The original concept of supranational democracy for Europe brought long-lasting peace to the Continent. EU's founder Robert Schuman described democracy as being in the service of the people and acting in agreement with the people. What's going on today? See also www.schuman.info and http://democracy.blogactiv.eu .
In recent days the European Commission has initiated major changes to the European political architecture. The EU has renounced the need for budgetary independence ('balancing the budget') and is becoming willingly subservient to international financial debt markets for the foreseeable future. It is in the process of re-engineering the entire economy on the basis of a 'Green Deal' that has enormous implications for every man, woman and child in Europe.
Are citizens and industries in the deal and in agreement with it? Have they ever been able to discuss this in its integrality, in-depth or in detail? Will it hinder and hamstring Europe's economy while China powers ahead with its coal-fired industries? Why are Europeans paying twice the price for energy compared with the USA?
The European Commission says it is open to criticism and improvement of these gigantic plans and changes. But is it? Can the people of Europe have any influence on these and other policies? The European Council sets guidelines and plans behind closed doors. Why? The Lisbon Treaty (TFEU art 15) says the councils should be as open to the public as the Parliament. The European Commission, more and more, acts as the secretariat for an oligarchy, off-limits to observation.
Does the EU listen to the people? Does it listen to small and medium industries? Does it respond to requests to cut spending?
Judge for yourself!
What is the record? The European Commission has refused for seventy years to publish the treaty on how democracy should work in the European system. The principles are outlined in a treaty that its founder, Robert Schuman, called the Charter of the Community (Pour l'Europe, p146). It was signed by the Founding Fathers, plenipotentiary ministers of the six founding States at Paris on 18 April 1951. The name reflects the Magna Carta that formed the basis for democracy not only in Britain but in the United States of America and elsewhere.
If the European Commission was listening to the people it would have long published this treaty both on its website and in the Official Journal.
It has refused.
In April I wrote to President Ursula von der Leyen about this. I received a reply from an official. I enclose my reply to this and the official's letter.
Feel free to publish these letters. I appreciate your support in the cause of press freedom and proper accountability for European institutions that are supposed to be democratic.
Following is the Commission's letter and my letter to President von der Leyen
From: David Heilbron Price<davidheilbronprice@gmail.com> Date: Wed, Jul 14, 2021 at 9:42 PM Subject: My letter of 9 April on the Schuman Declaration and the Charter of the Community
Your ref: Ares (2021) 2498475
Schuman Project
David Heilbron Price, Editor
President Ursula von der Leyen
European Commission
14 July 2021
Dear Madame President,
I am in receipt of the attached letter of 1 July from Dimitri Barua (Assistant to the Director General, Communications) in reply to my letter of 9 April, for which I thank you. Unfortunately it did not resolve or even deal with the matters I raised: the official publication of the full Schuman Declaration text (not the Proposal) and, above all, the Charter of the Community.
These documents, one a governmental Declaration at the origin of European integration and the other a Treaty, are not of mere academic interest but involve the legal basis and in fact the constitutional foundation of Europe and its future. The non-publication of these legal instruments has already led to lost opportunities for prosperity and losses of European funds amounting to millions and, in the case of Brexit, billions of euros. It is not a matter of personal ‘passionate interest’ but acknowledging the legality of documents agreed to and signed by the Founding Governments.
I was glad to see the text of the Treaty of Paris on the Coal and Steel Community has been linked to the platform of the Conference on the Future of Europe. This Treaty was long published in the Official Journal and formed the basis for actions in the European Court.
However, the ‘Schuman Declaration’ is mislabelled. The French Government of Georges Bidault decided on a Proposal after Cabinet discussions on 3 and 9 May 1950 (Pour l’Europe, p165). This is called the Schuman Proposal. Then later on 9 May Foreign Minister Schuman made a Declaration to the public – the Schuman Declaration. This includes his one-page introduction, declaring that the proposal marks the birth of Europe and explaining its worldwide mission of peace.
The Schuman Declaration has legal authority and should be published in the Official Journal too. It describes the profound implications of the initiative on a
·Historical basis (It would bring peace for the first time in several millennia),
·Geographical: (it was open to all countries including those in the Soviet sphere),
·Economical: it would bring prosperity as never seen before,
·Strategic: it announced the creation of Europe as a new entity in world politics,
·Geopolitical: including its mission to Africa and other trouble spots in need of peace.
As for this unpublished first page introduction, I am quite a little puzzled why the Commission made recourse to the 'Robert Schuman Foundation'. The Robert Schuman Foundation is not a depository organisation competent to find the full text of the Schuman Declaration. It makes the same mistake as the Commission. This text can be found at the Centre Robert Schuman at http://www.centre-robert-schuman.org/robert-schuman/la-declaration-du-9-mai-1950?langue=fr and elsewhere. The full text is reproduced in facsimile in the book of the Jean Monnet Foundation, ‘Un changement d’esperance’.
Two treaties were signed by Governments on 18 April 1951 in Paris, the European Coal and Steel Community Treaty and the Charter of the Community. The originals of these documents relating to the democratic foundation of Europe can only be found at the French Foreign Ministry, as I mentioned earlier, and as the Treaty of Paris declares in its article 100.
Even more importantly, the original of the other signed treaty, the Charter of the Community (Pour l’Europe, p146) is also archived at the French Foreign Ministry. I included html copies of this major, foundational stone of European democracy that I received from the French Minister for European Affairs, Bernard Cazeneuve. It has been on my website, schuman.info , for a number of years.
Despite my bringing it to the attention of the European Commission a number of times and underlining its importance, it has still not been published by the European Commission on its website or published in the Official Journal.
I should inform you that a complaint (number 202101229) has now been introduced with the European Ombudsman about the reluctance of the Commission to publish these key legal documents that are vital for lawyers, politicians, the press and the general public.
Madame President, the European Commission as Guardian of the Treaties should have officially published these legal documents during the last seventy years. The course of European history would have greatly benefited. For whatever reason they haven’t. But that is no reason why they should not be published now when the need is great.
I look forward to hearing from the Commission about their immediate publication.
This
year 2017 will go down in history as the year European leaders
conspired in Fake News, Fake History and Fake Geography! With their
slogan EU60 they will be ridiculed by future generations as fraudsters
using Fake Maths too. Why do they lie about dates? FAKE DEMOCRACY!
The Brussels leaders say this year is Europe’s 60th Birthday. That’s clearly untrue. In 2012 the Nobel Prize was awarded to the European Community/ EU for more than SIXTY years contribution to peace in Europe! Count it! Do some elementary arithmetic!
With the headline J’ACCUSE, Emile Zola wrote an open letter to
President Faure of the French Republic covering the front page of the
newspaper L’Aurore, 13 January 1898. It caused a sensation. It was meant to.
In this article Zola denounced the lies and establishment cover-up of
the French government in the Dreyfus affair. The French army officer,
who happened to be a Jew, was falsely accused to being the source of
espionage for Germany and Austria-Hungary. The writing in the dossier
sheet was used as evidence that the Germans had received French secrets.
It had been fished out of a waste bin in the German embassy by a French
cleaning lady. The handwriting was nothing like that of Dreyfus. That
did not deter the experts. They asserted that “the lack of resemblance between Dreyfus’ writing and that of the bordereau (dossier cover list) was proof of a ‘self-forgery'”!
It was obviously a Fake but the Fake experts said it was so good a
Fake, it must mean that Dreyfus was guilty! In truth it was the experts
who were fake and the Establishment who were traitors! Note how Fakers
use Fake logic! The entire world whose writing did not resemble the
bordereau writing would be guilty by that reasoning! Only one person
wrote that bordereau.
The bordereau writing actually matched a major who was working in the
French General Military Staff. The guilty man had the suspicious
Austro-Hungarian name of Esterhazy. But that made no difference for the
anti-Semitic establishment who wanted to put on an anti-Jewish show
trial.
Zola exposed the unpalatable truth. He named names in the high-level
cover-up by the military staff and French Government. Result? He was
accused of libel and had to flee to England!
But he was proved right. Two men were innocent, Zola and especially
Dreyfus. They suffered most. Today there is no doubt about who is
guilty. The truth always comes out.
The victim was all of Europe. The entire French military had to be
cleaned up. It had dire consequences. France was left in a weakened
state when it faced the Germans in World War One. High-level fraud is not uncommon. That is the lesson that the present European leaders need to learn. Their guilt will affect all of Europe. Nor will the truth of history redound to their glory.
During the whole of 2017, European leaders have connived in
propaganda fraud. They have spent millions of tax-payers money to hide
Europe’s real democratic history. Fraud hurts! Sometimes it costs lives, many lives. Take
Stalin. Did the USSR survive his Fraud and Fakes? Photographs of the
Stalinist regime in the USSR became notorious. The Politburo of the
early days was republished from time to time. Each time the one or two
of the original faces disappeared and the photo was made up as if they
never existed. They were either in a Gulag camp or dead allegedly for
treason. Stalin cost millions of other lives.
Today the European Union Politburo is interested in wiping out one face in particular, Robert Schuman. This is done not because that face is guilty of anything. Quite the reverse.
He is responsible for the miraculous rise of Europe as a super-power
in the world today. The keys to war and peace in Europe — and elsewhere —
are the greatest heritage of modern times. Why are the Brussels
Politburo throwing those keys away? Personal aggrandizement? Ignorance?
Petty jealousy? or what Schuman called the routines of power,
the inability of politicians and bureaucracies to think in other terms
than Europeans had for more than a thousand years?
The Brussels Politburo are especially keen to wipe out the signing of
the Treaty of Paris on 18 April 1951 and the Great Charter of Rights of
European Citizens (DECLARATION COMMUNE) that was also signed that day.
That showed how West European States can demonstrate they are real
democracies and expose the false democracies as they existed in East
Germany and elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain.
The guilty neo-Gaullist Brussels Poltiburo wanted none of this. While
the public expected the founding Paris treaty to be renewed in 2002, the
Council Politburo failed to do so -- without any public debate, never
mind any referendums.
Today
the guilty are more attached to money and markets than democracy and
openness. They want to say that Europe’s miraculous rise came from its
common market. They want people to believe their future depends on
globalization. False! The guilty try to cover-up their foul deeds and
those of earlier betrayers of the past. Who are the guilty today? EU
photos and histories today only show the guilty. These are the people
in Rome who celebrated Europe’s fake history by saying Europe began 60
years ago with the 1957 Treaty of Rome and the European Common Market.
The same goes for their propaganda. Their histories mainly start when
Schuman was no longer active or alive.
Why?
Why do they date EU history from Rome in 1957 and the signing of the
treaties of Rome? Why chose an event where Robert Schuman, the Father of
Europe, was absent? Could it be that that was the year the
anti-democratic Charles de Gaulle seized power in France?
That certainly is true. Today’s leaders in France and Germany want to
celebrate the Franco-German axis as if it was the start of Europe. That
is utterly false history. De Gaulle wanted to rule and dominate Germany
and all the other countries such as Italy and the Benelux.
Let’s see if there is any resemblance of EU60 to the truth.
Schuman’s Proposal saved Europe from catastrophic wars. The EEC Customs Union didn’t.
The ECSC created Europe’s first Single Markets in 1953. Rome didn’t.
We could add a few other achievements like being co-author of the
1949 NATO treaty and initiating the Council of Europe, 1949 with its
Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 1950.
Writing Fake History is like trying to make Dreyfus’s handwriting look like Esterhazy’s. Let’s add some other facts.
De Gaulle attacked Schuman. He tried to destroy the Community system.
De Gaulle invented the Franco-German axis as the motor of Europe because he could then control Germany.
De Gaulle turned the EEC into a milch cow so that up to 70 percent
of taxpayers money was spent on the CAP and farmers, usually French
peasants.
De Gaulle would not attend Schuman’s funeral and stopped Adenauer, who had already agreed, from attending.
De Gaulle had nothing to do with European Reconciliation. Adenauer
wrote that Schuman achieved this in 1950. De Gaulle wanted to expand
French borders to the Rhine!
De Gaulle was an autocrat. He hated political parties.
De Gaulle refused to have elections to the
European Parliament and persuaded Adenauer to stop these elections too.
Because of de Gaulle, Europeans have never had a proper election to the
European Parliament.
We could also add: De Gaulle kicked the Supreme European Headquarters
of NATO out of Paris. French forces left NATO. He despised and ignored
the Council of Europe and to gain power, was instrumental in the bloody
Algerian war and fierce torture. De Gaulle couldn’t destroy the European
Communities, no matter how hard he tried. The best damage he could do
was to “chloroform”
it for a while. He made sure the democracies of UK, Norway, Denmark and
Ireland did not join. He vetoed the applications three times — without
asking any advice of his ministers or asking parliament. He preferred
Franco’s fascist Spain.
Why is Brussels celebrating 1957? De Gaulle took power in 1957!
Politicians admire his style, exploiting the Common Market budget for
his own purposes. De Gaulle pillaged European taxes for his own
distorted version of the Common Agricultural Policy.
It took European money to bribe French voters to keep him in power.
Cunning! They would like to do the same. He made sure the Council had
doors closed to the public so criticism was muted. Weaker Europeans
could be exploited for Gaullist strong-arm policy. Democratic opposition
was gagged. That’s why politicians still keep the doors closed today.
It’s contrary to the Lisbon treaties that they like. Article 15 TFEU
says the Council shall meet in public! Why is the press so passive?
Decades to pro-Gaullist dog-training!
Many other politicians today like the idea of doing what they like
behind closed doors with the people’s money. Maybe that’s why in 2013
the Council celebrated de Gaulle as if he was a hero of Europe, not its arrogant opponent.
Why don’t honest politicians object to this abuse? It takes both guts, honesty and education. One prime minister told a Davos meeting
that the treaty that brought peace in Europe was the Treaty of Rome!
Frankly this prime minister, who claimed to be a historian, was either
(a) ignorant (b) deceived by EU propaganda or (c) a deceiver.
He wasn’t alone on the stage that day. The Commission first vice president agreed. He comes into the same category. He said: ‘No more paternalism. That was Schuman etc. Very paternalistic people.’
Wrong!
In fact it was de Gaulle who was paternalistic and autocratic. He
bossed everyone around, including the Dutch. Schuman created the first
stage of Europe’s democratic system, the opposite of paternalistic. Was
Mr Timmermans making a slip of the tongue? That’s why I later asked him,
in the presence of Europe’s religious leaders: “Do
you think this year’s emphasis on EU60 on the market has been overblown
compared with the 1951 beginning of Europe with the Treaty of Paris and
reconciliation, and a discussion about European democracy?”
Commission Vice-President Timmermans replied: “May I remind you
that the EU started with defence and not internal market or currency. It
started with an attempt at defence which was defeated in the French
Parliament.”
The facts? In August 1954, after other Member States had ratified it,
the French National Assembly voted to suspend the vote on the European
Defence Community, CED. What about the Schuman Declaration of 1950 or
the Treaty of Paris of April 1951 — which legally defined what the
Commission was supposed to do?
Not sure whether this was another slip of the tongue, the next week I
posed the same question to the Commission Spokesman. I asked whether
the Commission, as supposed guardian of the original treaties, now
refused to recognize that the European democratic project had begun with
the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 and Europe’s first treaty, the
Treaty of Paris signed on 18 April 1951.
The Commission spokesman refused to make any correction to this
monumental error about the origin of the EU, the European Community,
democracy and the Commission itself.
Lies upon lies and fraud upon fraud! How did this self-deception happen?
From the first, the Community Method and true European step-by-step,
consensual democracy was attacked by politicians who wanted to create a
pseudo-federal system. Others like the Gaullists just wanted to
dominate the other States.
The Community is a system that has potential for the common and open search for truth and common interest for the present and the future.
Instead of open democracy of the treaties, politicians preferred the
Gaullist distortion of secretive power in the Council and Commission.
Instead of the Community sectoral system (coal, steel, atomic
energy, customs) that each required full democratic consent, politicians
wanted to control all sectors of the European economy.
Instead of an impartial, Jury-like Commission that excluded
politicians brandishing party cards, the politicians wanted to exclude
non-partisan, impartial citizens such as experienced diplomats,
engineers, scientists, academics, trade unionists, inventors from
becoming members of the Commission.
Schuman and the Founding Fathers realized that the European system
cannot be placed in the hands of politicians alone. It must be open to
impartial citizens of high moral character, exercising their God-given
rights to freedom. Why? Because, as Schuman knew and said, politicians
have the tendency not only not to resist the corruption of power but to
obscure its very existence. They tend to follow party over public
interest, individual interest over collective interest.
That is why two institutions should be politician-free by definition: the European Court of Justice and the European Commission, Europe’s Jury.
The third, the Consultative Committees, is instructed to act as
impartial representatives of European civil society. That is it should
involve professional associations of all sorts, with democratic
mandates. The consultative committees, such as the as-yet, non-elected
Committee of Regions and the tripartite Economic and Social Committee,
(workers, consumers and entrepreneurs’ associations) act as honest witnesses to the state of Europe and the requirements of Europe’s future.
How did politicians and governments set Europe on its downward path? Arrogance. All
human beings have a tendency to corrupt. Putting known corrupters in
charge of anti-corruption is likely to corrupt the system more rapidly.
Their path to infamy? Maastricht, Amsterdam,
Nice and the failed Constitutional treaties illustrate their process of
political and psychological disorder. Is it a coincidence that the
initials spell out MANiC?
Europe’s most severe problem of legitimacy arose with the Lisbon
Treaty. It extended both their unlawful and unauthorized grasp for
power. It reiterated their denial of Referendum NOs. “And Lisbon” turns
their acronym to MANIACAL. The Constitutional Treaty was roundly rejected in referendums. it was
hugely unpopular especially in those countries that did not get to vote
in a referendum.
This was a big disappointment for the prime ministers (plus the
French President!). They wanted to have enhanced limelight. The European
Council, known earlier as the European Summit of Heads of State and
Government, was invented by de Gaulle in 1961. Its goal, to seduce
European leaders with fancy food and allow de Gaulle to be Master of
Europe! Today European leaders want to act like little Napoleons with
helicopters and snazzy limousines to take them to discussions on global
warming!
No sweat for thieves of democracy! They mobilized their plush
phantom democracy, the Council of Ministers. That and the European
Council (which was not then any form of European legislative
institution, nor a real Intergovernmental Committee recognized by
treaty) foisted Fake Democracy on the European people by FRAUD and
FORCE.
How?
Europe’s Founding Fathers had good, democratic reasons not to create a
European Council. It would try to centralize power in secret. When the
Constitutional Treaty was rejected, top politicians worried that they
may have lost this further lever of central power. The European Council,
under the Nice Treaty, could not then even publish a press release. It
had no executive power. Its sole responsibility was to meet twice a year
and (as the Summit conference for heads of State and government) and
submit a report after these two meetings to the European Parliament and a
yearly report on progress.
The Community system is built on sectoral responsibilities. This is
why the sectoral Councils of Ministers are one of the legal instruments
for the European peoples’ legislation. Legislation Proposals by an
impartial European Commission are to be transmitted to three
institutions only: Council of Ministers (Industry, Fisheries,
Agriculture, Science etc), the Parliament and the Consultative
Committees. These institutions have to send their amendments if they
find faults. Then the Commission decides on the most impartial
formulation which it publishes in the Official Journal as Law. That’s how Europe should work. Simply, openly and democratically.
The European Council or the Summit is not involved in this. It cannot dictate.
How did the politicians get round this problem in 2007? They got the
Council of Ministers to publish the Press Release or Decree of the
European Council. It still had no legal force. Who did they publish it
to? Not the public but the national delegations!
The Council press release to the Delegations announced two
conspiratorial measures: Money and political Might. The politicians
would spend a great deal of European tax-payers’ money on propaganda and
press management. Secondly their political might would FORCE the
articles of the failed Constitutional Treaty through the parliaments.
They would use their national party-controlled majorities against
virulent protest and righteous objections of the public. They did not
call this a Conspiracy against the people. They called it
“Consultations” with fellow politicians!
Thus a small clique of politicians could act totally against the
people’s referendum NOs. To oil their way they would need money.
This logo became the official symbol for the “50th anniversary” events during 2007.
Even today it is surprising to read the brazenness of this political
ploy. In the same paragraph that showed the strategy to override the
referendums, the press release said that money would be necessary for PR
enforcement. For that sleight of hand, the European Council proposed
that finance be poured into a fraudulent 50th Birthday for Europe, the
Treaty of Rome. (Not the European Atomic Energy Treaty, Euratom, mind you, only in practice the European Common Market, the EEC!).
This is what the Council Press Release said about the Constitutional
Treaty that lay dead in the water after the French vote of 29 May 2005
and the Dutch vote of 1 June 2005.
Council press release 22 February 2007 “Pursuing reform: the Constitutional Treaty.
As agreed by the European Council at its meeting of June 2006, the
Union has followed a two-track approach. It has focused on making best
use of the possibilities offered by the existing treaties to deliver
concrete results while preparing the ground for continuing the reform
process. The presidency (of the Council of Ministers) provided
the European Council with an assessment of the consultation with Member
States regarding the Constitutional Treaty. The outcome of these
consultations will be passed to the German Presidency as part of its
preparation for the report to be presented during the first half of
2007. The European Council reaffirms the importance of commemorating the
50th anniversary of the treaties of Rome in order to confirm the
importance of the European integration process.”
The chosen path was to avoid any more referendums at all costs. The second decision was to act as if the No
referendum results had never happened! Thirdly the rejected treaty
would be broken into individual amendments. They would be reassembled
and added to articles that could modify the EEC, Treaty of Rome and make
it exactly like the Constitutional Treaty. Huzzah! Hokus Pokus! The Constitutional Treaty lives again in spite of the people!
Thus the politicians made sure their two dozen votes were more
important than millions of voters in referendums nixing the
Constitutional Treaty. They could make a dead treaty live again, even if
the public had stuck a dagger in its heart!
They ordered the civil servants to prepare a book of amendments
modifying the Nice treaty (itself a modification of the Amsterdam
treaty, itself a modification of the Maastricht treaty, itself a
modification of the European Economy Community treaty of Rome.) For the
record, not all Member States were ‘allowed’ by politicians to hold
referendums on these earlier treaties.
None of these treaties were really legal. The Maastricht treaty had
been rejected by the Danes. The Nice treaty was rejected by the Irish.
The Constitutional Treaty was rejected by both the French and the Dutch.
UK had no referendums on any. Then, when the civil servants had
finished their dirty work, the Irish rejected the Lisbon Treaty.
Other countries had no chance to have a referendum. Why? The Irish
European Commissioner, Charlie MacCreevy, said 95 percent of the
European governments would lose a referendum vote on the Lisbon Treaty.
The Economist called him “Teller of painful truths.”
The original treaty of Rome , EEC, had a clause which basically said,
this treaty does not permit Member States to leave, because all member
States agree that the only sure solution for peace and prosperity is to
make Europe more democratic. Only a foolish government, if it claimed to
be a democracy, would want to leave. That Article 224 of the EEC treaty
had become Article 312 of the Nice Treaty.
It was yanked out and replaced by an exit article in the
Constitutional Treaty. Referendums in France and the Netherlands
rejected this Article 59
and all the Constitutional Treaty. It then became Article 50 of the
Lisbon Treaty. The British had no chance to reject either Article 59 of
the Constitutional Treaty or Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The
various UK political parties that in election manifestos promised
referendums on European treaties betrayed their promises when in power.
They told the public: “No referendum! We know best!”
Why are the British finding it so difficult to leave the EU? Actually
it is not too difficult. The European Union was the illegal
superstructure added to the European Economic Community. Most of its
MANiC changes reduce democracy, or try to. They empower politicians
against the people.
The Community system is, however, a different matter. The British in
the 1975 referendum agreed to the Community method with an overwhelming
majority of 67 percent. It was seen as democratic, and a means to
improve the democratic climate of Europe.
The Community method requires one European election (not 28 national
ones) to the European Parliament. That is still in the treaties.
It requires elections to the Consultative Committees. (That is also still in the treaties.)
It requires card-carrying politicians to be banned from the European Commission. (That is still in the treaties.)
It requires the Council of Ministers to be open to the public, just
like the parliament, when they ‘consider, discuss and vote’ on any draft
legislation. (That is still in the treaties.)
Schuman designed the Community system during the war, when he escaped
from Nazi Germany as a prisoner. He told his friends during the war
that the future European system would enable postwar Germany to
reinforce its democratic tendencies. It would also reduce their
proclivity to autocracy as they had experienced under Hitler and others.
He compared it to chaining European States together, so that they
would be obliged by their own self-interest to become more democratic.
Following the scandals of the Gaullist era with its wine lake, and beef
mountains, its corruption in high places and its election bribery,
Brussels has succumbed to some pretty low politics.
But it has not failed to deliver positive benefits to its citizens.
The European Community won’t go away. It won’t fail to continue. Today it is not Germany who wants to leave the European institutions.
It is the island that says it has the Mother of Parliaments. Why?
Britons smell something rotten wafting over the Channel from Brussels.
Today the Manifest Crisis of democracy
is apparent both sides of the Channel and in east, west, central and
southern Europe. The solution is simple. Follow the instructions in the
original treaties.
Have elections as required under a single Statute to the European Parliament.
Ban active politicians from the Commission.
Open up the Council of Ministers to the public and the press.
Make the Judges in the Court of Justice democratically responsible.
Hold elections of properly constituted European professional
associations to the Consultative Committees. Stop lobbyists altogether.
Replace the secretive COREPER and thousands of closed ‘expert’
committees with elected expert members of these democratic
organizations.
The outcome of Brexit would be the same as if Germany wished to
leave. Schuman said the new favorable climate the Community created
would make it totally unpalatable for any country to leave. In this contest, my bet would be on Schuman, not Brexit.
The conclusion: the only way forward is to make Brussels more
democratic and to follow the democratic rules. That too would help the
UK where some 30 or so MPs dictate the hard Brexit policy of what was
supposed to be an advisory referendum.
Secondly, truth is the best policy.
The foundation stone of European Law and Democracy has been revealed at last! Below is a copy of the key institutional document of European democracy that politicians have refused to publish for decades. It may not have been seen for SIXTY years. Now it needs to be fully integrated into European codes of Law and jurisprudence.
On 18 April 1951 the the Europe Declaration was signed by all the representatives of the six founding Member State Governments of the European Community. It creates the Foundation of a New Europe which made 'war not only unthinkable but materially impossible'. It provided a path as it says to create a new common destiny so Europeans could look forward to a peaceful future both of prosperity but also be forced to resolve peacefully common problems together and, despite the corruption and perversities of human nature, arrive together at moral and ethical solutions.
In his book, Pour l'Europe (p146), Robert Schuman called it the great Charter of Europe's Community. After its signature and that of the Treaty of Paris founding the European Community for Coal and Steel, it was then placed for safekeeping in the archives of the French Foreign Ministry at the Quai d'Orsay, Paris.
It contains the pledge of European Governments that all European Community future Treaties founding new Community organizations, all Acts and Laws arising from them would follow certain principles. This includes such things as supranational values, like honesty, justice and truth. It pledged that all citizens would have to give full democratic agreement to any future developments.
General de Gaulle was no friend of the European Community and tried to destroy it. The Europe Declaration of Interdependence may have been buried in the archives at this time. It contains the word de Gaulle hated: SUPRANATIONAL, meaning that dictators would find no place in a democratic Community of democratic Member States. He wanted to replace the independent European Commission searching out the common good and just solutions with a secretariat subservient to his own political views (Fouchet Plan and the crisis of the Empty Chair).
Democratic politicians in other countries together with democrats in France fought off this plan for Gaullist hegemony of the Continent.
Yet politicians after de Gaulle never published this foundational document, nor developed the Community's democratic institutions to any great extent. Referendums were avoided or simply disdained.
The Community's democratic and supranational principles have been ignored in recent developments including the construction of the euro. This is based on economics of national currencies strung inadequately together by international agreement of politicians, not the people. The Community system envisages a European Currency controlled by a properly elected European Parliament under a single electoral statute and organized civil society in a fully elected Economic and Social Committee.
After being hidden in the archives of the Quai d'Orsay for sixty years, ignored and kept secret from the public by politicians, this Foundational Declaration has now been released by the French Government, following a request by the Schuman Project. It is now published on its site www.schuman.info/CharterQdO.htm
The former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for a ‘Grand Bargain’
to set Europe on the right track. Part of his idea, said Mr Blair,
speaking in Berlin at the Council for the Future of Europe on 29 October
2012, is the election of the President of the European Commission.
‘My feeling is that the only way, ultimately, confidence
can be restored is with a fully comprehensive set of measures that
convince markets and public alike that the fundamental issues have been
overcome.’
Nor can it be built on commercial activity (even if the EU is the
largest commercial power in the world, equivalent to the USA, Canada and
India).
It cannot even be built on some ideological concept of democracy. (Ideology means part truth).
Putting the Commission into the hands of politicians by elections,
organized and controlled by political parties, is completely wrong. It
would exclude 98 percent of the population who are not members of
political parties. It is the road to disaster. It violates the most
elementary principles of Human Rights. A fairer, more just and honest idea is required.
Europe must be founded on truth and the search for truth.
Truth can be arrived at by experience, examining one’s conscience and
investigation. That is the only realistic basis for a sound society.
Experience tells us that politicians should not be given absolute
control, that their declarations should be examined by ordinary
citizens and interest groups in non-political representative bodies.
Their conclusions should be published and examined conscientiously by
all the public.
That is because all human beings have a tendency to
corrupt and putting known corrupters in charge of anti-corruption is to
corrupt the system absolutely.
Appeasing corruption is no formula for resolving the present crisis,
nor for the future. AT THE MOMENT POLITICIANS ARE FAR TOO KEEN TO
OBSCURE CORRUPTION RATHER THAN EXPOSE IT AND CORRECT IT.
European integration can only be founded on values like fairness,
justice and honesty. Schuman called these supranational values because,
in the past, empires, federations and confederations have collapsed
because of violation of justice and the rule of law. Science properly founded
on correct premises is a supranational value, said Schuman. Its results
were true in antiquity (even if not always recognized). It is true
today. As Schuman learned in his university days, justice decided in the
court systems of ancient societies tended to follow similar rules to
modern justice. Societies also failed when, as contemporary critics
observed, corruption replaced justice or when sexual depravity became
commonplace. Today lack of trust in politicians does not justify giving
them more powers.
What is important for us now is how the foundation based on
supranational values can be developed. These values form the basis for
European democracies. They arose from Christian basis of our civilization but also present in other successful societies too.
Should Europeans fear the future? Should they chase after the chimera of exploitative wealth?
Mr Blair says: ‘The 21st Century case for Europe is
based not on war or peace but on power or irrelevance. A 21st Century
with China and India that in time, as GDP and population size realign,
will become vast economic and political powers.’
Where this analysis is wrong is that ALL civilizations will fail if
they cannot handle the problem of corruption. This is true not only for
China, India and Europe but also for Russia and other rising, populous
states including the super-rich but corrupt oil powers
of the Middle East. What is relevant is building on a sound foundation,
not coveting immoral and unethical practices that seem to bring instant
wealth. Peace, which Europe gained by the Community, can continue to
bring vast improvement in technical and moral progress, when the real
keys of the supranational system are honestly applied.
Where Mr Blair makes a further fundamental mistake is to ignore the
fact that a Grand Bargain has already been made. It is the politicians
too often who are responsible for not holding to it. Take for instance
the European Commission. Mr Blair says it should be elected. That sounds
fair. But it is not what the Grand Bargain of 18 April 1951 to put an
end to war made actually says. Electing the President would throw the
whole procedure into the hands of the political parties who have a near
monopoly of putting up candidates. It would reinforce the party
political control of the institutions. Within the main political parties
a small group of party officials decides on who should be candidate.
Thus the whole process puts the presidency of the Commission into the
hands of party machines and a few apparatchiks who decide.
This is an oligarchic system and has great dangers. It does not
oppose antidemocratic attitudes of fellow politicians. The European
Council would reinforce its undemocratic meetings of all and everything
in secret. The ultra-secret Eurozone group would cook up lawless schemes
to bilk the public of trillions of euros. No democratic control is
possible. The Commission becomes fully complicit in any corruption. The
independence of the Commission from governments, and from political
parties and from any commercial, industrial or other interest group, is
fundamental to the Community system.
This proposal of Mr Blair is directly opposite to what the original
Grand Bargain entailed. So what was the Grand Bargain of 18 April 1951?
It provided a way to end war between Member States. It created FIVE mutually independent institutions
to safeguard this bargain and to build the future. By separately
analyzing and then cross-checking the proposal of an impartial
Commission (alone able to propose legislation), the most democratically
fair bargain could be struck to provide the basis for European laws,
taxes and budgets.
1. The European Commission must be (a)
INDEPENDENT and (b) represent Europe not national interests or in fact
not be tied to any interest group at all. The Commission must be
impartial. Therefore the selection of the future Commissioners must be made by a process that would avoid political corruption or the election of those representing special interests.
2. The Commission should be in permanent dialogue with a consultative body representing Organized Civil Society. These Consultative Committees
should be elected equally from three lists of European professional
organizations representing workers, consumers and entrepreneurs. There
should also be elections for the Committee of Regions and the Euratom Committees. These Consultative Committees have full powers in the preparation and supervision of all European legislation.
3. The Council of Ministers should be held
in OPEN sessions. There should be no taxation without full and
appropriate debate both inside the Council and also in the national
parliaments.
4. The European Parliament should be elected according to a single statute
for all the territory of the European Union. There should no longer be
27 national elections where the government parties bias the rules in
favour of their own political parties. (Under the Lisbon Treaty the
Parliament gave up its prime weapon for democracy — the ability to sack
the Commission.)
5. The Court of Justice should be composed
of impartial judges who are open to all tribunals and courts for their
ruling on the interpretation of European law.
This is not what has happened in Europe recently where we have seen
treaties brought in by secretive cabals of politicians, meeting in the
dead of night in European Councils. These treaties are not OPEN nor are
they agreed freely by the people. They are as legitimate as the measures
brought in by the Politburos of the so-called ‘People’s Democracies’ of
the Soviet era. Worse, the politicians went ahead even though, in the
few referendums that the politicians permitted, the public of several
nations pronounced decisively against them. Then the politicians changed
the system so that no further referendums would be permitted,
especially in the founder States who knew exactly what abuses had been
committed by de Gaulle and others!
The Great Charter said that the Community was the TRUE FOUNDATION of an organized Europe. It was declared as the first instance of a supranational organization
in the world. It was a Community of peoples (not political groups). It
set as prime condition that the people must be ‘FREE TO CHOOSE’. The
first measure of renewing the Grand Bargain is to republish this Great
Charter. It is the first Statute of European Law.
Mr Blair said: ‘I bear the scars of participation in
the Amsterdam Treaty, the Nice Treaty, the – Laeken process culminating
in the Lisbon Treaty and the 2005 EU budget negotiation, when the UK
held the Presidency – the most difficult negotiation I participated in,
(even including the Northern Ireland peace agreement.) Many of those
here today bear similar scars! ‘
The politicians are likely to get many more scars until they learn
their lessons about the real foundations of European democracy.
What is the most Fundamental Right for citizens in any society? You won't find it in the Lisbon Treaty's Charter of Fundamental Rights. It just isn't there. It is far more fundamental than any 'Fundamental' human right in Lisbon's Charter of Fundamental Rights. It's easy to explain its absence. The Charter of the Lisbon Treaty was written or supervised by politicians who did not want citizens to be aware of their most fundamental right.
Yet once upon a time, the most Fundamental political Right was agreed and recognized by politicians ... or rather by real Statesmen. They were the Founding Fathers. Today's politicians are trying to bury that fact. They are trying to blot out all memory that it once was recognized by governments and in treaties.
The Council of Ministers would be horrified if you or any other citizens knew about it! They fear the case against their dictatorial attitudes will be lost -- not only in the Court of Public Opinion. It could be lost and reversed against them in the European Court of Justice! This is also the reason that the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament and the somnabulent Economic and Social Committee refused to recognize the Great Charter was 60 years old on 18 April 2011. It is the reason that the Great Charter of the European Community has never been publicized by the politically submissive Commission.
The politicians and more specifically the political parties want 500 million citizens to forget that they can do far more than just kick them right out of power -- all of them. Elections are not much use if all parties are corrupt or aquiesce to the corruption of others, as a recent case showed. What power does the consumer have if a cartel or a multinational lobbyist is simultaneously subsidizing and wining and dining all the major parties? Political parties are Europe's biggest unregistered lobbyists. They can hide unsavoury lobbying of the powerful, as can goverment ministers. An election only changes one set of faces for the next but the policy bought by an industrial cartel stays the same. The cartel is laughing all the way to the bank.
Because parties have their own agenda, their own ideologies, but also a shotage of funds from the public, they lack public support. It is that distrust between the people and their supposed representatives that the Fundamental Right of the Great Charter addresses. In the People's Democratic Republics of the Soviet era, the people were allowed to vote for a variety of parties but it made not the slightest difference about freeing themselves from the Soviet orbit. Nor did they have freedom of thought, for example in religious matters or anti-Marxist criticism.
Today what is most important is for the citizens to retain the right to decide what type of democracy Europe should have. The major parties form a political cartel of power against the 98 percent of the population who refuse to join a party or even vote. A system run by a political cartel defending their super-privileged power structures is another form of dictatorship.
It can refuse to recognize any and all national referendums against their proposals (such as the Constitutional Treaty).
It can refuse to allow referendums in other countries where they know the cause is lost before they start.
It can then increase their own salaries and expenses without any controls -- such that the 'expenses' are far more than the average wages of ordinary citizens.
It controls the purse-strings of the budget, jobs, committees and policies.
It can ignore public opinion. Policies are often simplistic as politicians are unable to deal with the complexity of modern life and all too often they impose ideas at variance with public opinion (who often know better).
It can contort healthy economic policy to stay in power. Politicians encourage property booms and financial bubbles because they provide instant cash for their State projects. They refuse to balance the budgets preferring to try to bribe voters with money they do not have. The public then pays for the consequences.
In short, the Lisbon Treaty EU is becoming more like the German Democratic Republic of the early postwar period. They had parties called Socialist, Christian Democrats and Liberals, but in reality they were counterfeits controlled by the Communist party of the Soviet Union. The proof is in their deceitful and fraudulent attitudes to referendums.
Choosing the FORM of Democracy is the most Fundamental of all Fundamental political Rights. Not all forms are equal. Each nation, however, has the right to choose its own democratic system. Robert Schuman, the Father of Europe, recognized many different forms of democracy. Unusual for a Frenchman from Republican France, he observed pragmatically that some constitutional monarchies respect democratic practice more than some republican forms of governments. The choice, however, is up to the citizens of each country. The main mission of all is to make each more democratic and fair.
If that is the case for each Member State, then do Europeans have the right to choose how democracy is organized at a European level? Schuman said emphatically: Yes. Furthermore he put that right as one of the first, one of the most fundamental of rights, into the very first agreement of governments right at the beginning of the modern Europe. He got every minister at the Treaty signature ceremony to sign it. It was also presented to the public so that all the parliaments of the six founder States could ratify it. And so they did.
It is called the Great Charter of Europe. It was signed sixty years ago. Isn't it curious that that date was not celebrated by the Council of Ministers?
It was the sixtieth Birthday of the first meeting of the Council of Ministers.
It was the sixtieth Anniversary of the governmental decision that brought them into existence as INDEPENDENT institutions. How forgetful they are! How ungrateful!
The Community is an act of faith in the solidarity of peoples and nations that are persuaded that the future holds no place for war amongst themselves and corruption that exploits their neighbours and themselves. The Great Charter fundamental right of being 'free to choose' assures the means to clean out corruption from oligarchic and cartel powers.
Maladministration can be addressed to the European Ombudsman. The following is my reaction to the inadequate excuses of the European Commission -- that is supposed to be the Guardian of the Treaties -- as to why they have not published the Great Charter or even the correct version of the Schuman Declaration. It is not just a matter for the European Ombudsman but for European citizens. It is their Great Charter. It is everyone's Fundamental Right that is being challenged and buried.
Dear Ombudsman,
This is to clarify my dissatisfaction with the Commission's non-reply to the main issues for which I requested a response, together with lack of figures and details of hierarchical responsibility. I have already sent you a copy of my letter back to the Commission DG Communication (also included below).
1. NO financial figures were given about how much was spent on the Schuman Declaration activities in 2010, by which I mean directly relevant Schuman Declaration activities, not cocktails and publicising other people's activities. A comparable case was the 'Together since 1957' programme which had a logo. What activities had a '60 years of the Schuman Declaration' logo or equivalent? What was said, what was published, what was broadcast about how the Declaration and the treaty provided for a peace system that gives present citizens the longest period of peace in more than 2000 years of history?
2. The Commission DG says that the Commission will correct what it has till now wrongly called the FULL text of the Schuman Declaration. It has been clear for half a century it is not the FULL text. The present Commission has for more than a decade facsimile copies of the originals, as I pointed out. The Commission still has not said what it means by FULL text. This needs to be spelt out as it already has its own 'flexible' definition of 'full' -- equivalent to what normal people call 'abridged, uncorrected and incomplete'. I request the Ombudsman to ask for clarification from the Commission.
Nowadays, due to this persistent error of the Commission and other EU institutions, nearly every other private and public publication including school textbooks and academic material, as well as European organisations and political parties, now use the wrong version. How and when will the Commission make the corrections and will it give conferences about it? Will all the institutions signal it widely with a prolonged programme? This situation has arisen because of the wilful Commission action in publishing the inaccurate version, prolonged incompetence in not checking the readily available facsimiles and the authentic sources, and inertia and refusal to reply to many letters and correspondence from the public over the years pointing out the errors. How does it propose to clean up the errors in publications and on the Web?
3. I asked who was responsible for the outright refusal to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the day the Founding Fathers called the 'true foundation of Europe'. The non-answer was 'it was not selected by the institutions.' ! This is an evasive circumlocution. I know, and you will be aware from the absence of even a press release, that it was not only NOT selected but the persons responsible deemed the true foundation of Europe should be ignored to such an extent no one should hear a whisper about it from the institutions. Why? and Who? The Ombudsman should also be aware that besides the daily televised press conferences, briefings on legal, political and other matters, the dozens of daily press releases, the Commission also publishes each Friday a 5 or 6 page 'Calendrier' (CLDR series) of the coming week. It includes all the meetings of the Commissioners for the coming week plus 'previsions' of the main events and meetings for the month. A competent staff instructed to provide diary and anniversary information must have been told by their political masters and mistresses to ignore and omit any mention of what should be the most important date for the existence of the Commission -- the day when governments signed it into existence in the treaty, 18 April 1951.
The circular answer from DG Communication is aimed at hiding political responsibility. It is gross mal-administration because the public, including the tax-payer, is not able to call to account through this anonymity those responsible for misuse of public funds and distorting political influence. Names should be named on money matters and no policy of hiding political responsibility for misleading propaganda should be countenanced by the Ombudsman. The silence and the blotting out of the historical facts about the 'true foundation of Europe ' contrasts starkly with the millions spent subsidizing and campaigning for the false 'Birthday' of 1957 -- a pure fiction, subscribed to by none of the Founding Fathers. A bureaucracy should not be allowed to cloak what is politically or administratively embarrassing on such a serious matter as multimillion euro budgets and public education about European democracy. In this case the political action aims at hiding the legally agreed Human Rights of citizens recognized at the time of the foundation of Europe by (a) Member States (b) the European institutions about to be created and set in action as European governance. Furthermore who, might I ask, was responsible for spending 4 million euros and possibly much more on false propaganda about 'Together since 1957'?
4. The same goes even more for the Charter Declaration on Europe by the Founding fathers. What is the Commission's plan to correct this omission in publications, on the Web and also in the legal databases? How is it planning to make citizens aware that the 'right to choose' about Europe's organisation is fundamental and that the Founding Fathers considered that supranational democracy was the TRUE FOUNDATION of Europe rather than the present deformation of the system (intergovernmentalism)?
5. There are urgent and far-reaching reasons that the 1951 Great Charter should be published widely and be the primary and key part of the legal corpus of the Communities and the present EU. Some of these reasons are given in my letter to DG Communication. The right of citizens enshrined in the Charter goes beyond the 54 'fundamental rights' of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the Lisbon Treaty. In articles 53 and 54 of the latter it is clear that earlier rights such as specified in the Founding fathers' Great Charter are not abrogated in any way. One of the rights in the Great Charter is more fundamental that any of the 'fundamental rights' of the Lisbon Charter of Fundamental Rights. The Great Charter gives all citizens the right to choose how Europe should be organised democratically, describes the initial 5-institution framework to be developed and says it can inspire democratic impulsions beyond its frontiers as a totally new type of foreign policy. It specifies that systems such as the People's Democracies of the Soviet era are not acceptable as Member States of the Communities or the EU. This exclusion requires and provides the means to define democracy more accurately than it is being used nowadays and refine the Community system to make it develop more fairly in the future. The publication of the Great Charter and its legal use are therefore of major importance both for the Courts and for the Ombudsman.
The 1951 Great Charter is a legal document at the heart of European Community and EU law, so defined by Robert Schuman in his writings and the other Founding Fathers. The 1951 Great Charter is a concomitant part of the Treaty of Paris, signed by governments and ratified by all 11 chambers of parliaments in the Six Member States plus a number of other bodies such as economic and social committees of Member States. Like all treaties, all charters and all laws, it obliges the signatory powers and all others affected by it to publish it so that it may be fully applied. In the last paragraph the Charter as a legal document says succinctly:
that all governments have a public responsibility to interact, explain and interpret in their national contexts,
that all parliaments and other organisations should be actively participating in public debates to elucidate the supranational democratic principles involved and
that the European institutions must have the support of public opinion for their functioning and be willing to interact fully within the agreed structures as their service to Europeans for peace and prosperity.
Should you have any questions on the above. please do not hesitate to contact me.
