction is forbidden whether from the national governments OR political party OR any other body or association. Today it would be surprising if the Commission would ever take the Council to Court or raise embarrassing matters if they could be covered, whether quantitative problems of statistics or quality of banking. Events this year indicate that politicians still manipulate and cover inconvenient but illicit banking operations.

The present crisis derives from legal and technical problems that can only be removed if all politicians are simultaneously honest and law-abiding. Why? Because the present system has politicians as both the culprits and the guardians of rectitude. No independent checks and balances exist in the system devised by the politicians themselves.

Secondly, a major flaw exists in the design and structure of the present Euro itself. Under the present agitated state of the markets, any flaw in a system will be tested to destruction. It is inevitable that this will cause a rip in the fabric of the euro and unless immediate wise action is taken the European economy will suffer catastrophically.

The politicians have been unsuccessful in playing at speculation themselves. When Euro-candidate countries wanted to join, they took some action to clean up their finances, and the interest rates for their bonds declined as they were a better bet. When the markets saw that fraud and obfuscation was involved the interest spread increased between the reliable and the unreliable. The politicians in Council thought that they could play the same game. Instead of correcting the monetary system to a supranational one, they decided that they would make a counter-bet using the European institutions and national treasuries as the fodder. They thought that if the fast crowd in the City and on Wall Street used leverage, well why couldn't they do so too? They hopelessly underestimated both the nature of the game and the money required to do so.

The European Financial and Stability Facility was set up in what finance ministers had only recently denounced a tax haven, Luxembourg. Previously they said companies set up in places like Switzerland and Luxembourg, not to mention other exotic places, were defrauding their treasuries because national taxpayers were sending their money there and they couldn't trace it to grab it.

Now, all of a sudden, the ministers of finance are employees of such a company in the 'tax haven'! OH! What are they doing there? Speculating on the currency market! They thought that they would be able to make a nominal deposit of the States' money -- taxpayers' money -- and then leverage it. At first they said they wanted to raise only a few hundred billion Euros. Then they said they needed a few trillion. They did not succeed in raising anywhere near that sum. Not even one.

Which brings us to the second main reason why the present Euro will fail. There are many people betting against the Euro, more now than ever. At the centre of this, as the Schuman Project warned the Commission in 2001, are forces inimical to the existence of a united Europe.

Europe is at war, whether the politicians recognize it or not. Europe needs an impregnable currency.

But it does not require just one group or ideological cartel to be at war to cause major destruction. Many people with vast resources will use their money and also leverage it to bet against the Euro project when they think that it will inevitably fail. This is the herd instinct and the herd will include many European and American citizens who will be hurt far beyond their gains if the Euro collapses. These turkeys are voting for the slaughterhouse because they think they will gain from higher prices at the butcher's.

What sort of forces are the finance ministers in their Luxembourg company offices up against? No one knows for sure, even those responsible for future trading markets. The best estimate is that more than SEVEN HUNDRED TRILLION DOLLARS are involved in such Over the Counter (OTC) volatile money, according to the Bank of International Settlements. It is growing at a considerable rate -- 18 per cent in the first half of 2011.

What currency, what raw material, what future market, what derivative will not be affected by the collapse of the Euro or even by the default of one Member State? By comparison the entire EU budget is around 140 Billion euros -- one five thousandths of this sum. The entire EU combined GNP is a mere 12 trillion euros. A sum sixty times -- and now probably more -- bigger than the EU is being laid in hot money bets and its value depends on the stability of the Euro currency soup. How can our politicians -- now apparently turned hot-rod speculators and esconced in their little Luxembourg office -- compete with the big bucks?

The really big hot money is on the bet whether the Euro and the EU will survive. Now if you know that the Swedes would vote four to one against joining the Euro, how do you think the big betters should place a bet? Do you think it has a future? And if this was reinforced by the opinion of the Danes where only one in five also think the European Council's Euro package will solve its problems, do you add more money to you stake? Or do you bet on a Euro collapse? If many of the investment companies and pension funds found that big money was heading against the Euro, where do you think they would then go to stick their money? And then the masses of smaller money will be also headed in the same direction.

Let's be as wildly optimistic as the present politicians. Let's assume that the Euro survives the present struggle. Let us further assume that the mass of corset-tightening measures also work. Most Euro countries stick with a spending deficit limit of around 3 per cent, keep in line with designated inflation differentials and bring their debt below sixty percent. That means some Member States are shaving only 3 per cent off the currency income they don't have, but some others are shaving a little bit less and being a tad more honest. They hope this will be resolved by inflation. What happens then?

The smart hot money will then be bet more or less the same way. Some countries will be at 2.99 deficit and 59.99 debt. Others will be at 2 per cent deficit and 40 per cent debt. Some may be generating a good surplus. There will still be a differential in the bond market among the States. The huge mass of trillions of foot-loose money will then be bet on trying to split the strong from the weak AGAIN. This is just new apples in the game of apples for the rich men economics that exaggerates any difference in quality for equally exaggerated prices. The hot money folk will use their trillions to lever any holes in the system to break it up for the big, big prize -- the bets on the destruction of the Euro.

The two main practical consequences for Europe with the present Euro policies involve its lack of national freedom and the non-convergence of the economies. Years ago one European prime minister who was formerly a banker warned other leaders that to build a Euro this way and ignore hard reality by egotism would cause major problems in the future. He was right. The Euro-constructors did not listen but conditions were imposed, albeit reluctantly, on the headstrong politicians by some others.

They imposed the Stability and Growth Pact. It doesn't solve the problem but constrains all Member States to its own version of monetary chastity. But it is no chastity at all with an arbitrary chiseling of the currency by 3 per cent deficits and resultant inflation and credit card limit of 60 percent. (These conditions never applied for the budget of the European Communities, or the EU, where book-balancing is absolutely necessary and no debt hangover is allowed.) The 27 Member States and the 17 Euro zone members all have different potentials for growth and these are also squelched by the EuroGroup policies.

The supranational system for a common currency gives national governments complete freedom to choose what they want to do. It provides freedom to grow, especially in times of crisis. However it establishes a single standard for all. It does not make an unsatisfactory mixture of strong, weak and weaker currencies but a standard that all currencies can attain to. Schuman recalled that it took a thousand years for Europe to develop its democracy. It will also take time to develop the moral qualities and civic courage among leaders to build a European currency fit for all.

A Supranational currency is far superior to a currency soup. It will therefore inevitably replace the very expensive mistakes of cartel politics. Politicians had better think about how this can be done before they reach the edge of the cliff. Time is short.

One essential ingredient is humility. Europe is not about defending without question one's nation or one's currency. Its supranational purpose is making it a better nation, a better place by providing a more useful service for both the nation's and the Community's citizens. The politicians in Council have temporarily blocked the democratic imperative for both the Parliament and the Consultative Committees. The latter provide for non-political discussions and collaboration across all groups, associations and enterprises thus boosting growth and career opportunities.

A supranational currency will show up the faults in all the currencies but it will also provide a sure path to improve the nation's, Europe's and the global economy.

Budget12: Fiscal Union? No thanks! Open Letter on Openness to President van Rompuy and Parliament President Buzek

Some government leaders and commentators are advocating what they call a FEDERAL fiscal authority to tax everyone and spread this money to governments. Some call this a supranational authority. It is not. It involves reinforcing secretive, cartel-style politics.

But would a FEDERAL fiscal union and a new "authority" help at all? It would tax more money from the public to help those who are already convicted by the facts and public opinion to be

• untrustworthy,
• crooked,
• distorters of statistics,
• in collusion with each other in fraud,
• liable to criminal prosecution under the treaties.

Nearly all governments have shamelessly violated the treaties such as the Stability and Growth Pact to control budget overspending and inflation. (In a Community system overspending and inflation involves stealing from Member State partners as well as deceiving national citizens.)

A fiscal union without openness or proper democracy is a fraudulent fiscal compact or a cartel compact.

In the face of a European Court judgement a few years ago, they shamelessly thumbed their noses at it and said it was up to them to decide whether they -- France and Germany in this case -- would be punished for this violation or not.

The European Central Bank has shamelessly violated specific articles of the treaties -- and done the exact OPPOSITE of what it was supposed to do, because an unelected, technocratic President of the ECB decided -- without asking the public -- that it was necessary to deal with the long-term fraud committed by politicians over decades.

Will a 'normal' FEDERAL-style fiscal union stop fraud among European politicians involved in tax and statistics scams? No. The guardians are the politicians themselves! The Commission has been shorn of all independence. It is a politicians' club.

Will it open up the present secrets of what they discuss behind closed doors? No.

Will it stop the international cartel of political parties acting in their own interests? Hardly, it will only encourage it.

ALL THE LEVERS OF POWER WOULD REMAIN IN THE HANDS OF THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE PROVED THEIR UNRELIABILITY IN THE PAST! -- THE POLITICAL CARTEL OF MAJOR PARTIES, COLLUDING TO THE DETRIMENT OF THE CITIZEN! No checks and balances but reinforced cartel-power!

Supranational means international democracy. Robert Schuman defined supranationalism in terms of democracy and openness -- which is precisely what the Council and the European Council or the EuroGroup are NOT practicing. They want more secrecy now to hide the past and present scandals and political collusion.

What is proposed has nothing of democracy or light about it. If they wanted a supranational institution, it would be dead easy. A complementary supranational institution already exists that would instill HONESTY supervised by taxpayers. But it is in cold storage -- thanks to the Council.

A supranational Community system is a democracy of democracies. We have 27 member democracies at present. WHY should the governance system of European Union be typified by the hyper-secretive EuroGroup or the European Council whose main characteristic is that they do not let the public know what they are discussing, let voters listen to what is said, let companies, associations, trade unions hear what their reasonings are or how the so-called democrats propose to tax and spend the citizens' money?

In the case of the EuroGroup it is not even an official institution of the Community or the EU and it is the EuroGroup that is now ruling the roost. Its chairman says he has to lie for Europe. So the citizens cannot trust even his information about when it will meet. It makes secret treaties, sets up a shady company in Luxembourg that employs government ministers and tries to lever money as if they were a bunch of Wall Street derivative crooks. They lack the expertise. They are already far from the 1.4 Trillion that was boasted about after they set up this ramshackle operation. (That is more than TEN times the annual budget of the EU!)

They lack open confidence of saying whom they are acting for (their parties or their nationals in Europe?) and even their identity (democrats, ministers or perhaps pseudo-bankers, or even conspirators against the too powerful markets?). The dog's tail of the parties is wagging and shaking the nations. The Euro Zone Heads of Government now meet in an huddle or conference that is in NO WAY DEFINED OR REGULATED BY TREATIES. They are not sure whether to call themselves a European Summit, the European Council (which they are not! They exclude the ten non-Euro Member States) or a Council of Ministers (which they are NOT, even though they fraudulently use its letterhead paper to say they are all honest!)

How can Europe get honest finances again? Supranational democracy requires that the Consultative Committees -- the bodies for democratic associations in Europe like the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of Regions and the equivalent body in Euratom -- be elected based on (1) a reference list of relevant European associations (2) elections within the list of those properly registered associations for a smaller number of seats in the appropriate bodies. (This was part of the Founding Fathers' grand design for Europe and is still active in the body for NGOs in the Council of Europe but has been blocked by Council in the Communities.) The elected body would establish the rules for defining what is a democratic association and what is to be excluded as an unrepresentative lobby.

The Consultative Committee of the European Coal and Steel Community -- even though not properly elected on a European basis because European associations did not yet exist -- was able to control the finances and the budget of the pioneer Community and make sure that housing for miners etc paid out of the European tax did not involve corrupt practice and that the European tax of the Community was properly collected from all firms in the Community. Europe had a real European tax until 2002 -- but this was stopped by the politicians when they decided not to renew the Coal and Steel Community Treaty for another fifty years.

At the start of the first Community politicians delayed the implementation of the changes to make the Consultative Committee a truly European body. They preferred to choose the members themselves which was the interim agreement. Then de Gaulle tried to move the European government system of the Communities to French control inside the Council with its closed doors. De Gaulle is long gone but his undemocratic deformations remain. Can they be reversed? Yes. They will be when we have Europeans with moral courage and honesty. The process of justice and democracy is ineluctable.

We, the citizens, are still waiting for the present Consultative Committees to produce plans for THEIR European elections. Don't hold your breath. The European Parliament took decades to fulfill the minimum electoral requirements in the treaties and still has not once had a proper Europe-wide election under a single electoral statute as required by treaty law.

Such Consultative Committees -- if active -- would have prevented the decades of corrupt and fraudulent practice among Member States, the bad construction of the euro and the present mortgaging of the future planned behind the closed doors of the European Council and the EuroGroup. (See the budget series on http://democracy.blogactiv.eu and the commentaries at http://www.schuman.info/news.htm )

The Consultative Committees should have specialized subcommittees on monetary affairs, representing various types of associations of taxpayers. These would be open and would eliminate much of the comitology -- which is neither open nor democratically approved.

Meanwhile both Parliament and the European Council make sure that Budget matters are dealt with the doors closed to the public.

What is to be done? I wrote to both presidents asking for justification, morally and legally, for what is clearly UNdemocratic practice. The following is the latest correspondence.

5 December 2011

Mr Herman Van Rompuy
President, European Council

Dear President van Rompuy,
A year ago I sent a letter asking for the legal and moral justification that the European Council closed the doors on meetings on the taxation of European citizens and budget expenditure matters. This is in opposition to the articles of the Lisbon Treaty. The treaty says clearly that all such matters, especially those dealing with the earliest consideration of legislation, should be dealt with openly. Morally, all Member States adhere to the principle that there can be no taxation without fair and open representation, which is then the basis for public awareness and public consultation. Consultation is impossible if the consideration of such vital financial matters is presented cut and dried by politicians, without public access to the debate so they can employ the means in the treaties to influence the decisions, to ensure control and provide adequate inspection of the results through properly elected Consultative Committees.

The public is showing increasing distrust of politicians and so are markets. This lack of open responsibility has now resulted in proposals for trillion euro operations mortgaging the future of the next generations. Even before the European Council was designated an institution in the Constitutional and Lisbon Treaties, it had the moral obligation to have open meetings. It did not. That was the reason that a decade ago the principles of openness were written into the treaties. Half a century ago Robert Schuman said that "the Councils, the Committees and the other organs {of Europe} should be placed under the control of public opinion."

Secret political 'deals' of the past are now paralyzing Europe. Why is the principle of openness and democracy still not being respected? European finances are not the property of politicians.

I am therefore sending this reminder, as I believe the public has a right to know the legal and moral opinion why the European Council deems it can close the doors while attempting to extract tax money and design its plans for spending public money.

Many thanks for your help in this matter.

Yours etc

A reminder letter was sent to President Buzek of the European Parliament with this complaint introduced to the European Ombudsman for non-response.

The Parliament has not replied to my letters. They deal with my exclusion, press exclusion and exclusion of the public to matters of primary importance to all, namely, holding secret, closed door meetings on taxation of European citizens and use of the budget.

I was excluded from meetings as noted in the correspondence. President Buzek's earlier argument made for exclusion is not logical or consistent. The Parliament excludes journalists and the public whether or not the Council is involved.

The Parliament says it upholds the principle of open meetings. As for the Council setting the rules in prima facie violation of the treaties, there is a simple way to resolve any potential 'bullying' of the Parliament by the Council. That is to get a ruling by the Court of Justice on such articles as Article 15 TFEU and general principles of taxation and open representation.

For decades the institutions involved which are supposed to be independent and sovereign have refused to do so, being submissive to Council. The public which is the most important partner in the taxation debate should under no circumstances be excluded from discussions among politicians who have their own agenda and interests that are not identical with their electors (the voters are a minority of the electors who increasingly refuse to vote) or the public in general. All the institutions were created for the citizens, not for the political parties who are now (often contrary to the treaties) firmly ensconced in all the institutions, save the Court.