Circus4: Byzantine Commission structure provides jobs for unemployed European politicians

The Commission’s drive to reduce unemployment is working!

Five former prime ministers and 19 former ministers have found jobs. They have high-paid employment as Commissioners in Jean-Claude Juncker‘s new Commission, announced on 10 September 2014. It is composed of a record-breaking number of politicians — twenty eight. It is 100 percent, wall-to-wall card-carrying politicians.

Career politicians are happy. They are being paid from public taxes. There is not a normal person, a non-politician, in sight. Candidates from among Europe’s 500 million citizens have been side-lined. Many could fill the role better than politicians: leaders in industry, law, advocacy, human rights, non-governmental organizations, ombudsmen, scientists, engineers. All honest people are eliminated by government leaders. That action is against the clear right of all citizens to be candidates for the job:

The Lisbon Treaty Article 10 TEU says:

10 para 3. Every citizen shall have the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union. Decisions shall be taken as openly and as closely as possible to the citizen.

Politicians want the Commission to be exclusively controlled by a dangerous party cartel. Cartels are dishonest, illegal and led to WW1.

The European Commission is political but it should not be party political, controlled by a party clique.The first President of the European Economic Community, Walter Hallstein said:

In principle, we have no [political] competences … because there is nothing of that nature in the Rome Treaty. But we have political responsibility because we are a political – not an economic – enterprise. The Common Market has the goal of unifying Europe politically.

Political parties, whether national or European, do not represent all of Europe. They are at best an important part but they do not encompass all interests of Europe. They cannot really be impartial honest broker. Parties are partisan, representing a vocal part of the population. The European Commission must address all issues of all citizens. It must also address important matters such as the need to stop party political corruption and the need for governments to obey European law.

Hallstein was previously not a minister but an unelected civil servant in Adenauer’s government. He was chosen as president because, as formerly a professor of law and an ardent defender of democracy, he was better placed than others to lead in the struggle against egocentric politicians such as Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle wanted to destroy Europe’s last chance for peace in its supranational institutions because he wanted to dominate the Continent for himself.

Hallstein called de Gaulle’s attempts to dismantle the peace progress achieved on the path to a supranational Europe “the greatest act of destruction in the history of Europe, even of the free world, since Hitler” (der größte Zerstörungsakt in der Geschichte Europas, ja der freien Welt, seit den Tagen Hitlers).

Politicians have been trying to create a peace structure in Europe for a thousand years. They all failed until the idea of a supranational Community was initiated. Its principles, however, are often ignored or abused. Politicians, especially later ones, have shown by their incompetence that they do not know how to bring peace, either in Yugoslavia, North Africa, Syria or in many other areas of the world. European politicians meddle ignorantly with the primary mechanism of an impartial Commission at their peril. It endangers all European citizens.

By the Treaty Law, the European Commission should have a small, limited number of experienced people who have no further outside ties or interests. They should seek European common interest. Instead the politicians have refused to follow this. They have been trying to foist two major changes on the public:

• The Member States should each have one Commissioner.
• The Commissioners should all be card-holding party politicians

The upshot of these illegal moves is that politicians have excluded all well-qualified European citizens who could be considered Commissioners.This nepotism of a party clique would be serious matter of corruption in a town or commune. It is major corruption for the European Union which controls the strings of a 14 trillion euro economy ($18.5 trillion).

Who benefits? The political parties of the three major ‘families’ the ‘European People’s Party’ (George Orwell is spinning in his grave!), Socialists and Liberals. All other parties are excluded except for one. That is the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom. Apparently the British are keen to ‘renegotiate’ except when it comes to ‘jobs for the boys’.

The illegal innovations contradict both the letter and the spirit of the treaties. Why? National representation assumes that the person is not impartial. How should it be done? The most obvious way is to have an impartial jury and let the public nominate those they consider fair-minded and independent Europeans.

It would be more honest if government leaders nominated someone who was not a national of theirs and considered by all Europeans as impartial. Secondly those they nominate are obviously not impartial because they are friends and colleagues of the government leaders — who have many critics. They are also of the same political party. Having card-carrying party members proves they are not chosen according to the Treaty criteria. A party politician is partisan — the very opposite of impartial and independent.

European elections show voter turn-out at an all time low in spite of some countries having compulsory voting. Public opinion is more and more alienated from the European institutions.

The European Commission was set up and seen as the honest broker for diverse European interests. No more. The public has seen politicians fiddle the books on the euro. They have fiddled the statistics. Major countries like France and Germany have refused to follow the judgements of the European Court.

The politicians’ solution? Make the European Council the arbiter of ‘fiddling’! Change the European Commission that took them to Court — which once had no party politicians– to become exclusively the home of retired or unwanted politicians or those coveting an income boost.

What will be the outcome? Firstly more politicians means more political scandals and infighting. Secondly a continued amount of public distrust both of the politicians and unfortunately for the European institutions.

1: Where's the democratic debate in Europe?

America has had its presidential election. Where is Europe’s democracy? Who should be the leader of the economic Super-Power on this side of the Atlantic? Where and how can European voters find the most suitable person to help organize a Community of some 500 million people and the world’s largest trading power?
On 15 April 2008, when governments of the EU eventually published the proposed Lisbon Treaty still in provisional form, a dozen parliaments had already ratified it. Isn’t it unusual, even bad form, to ratify something you haven’t seen? Would you buy a used car without seeing the engine — or more importantly — finding if the brakes work? Would you buy an insurance policy or a parachute without knowing the contents? Why are politicians in such a rush?
It’s a presidential race. But nothing like USA. The EU, a world super-power, even larger economically and commercially than the USA, has no presidential elections. Not even for the new-fangled, 2½-year presidency of the European Council, the body where heads of governments decide EU policy in secret.
The big difference between the United States and Europe is that the new treaty will provide enough presidents for a football team. There will be presidents for the European Council, another for the Council of Ministers, presidents for the Parliament, a president for the Economic and Social Committee, and a president for the Committee of Regions. There will be untold presidents for the secret committees like the Monetary Committee, Council and the Coreper committees. And that is not to mention the innumerable Agencies, sometimes a law unto themselves.
But with all this football team for the boys and girls of the political parties to splash mud, it will not kick off the first Europe-wide elections specified in all treaties back to 1951. Has no one read the treaties? Does anyone understand the founding principles of European democracy? Instead the so-called ‘reform’ politically stitches up the referee in the most brazen and unscrupulous denial of democracy in modern times.
Governments keep silent about one president — that of the European Commission. It is Europe’s most essential post. More than just the referee, the Commission, and only the Commission, can make a proposal for legislation. The Commission is like the person who cuts the cake into fair and equal slices, before the greedy children, the governments, chose portions. It proposes policies for the common good of 27 democracies. Competence and impartiality are indispensable. The Commission can do far more than cut cakes fairly. It can propose how, when and where all Member States, working together in democratic harmony, can bake a new cake of common policy together. When States know they can trust each other, they can accomplish positive things beyond their previous, limited, nationalistic vision. They can help each other and the world beyond, now in sore need of peace.
Does the system work? You bet! The founding Coal and Steel Community of 1951 ended Europe’s incessant wars and dismantled greedy and dangerous cartels. Drawing inspiration from moral philosophy, not yah-booh politics, the Commission must exude fairness and honesty in a Europe of values.
In short, the President of the Commission had to be chosen by several characteristics that some politicians do not wish to examine: namely, and above all, independence. That means an honest character, who is not attached to any commercial, governmental or POLITICAL grouping. He or she should have the requisite experience and, as the treaties imply, humility!
The founding fathers, like Robert Schuman, designed this democratic high authority to strengthen member state democracies. They insisted that the Commission be totally independent of governments. How? Firstly, governments had to chose the president unanimously. Unanimity guarantees some impartiality as any country can veto a dishonest candidate. Big states vetoed each other’s biased and self-serving nominees. The Commission had to build trust between States. That’s why it has to be independent, impartial and experienced. Quite often, good Europeans to act as President could only be found in smaller countries.
Today, politicians think they know better. Their contribution is usually to throw sand into a delicately working motor of democracy that still has to build up democratic speed. Under the proposed Lisbon Treaty, this impartial Commission ends. Politicians want to restrict the candidates to a tiny group of politicians like themselves. Then this president of Europe would be chosen in secret with votes weighted in favour of the big States, the bullies of history.
Early Commission presidents were often former civil servants, lawyers, professors or diplomats. They were NOT party politicians. If they had had political or governmental experience, they gave up party activities. Their records were scrutinized to see if they remained honest under pressure. However, when de Gaulle seized power in France in 1957, he declared at first a covert then an open war. He attempted to ‘chloroform’ the democracy required of governments and pledged in the treaties. Inserting his partisan nominees into institutions, he attempted to gain personal control of the three European Communities. Commission presidents Walter Hallstein, a former law professor who as a captured soldier had the courage to teach fellow German prisoners of war about the rule of law, Étienne Hirsch, a brilliant engineer who had lost much of his family to Hitler’s depravity, and Paul Finet, a metallurgist/ trade-unionist, stood up against these undemocratic assaults. These great European democrats were NOT party politicians!
Did the democratic governments learn a lesson? The party politicians REFUSED to implement the basic democratic requirements, such as direct elections to Parliament under a single electoral statute. These were written into every treaty from Europe’s founding Treaty of Paris in 1951, the two treaties of Rome of 1957, the Adhesion treaties, the Amsterdam, Maastricht and the present Nice Treaties. Whatever may be said of ‘democratic politicians’ at home, they are as slow as treacle in Antarctica when it comes to European democracy!
After de Gaulle, democracies half-heartedly reviewed treaty obligations. Direct elections to the European Parliament, required for about 30 years, were only implemented in 1979. (Schuman initiated Europe’s first parliament in 1949.) And then the governments refused to do it according to the fair, democratic rules that the treaties specified. Each government wrote its own electoral rules. These distort the outcome of the elections in the interests of big parties and the benefits the party political elites. It deprives the average citizen of a fair vote. How do we know this bias is intentional? Well, firstly the systems are all different. Yet the dominant national parties like them: many small parties and individuals don’t. What does that tell you? Secondly, if the distorted system did not please and delight the national politicians in their unethical objectives, they would have changed it long ago to something fairer, more just, more legal and more democratic. They would have examined the treaties they signed and implemented the fair rules of a single electoral statute, agreed by all.
The main governmental parties still refuse to initiate major democratic pledges in the treaties. Some institutions are still disempowered. The chambers of the Consulative Committees are filled with ‘representatives’ - not of the European civil society as the treaties say, but ‘representatives’ for politicians and parties! Special governmental (=politicians’) committees deny civil institutions and NGOs the political powers, some of which should be equivalent to the secretive Council of Ministers. We have only to investigate agriculture, an area essential for Mr de Gaulle’s political support. Much of the public funding to big farmers was until recently shrouded in secrecy, as if it were military security!
Today, who raises an eyebrow that the Commission is stuffed with national politicians? Some proudly boast their party affiliations, in complete defiance to the treaties! Does this profession of ‘party politician’ have the only wise people with adequate qualifications to be members of the European Commission? Are there no wise democratic people who can be candidates among the 480 million independent citizens who decline the offer of party membership? Do the fair-minded have to become ideologically biased by joining a party? What nonsense and lack of logic!
The proposed Lisbon Treaty goes much further towards an authoritarian oligarchy than Mr. de Gaulle ever dreamed of. It enforces bad practice by law. Anyone who is not a card-carrying member of a political party is outlawed. Jean Monnet was the first president of the Commission, then called the High Authority. Today he would be banned. He was never a member of a political party. Many people today have the same sentiment as Monnet. They want to be independent and non-political. Many don’t trust politicians. They see them as too often motivated by out-moded ideologies. Some are suspected of sharp or even corrupt practice.
Yet politicians say only they should be eligible to lead the Commission and hence Europe. And to prove they are right, politicians voted themseves a personal power grab — and in nearly all States ONLY the politicians were allowed to vote on this, the most important decision for all European citizens. The representatives of the people voted to EXCLUDE the people.
It is a momentous decision made exclusively by a political elite who claim to represent the people! It marks the start of party political oligarchy, not democracy. The proposed Lisbon Treaty ‘reform’ makes it impossible for the Commission President to remain impartial, ever again.
(To be continued.)