Brexit and Renaissance for European Democracy. Why PM May spoke in Florence in 2017.

On 22 September 2017 Prime Minister took her leading ministers and a gaggle of press to Italy. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was there. So was Brexit Secretary David Davis and Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond. Why? Just for a speech! Then they all returned to London.

Does Germany’s Angela Merkel take such a day trip to foreign lands with her ministers? Does M. Macron? Leaders usually don’t waste taxpayers money for such extravaganzas. They have pride in their own towns and cities.
Aren’t there great cities in Britain? Some are as old or older than Florence. Florence was founded as a settlement by the Etruscans around 200 BCE. it was destroyed by the Romans and rebuilt by Julius Caesar. There are cities in Britain many centuries older. Britain saw off Caesar twice when he tried to invade. He shuffled off to Rome in shame.
Mrs May decided not to take her ministers to Paris, the City of Light. She eschewed Berlin that vortex of the German superpower. Nor were the friendly neighbours of the Netherlands, Belgium or Luxembourg asked to provide a venue. Instead she chose Italy. She tripped to a provincial town, not Rome. Nor did she invite the Italian Prime Minister to listen to her.
What did she do in Florence? She spoke. Aren’t there modern auditoriums in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland?
Apparently not as fitting as the place the British leader chose in Italy. Even as a founder State of the European Community, Italy was then considered on the margins of European power-brokering. Poland and the countries newly freed from the Soviet yoke were not on her list for a suitable backdrop for her speech. And the room in which she spoke was hardly an auditorium with modern acoustics.

Did she choose a richly ornate palace? No. Did she choose the British Institute with its famous library that was celebrating its 100th anniversary? No.
She spoke in an Abbey that had been in disuse. The Santa Maria Novella is the first basilica built in Florence. It dates from the early fifteenth century. But it had been taken over by squatters — pigeons. The place had to cleaned up from their droppings. It was considered an annex of the military police force, the Scuola Sottufficale Carabinieri.

What did PM May say to explain and justify this expense and rupture of custom? She began her speech — without anyone welcoming or introducing her — by saying:

“It’s good to be here in this great city of Florence today at a critical time in the evolution of the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union. It was here, more than anywhere else, that the Renaissance began –

• a period of history that inspired centuries of creativity and critical thought across our continent and which in many ways defined what it meant to be European.
• A period of history whose example shaped the modern world.
• A period of history that teaches us that when we come together in a spirit of ambition and innovation, we have it within ourselves to do great things.”

“To do great things” together sounds like a forecast.

What do we see today?

• Europe is in crisis.
• UK is in crisis.
• The Westminster Parliament is in crisis.

That could have been said of the general state of Europe in the 1400s. That is why the Santa Maria Novella is an important landmark. The basilica held a meeting in 1439 between European leaders and theologians and the Emperor of the Roman Empire whose practical area of administration was reduced to Constantinople. In the long imperial absence from western European affairs, although he still retained legal primacy, the pope had set up a phantom Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. (It was Fake News, Fake History. It was neither holy, nor Roman nor German!) A decade and a half later in 1453 the Roman Empire, founded around 750 BCE with a millennium-long capital Constantinople, was extinguished by the Ottoman Turks.

The papacy claimed temporal powers over kings and kingdoms. It had tried to extend its fiefdom to the Angles and Saxons with the mission of Augustine around 600. (The Britons who knew better resisted this intrusion.)

Rome’s main weapon was the Latin language and its Latin version of the Bible to the exclusion of the original languages. The Reformation showed it was a Fake too. Greek had not been taught in Italy for seven centuries before the events of Santa Maria Novella. As for the Hebrew Scriptures, only the Jews and some persecuted non-Catholics even knew that this was the sacred tongue of Moses and Jesus.

In 1420 Pope Martin V called for “the extirpation of Wycklifites, Hussites and other heretics” who were not taken by Catholicism. This followed centuries of slaughter of Waldenians, Henricans, Petrobusians and Bogomils. Historian Raphael Lempkin coined the term “genocide” to describe the perhaps one million killed in the Albigensian-Cathar “crusade“.

Why did the Byzantine emperor decide to come west to what was legally part of his empire but effectively lost? That followed decades of Councils organised by European rulers aiming to reform the debauched papacy and bring peace. The emperor sent his envoys. One of the emperors diplomat/scholars, Chrysolorus, stayed on to become professor of Greek in Florence. The Medicis knew that knowledge was power.

Truth has explosive force. So does reaction to corruption.

Florence and Rome were at loggerheads. In 1478 Pope Sixtus IV tried to assassinate the Medici brothers in Florence’s cathedral. Giuliano died. Leonardo da Vinci, then the same age, became the envoy of Lorenzo Medici to help build up anti-Roman military power in Milan. The Florentine bishops excommunicated pope Sixtus IV. He ‘waded deep in crime and bloodshed,’ wrote a contemporary.

In 1439 the emperor wouldn’t go to Rome. Nor would the pope travel to Ravenna, erstwhile imperial capital in the west, then under Venetian control. So he came to Florence where there was a semblance of biblical scholarship.

Florence was overwhelmed by the arrival of Emperor John Paleologus VIII decked in oriental splendour and with a sumptuous retenue of 700. He also brought with him Joseph II, Patriarch of Constantinople, together with 22 metropolitans, bishops and many theologians and scholars. Pope Eugenius IV may have been surprised to know that his title of ‘pope‘ came from the Greek word meaning ‘father‘ and was applied to all priests in the Greek-speaking world and earlier throughout Europe.

But rich as he might appear, the Roman emperor lacked arms and armies to defend his capital that Constantine established in the 320s. He was shaken by the Catholics’ fraudulent claims too. Would he trade his Orthodox “heresy”, submit to a union with the Roman Catholic pope in exchange for west European swords and men?

This tentative of unity failed on a number of counts. Europe failed to send troops to defend Constantinople. And the theologians there would not countenance the errors of the popes.

The lasting legacy was not the personalities involved. Who remembers their names buried amid fakes of power-brokers? It was that Europeans were able to understand the original Greek and Hebrew and get to grips with the quest for truth in a world full of Fakes. Erasmus published the Greek text side-by-side with an accurate Latin translation.

Fake Faith was finished.

Truth was the motor of the Renaissance.

Brussels and London and all the other capitals are faced with the same problem of truth and true democracy. As usual they may try every other way but the right one until everything else is eliminated. It is time for Europeans to rid themselves of fake history and fake treaties like that of Lisbon. They were rejected in referendums.

It is time to reassert the elementary idea that democracies mean that the people, not the unaccountable politicians, are in charge. That is why the five European institutions of Schuman and the European Founding Fathers that describe a fair and honest balance between

• Nations,
• Associations,
• Individuals

must eventually prevail.

13 Cyprus-3 How a Community solution can revive Cyprus and the Mediterranean.

1. The lost truck
How do you solve the following problem? A large lorry from a Member State of the EU arrives by ship at a port in Cyprus with goods for delivery. All the custom documents are in order according to EU legislation. Unfortunately the goods were intended for the Cypriot Greek south of the island and the lorry arrived in a port in the Cypriot Turkish north. The truck with a sealed TIR consignment was driven to the inter-communal border but was refused any passage across it.

This incident provoked a crisis between the Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking communities. Both communities discussed it at the highest level. It reached a logjam. A simple truck became high politics. So what happened? The truck returned to the port of Famagusta, it was loaded on a ship and was returned to the European Member State from whence it came. Later it was placed on another ship and sailed to a Greek Cypriot port.

Thus the importer was faced with massive extra costs. And who was responsible? We can judge for ourselves. The importer was under the impression that there was a European Single Market. Apparently the importer did not take the two community leaders to the European Court!

West Europeans today might denounce this sort of thing as kindergarten politics, however, before 1951 and the European Community, the same Europeans were skilled practitioners in this type of difficult, uncivilized and uncooperative behaviour.

Be encouraged! The States of the European Community – before it existed – faced far bigger problems. Even among supposedly friendly countries the complexity of the problem was horrific. In the north of Belgium the border between Belgium and the Netherlands is worse than a Swiss cheese. Not only are there exclaves of Belgium inside the Netherlands, there are even enclaves and exclaves inside these holes in the Swiss cheese. This was paradise for smugglers trying to escape controls of one national government against another.

And that was not the worst problem. Neighbouring countries had been at war with each other – and bred long family traditions of hate and distrust – for CENTURIES. Continental Europe had been turned into a slave society by the Master Race with mass murder as State policy of the Nazis, supported and paid for by major, global corporations. There were millions of displaced citizens. Yet within FIVE short years after the end of the most horrendous and hate-filled war in all European history the problem was solved! The Schuman Declaration was made 60 years ago. Have we learned the lesson?

How did the other Europeans solve this problem with the first common market? How did they solve the problem of centuries-long war? On the face of it, the lorry cargo problem is a small, purely technical question with economic implications. But such incidents become highly political. Bad politics lead to distrust and distrust leads to war. That was Europeans’ experience before Europe’s first Community, the European Coal and Steel Community. When in 1953 the first single market was created, it was at first purely in coal, iron and steel products. But it solved a major problem: war, hate and distrust.

Later the Community experiment proved so successful that the single market was created in other goods and services. (Customs Union and Euratom)

A Cyprus Community solution will provide the means to solve all outstanding issues between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.

2. The process
The first lesson: start simply but decisively. This must lay the real basis for a developing Community interest. Thus one particular problem has to be solved at a time. Not all together. Choosing a Community solution will solve all outstanding problems based on the same principles of justice. In 1950 Europeans did not chose a 'Package deal' -- which will all separately unwrap if not based on true principles -- but a single supranational solution that grows organically to make the New Europe.

How would supranational principles avoid a political deadlock in the case of the lorry scandal?

First the small group of people should be created who were trusted by both Turkish and Greek Cypriots. Such persons do not necessarily have to be Cypriots but they must have experience in Cypriot affairs. They must have the confidence of both parties for their impartiality. They should be able to speak with authority.

According to Europe’s first treaty, such a High Authority should be experienced and independent. Yes, that goes against the grain for politicians. But the treaty is insistent. These eminent people who constitute a ‘High Authority’ should ‘exercise their functions in full independence in the general interest of the community’. It says that ‘in accomplishing their duties, they shall neither solicit nor accept any instructions.’ From whom? Not from any government, not from any other body or organisation, political party, nor any individual. ‘They must refrain from any act incompatible with the supranational character of their functions.’

Supranational means that they have full delegated authority from the governments. Governments, political parties or any other interest will not interfere. Furthermore they should not be members of any interested body. They should resign from any body if they are members.

That is pretty clear. The High Authority acts like impartial judges so that it can come up with an impartial decision. (In later treaties the Authority is called the European Commission.) Like any honest brokers, conciliators or judges, their free will and free judgement must not be undermined. When Schuman was Minister of Justice he said that judges were responsible only to their own conscience.

Thus governments and political parties must exercise self-restraint. That may seem hard for parties and governments that wish to see they have a thumb in every issue. But if governments want sincerely to solve the problem, this is the way to go about it.

So we have a High Authority. It will only deal with one sector. Governments will not lose power. It will deal only with one issue agreed by both communities. In the case we are discussing it will deal only with the free movement of goods across the island and the access of all EU companies to both communities and to all Cypriots as purchasers and consumers, buyers and sellers.

3. How can Cypriots be sure the High Authority acts fairly?
This question was solved in the European Community by creating a body engaging organized civil society. It was called the Consultative Committee. It was a sort of parliamentary assembly – but only for associations, not individual electors, political parties or lobbies. It represented the overall interests of three sections of society: the producers, the consumers and the workers in the sectors in the treaty. The Committee is the specialist, technical agency for the Community. So if the system was to be applied to the fruit market, a third of the consultative committee would represent fruit producer associations (farmers) a third would represent fruit purchasers and eaters (who are concerned with quality and price) and a third would be composed of workers (so that if the price fell they would not be working on slave wages or have to submit to dangerous insecticides).

Ideally the Consultative Committee would be composed of a small number of independent Cyprus-wide associations. It could initially for a transition period be composed of existing associations. One of the first duties of the interim Committee would be to lay down impartial criteria for the definition of a Cyprus-wide association (its democratic and open basis in each section).

With such clear definitions in hand, any association could apply for recognition by the entire Cypriot community. Those associations that fulfilled the criteria would then become the electors for the new democratic body. They would be issued with one vote each, and elect a number of associations that corresponded with the predetermined size of the body. They would have to take into account that not all associations could be present in the Committee. Therefore their task would have to choose associations that were the most impartial and representative of the general interest. Those elected would also have to have excellent network contacts with the local and specialist interests. Why? Because if any question came up the Committee would be charged with finding out how all producers, consumers and workers would react to it. For example, it may relate to how costs should be defined both for city dwellers and for those who live in more inaccessible places. Armed with comprehensive data, they could debate the optimum solution, the best common approach to common problems.

The function of the High Authority would be to make decisions, recommendations or laws, relative to the issues it was designed to solve. The Authority would be in permanent dialogue with the Consultative Committee to see what the main issues were, what sort of solution was preferred and how, when and where to tackle it. The Authority could make decisions when there was an immediate problem like the European lorry that could not circulate across the island, or it could make more long-term proposals to create a healthier basis for trade.

To ensure that a good balance was made, and fair and just decisions are always available, three additional bodies are required to maintain the democratic rule of law. They would also provide the five-institution nucleus for a permanent democratic process in any other sector that needed to be added to ensure peace, justice and harmony.

For example, what happens to the interests of the individual in all this? The Community system installed a parliament with some special features, not always performed in our own parliaments. The parliament was to see that the bureaucracy did not get out of hand. It acted as a supervisor of the whole system. That meant it should review the decisions, recommendations and laws that the Authority had implemented. It should clean out the verbiage, make laws understandable and as simple as possible and should see to it that the overall effect was just and fair. A complex law or recommendation might have the right result but it would be far better if the man or woman in the street fully understood it and saw that it was so.

The parliament would have further special powers in that it could dismiss the Authority if it thought that some corruption of mismanagement was going on. It makes an annual review assessing the positive developments.

Would the existing governments be left out? Not at all. The equivalent of the Council of Ministers could be set up so that it could also give its input. In this example it would require the ministers of agriculture or trade to meet.

4. How it would work
In the system as original proposed by Robert Schuman the following would be the working scenario. The High Authority, in permanent dialogue with the Consultative Committee, (representing entrepreneurs, workers and consumers), would be appraised of the most urgent problems and strategic challenges. It would make a proposal for action: either a decision affecting one case, a general recommendation or a law. It would send the draft of this proposal to the Consultative Committee, the Council of Ministers (in this case a meeting of Turkish and Greek community ministers.) It would also go to the assembly of parliamentarians delegated for the purpose. Each of these three bodies, Consultative Committee, Ministers and parliamentarians need to discuss the proposal to see if it is fair for all. They can suggest amendments but they have to agree on them as a body. Each body would give its own Opinion. Thus the Committee would vote on their Opinion, the Ministers would agree what they thought best, and the parliamentarians would vote on what they thought could be improved in the proposal. It is up to the High Authority to accept and reject these opinions for amendments, as it sees best.

But what if the High Authority did something palpably unjust? Let us say, that the lorry owner, who was a foreigner and not a Cypriot, took the brunt as a scapegoat. He was asked to pay a fine because of the trouble he had caused. That is where the fifth body comes in. That is the Court of Justice. It is there as a last resort, because the other institutions should be able to solve all Cypriot problems. And if the special Court in Cyprus did not give him satisfaction, the lorry-owner could take the matter to the European Court. In fact, everyone in Cyprus, whether an individual or an association or a community could take the matter to Court. This right was written into the Treaty of Paris and subsequent treaties. There is no reason why Cypriots should not enjoy the right too.

To solve the problem of the wandering lorry, this five-institution system may seem complex. But it is not for a lost lorry that it would be created. It would be to make Cyprus the jewel of democracy and harmony and a full and active member of the Community system. The institutions would only involve a handful of people to ensure fairness for all.

5. How to start
What problem should Cypriots tackle first? The easiest or the most difficult? The essential feature of Schuman’s strategy was to build TRUST based on universal, that is, supranational values. Robert Schuman, the founder and initiator of the European Community system, called it a process of detoxification. Once he had established the Convention of Human Rights in the Council of Europe, he chose to start with a question of the most vital interest to all Europeans: war and peace. It was the most crucial issue for everything else, not the easiest one.

Furthermore the system works! No democratic system had a harder trial than stopping war that had persisted for centuries in Europe. Robert Schuman warned that the Community method was designed to prevent such a potential suicide and to make ‘war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.’ All the founding fathers who signed the Europe Declaration on 18 April 1951 agreed with him. So did the general public. Europeans are no living in the longest period of peace in more than two thousand years.

A supranational solution will have extremely positive repercussions for the island of Cyprus, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Mediterranean basin, all of Europe and for the entire planet. The challenge is now with the people of Cyprus. The world is waiting.