For the whole of this century European Commission chiefs have been trying to stop Europeans asking the most vital, existential question!
Brexit, says EU Commission President Juncker, is Europe’s biggest issue! But he won’t come to Britain.
The Commission tactic: No debates on EU’s fundamental faults with Britain!
In the last two decades amidst the greatest political crises of Europe, Commission Presidents have made perhaps three or four visits to Britain. Most were semi-secret and not open to the public.
Hence Commission presidents Juncker and predecessor Barroso have held no top-level debates with the British public this century!
How many trips to UK? The Commission
refuses to give any figures at all. Even less will it compare it with Mr Juncker’s incessant visits to France, Germany, Italy, Greece and everywhere else around the globe.
Great Destroyer
President Juncker has toured and spoken in Germany’s provincial parliaments. From the Saarland regional parliament, he denounced one
British prime minister, who questioned Mr Juncker’s legitimacy, as a ‘
great destroyer of modern times‘. That’s tough company if it includes Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Osama bin Laden and al Baghdadi of the jihadi Islamic State.
Mr Junker has lectured Belgium’s
Flemish and Walloon parliaments with his doom-laden message of Europe’s inevitable decline. He has spoken to the tiny
German-speaking community of Belgium.
The British Mother of Parliaments he treats with disdain. Not a word uttered there or any other association, club or assembly. For the Scots he is silent. For the Welsh he is wanting. For the Northern Irish he is aloof.
Across Britain, pro-Europeans march in their myriads. From Hyde Park Corner (legendary bastion of free speech) to the Houses of Parliament, they raise their voices. They wave their European flags. Monsieur Juncker is missing and mute. Bizarre conduct for someone who announced that he was changing the Commission’s impartial status in the treaties to become the first “political Commission”.
‘The Commission is not responsible for Brexit,’ Mr Juncker said on 24 October. He was speaking at the Brussels-based think tank, the
European Policy Centre in what he billed as his last speech.
He said that, if UK media tells its public for 46 years that the UK is in EU only for the market — and the rest is bullshit — the referendum result should be no surprise.
Is this true?
“Brexit is a shame and is the most difficult problem we have ever had to face. I do not think that Brexit is in the interest of the Britain, nor in the interest of the European Union. All of us – we will pay the price,”
Mr Juncker said.
Why then do Commission presidents refuse to step on UK soil? Wouldn’t coming and offering more money help morale? Money and markets seem available by the bucketload for other Member States via the
€440 Billion Juncker Plan.
Real Problem
Something more serious is the core problem, not economics. The Presidents of the European Commission have been avoiding any real dialogue with the United Kingdom. They treat the UK as an Island of Lepers!
They refuse to cross the Channel. Why? Is UK contaminated? No, but it has a contagion. It is called:
D E M O C R A C Y.
Do European Commission presidents fear Hyde Park Corner? Or is it the House of Commons and British Common Law?
British Common Law has upheld the nation’s democratic heritage together together for 3000 years — long before Romans ever thought of coming.
This diagnosis should come as no surprise to Brussels. The British have been complaining about the
Democratic Deficit since 1977.
The complaints came from pro-Europe activists, not the sceptics.
Prof David Marquand used the term Democratic Deficit in his 1979 book on the European Parliament. The Political clique, the new Politburo, refused to heed.
Democracy is essentially about
HONEST GOVERNANCE. That applies to all institutions and how they conduct themselves.
Honesty has been singularly lacking for decades. Without honesty and openness democracy’s fuel tank is filled with sand. The motor blocks. That is what has happened today.
Democracy Postponed
The Deficit is not just about lack of ‘
one elector, one vote‘ of MEPs. That elementary requirement for parliament democracy has NEVER been implemented in 70 years! Don’t hold your breath. There should be
one set of election rules for Europe, not 28.
Schuman and Europe’s Founding Fathers said that the
Consultative Committees should have a role comparable to the Council of Ministers. They must elect their own representatives of organised civil society. They would act as a sort of Europe-wide Think Tank. Thus representatives would be able to give in-depth understanding of the needs and potential of Europe’s
- workers,
- industries,
- consumers and
- regions.
Never happened. Elitist politicians decide on who can be members of these ‘democratic‘ bodies! On a temporary basis, of course.
The Founding Fathers said that Ministers should hold open Council meetings. What was said would be reported on TV and in the press. Today’s politicians refuse.
They now drive Europe further into secret government.
They created a super-secret European Council! The EU and its misbegotten currency the euro is run by the EuroGroup, an “institution” that appears nowhere in the treaties!
Deficit Origins
It worked.
He was inspired by his study of the
British and American constitutions, themselves based, as he wrote, on biblical principles of justice. Instead of incessant wars that had plagued Europe for more than 2000 years, Europe had for the first time lasting peace and prosperity.
Many Britons wanted to join. Others suspected the Continentals were untrustworthy.
Europe’s Customs Union and Single Market flourished. Hit by labour unrest, UK had declined into a parlous economic state. UK was known as the ‘
Sick Man of Europe‘. Britons learned the lesson that a democratic Customs Union was the way to prosper.
But British governments had left it two decades late to join. Since 1945 de Gaulle fomented a revolution to overturn the French Constitution. He seized power in France in 1958. France remained under the autocratic control of the Gaullists. They were intent on wrecking and destroying the Community’s democratic base while making sure France by political pressure had the lion’s share of the Community budget.
The UK arrived when the Community system was palpably in a major crisis of trust. The thirty glorious years of the postwar economic miracle were faltering because autocracy always damages the economy as well.
The
Democratic Deficit can more properly be traced from 1973, the year UK joined the European Communities. To outsiders the damage was obvious. The British Labour Party was so disgusted at the way the Europe’s Parliament was treated under de Gaulle, and was still being treated, that they BOYCOTTED it!
The French autocrat, Charles de Gaulle, president from 1958-69, forced an agreement on the then politically weaker Germany, led by Konrad Adenauer. All the instruments of democracy were suspended. De Gaulle forbade European elections to the Parliamentary Assembly. All democratic institutions were frozen or “
chloroformed” according to his scheme.
De Gaulle’s minions decided European policies behind the closed doors of the Council of Ministers. Power politics reigned. The Council and even the Commission consigned parliamentary Amendments on legislation to the dustbin without being read. The Consultative Committees were never elected. Gaullist graft ensured French farmers benefitted from his corrupt and bloated Common Agricultural Policy that cost two-thirds of the Community budget.
So, post-de Gaulle, did European politicians reverse the democratic deficit and stop having secret meetings? Did they have proper elections? Did they have budget accountability?
Not at all. Worse was to come. They grafted Gaullist graft into their system. They turned it into a secretive party political oligarchy.
The Acid Litmus Test
Today Europe is faced with a Europe divided between the neo-Gaullists who have absorbed anti-British attitudes and those who understand that open, democratic, Community principles brought Europe’s peace, prosperity and the
freed the nations behind the Iron Curtain. Others are just confused about European governance.
Unhappily the confused seem to be in the majority when Europe’s future was discussed in 2001. Elitist authors of a new treaty failed to convince the public. It rejected
Constitutional Treaty and its later identical twin, the
Lisbon Treaty. Instead of insisting on Human Rights politicians tried to subvert them. The public smelt the fish.
Elitist projects are built on constitutional errors, lack of honesty and humility. Robert Schuman warned such schemes would lead to
unrealisable utopias.
Human Rights Violations
Contrast that with Europe’s birth. The early Community treaties had to be examined by the
Council of Europe, guardian of the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Elitist politicians knew they could not succeed under this scrutiny.
How can we Litmus test the anti-democratic acidity of the present politicians?
They abandoned any Human Rights checks on treaties.
They refused to recognise the public’s right to a referendum. If the public got the ‘wrong’ answer, the Commission told the Council the States must vote again.
- Maastricht 1992 Denmark.
- Nice 2001 Ireland.
- Euro 2000 Denmark.
- 2003 Sweden.
- Constitutional Treaty 2005 France & The Netherlands
- Lisbon treaty 2008 Ireland.
- Greek Bailout 2015.
- Ukraine Association 2016 NL
The UK was refused any referendum on any treaty since 1975. UK has not confirmed by Referendum the Lisbon Treaty (and its Article 50). The Brexit Referendum of 2016 based on Article 50 is illegal UNLESS Britons first agree by Referendum to this treaty!
The people are not subject to the Lisbon Treaty because it was imposed by Parliament contrary to Government promises that a Referendum would be held on the Treaty itself before Article 50 could be used. The Lisbon Treaty (then called the Constitutional Treaty) was rejected by France and the Netherlands and others.
Parliament is subject to the voice of the people in legitimate referendums.
Now track the Commission. See what they are up to. See if and how they engage in democratic reform and debate with the public. For example, Britain.
The presidents of the Commission zip around Europe. They fly around the world. They collect fancy
medals and honours. They collect scores of honorary doctorates.
But not in Britain. Why?
President Jean-Claude Juncker is nearing the end of his five-year mandate. What’s the record? At times he has seemed to spend part of every week in Berlin, if not in Paris. Then he’s off to the Mediterranean and Italy, Spain and Portugal or the Black Sea reaches of Bulgaria and Romania.
To England? Naaaaah! A fast Eurostar train from central Brussels to central London is just too far.
How many times has he visited London or any other part of the UK?
He made one trip for an evening dinner in London. Did he speak to a mass meeting of concerned British democrats. Did he speak to Parliament? No. On 27 April 2017 he had a private meeting with PM Theresa May to describe the length and breadth of any agreement on Brexit. With his team of
Martin Selmayr and Michel Barnier, he visited
10 Downing Street under tight security to tell Prime Minister May that Brexit was no walk in the park. He came loaded with the Canada agreement to show how big a document a trade agreement normally was and how
negotiations are conducted.
Mr Juncker told a Polish journalist that he has actually visited London on another occasion. When? No one can remember. That makes
two trips in 5 years.
Why did he not come more frequently given the gravity of the Brexit crisis — which at the time threatened the disintegration of the EU. When asked by a Polish journalist how many times he has travelled to Mrs May at Downing Street, his less-than-chivalrous reply was:
“Why fly somewhere, if you can discuss it here?” He added: “She used to sit at the place where you are now, at seven in the morning, at eleven o’clock at night.”
Then there is a division of views on politics across the Channel. Many Continental politicians, regardless of what laws and treaties say, feel they can do what they like. No one will take them to Court.
Some of UK’s nearby neighbours don’t blink an eye at
presidential slush funds. A mistress of 30 years is housed at the State’s expense or another lover is made prime minister. Would taxpayers in UK agree?
Ministers and prime ministers across the Continent get away with financial and political corruption.
In UK ministers are forced to resign if they mislead the police on a motoring offence. They may end up in prison.
The Question
What is the question that European Commission Presidents don’t want to hear? There are many words which point to the same direction: accountability to tax-payers, honesty to electors, open government … or simply real democracy.
What is the major chasm of credibility for Europe? Fraud. Political fraud.
What Commission presidents Juncker and Barroso fear is that the whole
fraudulent Lisbon Treaty structure will come crashing down on their heads. It should.
Why is the Lisbon Treaty fraud big-time? It is not just that this changes the constitution of 28 Member States without the approval of the citizens.
It is not just that it puts European government in the hands of politicians who prefer secrecy and political plots above transparency.
It is that the whole treaty was rejected by Europeans in massive referendums. Further referendums on the renamed treaty were refused by the political clique. Elitists think they know better than everyone else.
The articles are the same as those misshapen monstrosities that appeared in the rejected
Constitutional treaty, committee-written under the supervision of former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. This camel of a treaty was roundly rejected by the French and the Dutch in 2005. Six other nations,
including UK, were expecting to have referendums. But the political clique refused to let them. The outcome was clear to all. No. No. NO!
Mr Barroso said the camel looked partly like a horse. Spaniards (who were pretty fresh to democracy) voted for it. That’s no endorsement.
But politicians and bureaucrats thought they could get away with it. Two years later the rejected articles were forcefully re-instated as the Lisbon Treaty. How? Articles were retained and inserted as amendments to an old treaty, the much-amended European Economic Community treaty of Rome, 1957.
Why were no further referendums allowed? Bureaucrats said so.
Giscard himself explained in an article published in a number of newspapers. The British must be denied a democratic voice. Human rights must be suppressed.
This deception operation, was foisted on the public by the Council. It is an affront to any citizen with a micron of morality. It was whipped through parliaments because their ministers told their parties to avoid referendums at all cost.
In a democracy who tells parliaments to obey?
Not even the ministers. In the Brussels Bog it was the bullyboy bureaucrats at the Council who insisted that the Lisbon Treaty would not die by democratic decision. It must be re-instituted regardless of the cost to honesty and integrity.
Did Mr Barroso come and explain his strange decision to the great British public? He came to UK perhaps once to
Chatham House for a one hour meeting at the end of his ten-year mandate (24 October 2014). Then, amid
public outrage, he was off to join Goldman Sachs.
The official name of the Lisbon Treaty is Treaty on European Union (TEU) plus the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The EU Treaty, for short. But leaving the EU is not the same as leaving the European Communities. Hence, logically, a referendum that affirms the desire to ‘Leave the European Union‘ does not mean leaving the Customs Union and Single Market of the European Communities.
Before any progress in Europe can be made, legitimacy needs to be restored. Europeans require that THEIR VOICE is sovereign — not bureaucrats. Legitimate Referendums must be respected. Politicians should no longer hide themselves behind closed doors. The public must have an open dialogue about their plans and investigate their plots.
No more political Leper Colonies!
