Elysée1: Germans! French People! Are you still being fooled by de Gaulle?

Can you discern political propaganda and deceit? Do you know what real European democracy is? Today the French and Germans are spending a great deal of taxpayers’ money on celebrating 50 years of the January 1963  Elysée Treaty. They are being told it is the motor of Europe.

Rubbish!

It isn’t and never was. It was designed as a means to stifle European democracy by giving de Gaulle power over German resources. It was designed to control Germany, to mobilize the populations including the youth to support the Gaullist government and grant de Gaulle non-democratic powers. De Gaulle closed down all European democratic institutions. His plan was to destroy them if possible.

That is far from a Community approach. De Gaulle treated all the other Community States, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy as children. Above all he wanted to harness Germany and its economic power. He feared democracy especially European democracy or supranationality.

He told his Minister of Information Alain Peyrefitte:  ‘supranational integration is going to allow the Germans to teach the French organisation and discipline. All that is monstrous! Monstrous!’

Is the Elysée Treaty the centre of European action? Did European reconciliation start with de Gaulle’s action? No. European reconciliation clearly started when Germany was allowed to enter the Council of Europe as a normal member and become an active member of the European Community in 1950.

Germany got equality from these institutions that Schuman and the Founding Fathers of Europe created. From the Elysée Treaty Germany gave its acquiescence to pay for Milk Lakes, Butter Bergs and Meat Mountains to support the French farmers’ votes for de Gaulle.

Was Adenauer fooled by the Elysée treaty subterfuge? No, he was not. But he went along with it because he needed de Gaulle’s support for his pro-western policy. De Gaulle had the key levers: the veto to make sure that any democratic State would not enter the European Community. Thus Norway, Denmark, UK and other countries were refused and Germany had to deal subserviently with France as the main power-broker. All democratic institutions of the Community such as the Parliament, the Consultative Committees were frozen or to use de Gaulle’s word ‘chloroformed’.

Did the Elysée Treaty bring Franco-German reconciliation? As Adenauer acknowledged, Franco-German reconciliation was accomplished more than decade before de Gaulle by Robert Schuman.

He wrote in September 1962:

Dear Mr Schuman,
During the visit of General de Gaulle last week, I often thought of you as the man who by his initiative of the Coal and Steel Community, laid the real foundations of the friendship which at present unites our two countries. It is with gratitude that I always think of our joint work. I would dearly like to express to you, especially in the present circumstances, my appreciation.  It would be a great joy for me if it were possible for us to meet again. Rochefort: Robert Schuman, p359.

Europeans – including both French and Germans should be highly suspicious when governments spend such money on political folderol and ignore historical facts – such as the sixtieth anniversary of the EU institutions. The real celebrations of reconciliation, European integration and democracy never took place last year.

Just ask the politicians who are busy spending French and German tax money:

Who was the first President of the European Community’s Council of Ministers?

Do they know? It was Konrad Adenauer who presided over the first Council of Ministers on 8 September 1952. France sat at the table while Adenauer, the German Chancellor, banged the gavel!
Adenauer had no need to celebrate reconciliation more than a decade later. The treaty only marks the fact that de Gaulle had to recognize the European Community as a fact that he could not destroy. It is a celebration hiding the change of policy of de Gaulle. It has nothing to do with real European reconciliation.

Before 1950 de Gaulle wanted to seize German territory such as the French occupation zone and the Saar, carve out the industrial Ruhr and draw new French borders on the Rhine. He denounced Bonn democracy and the Federal Republic of Germany as 'the Fourth Reich'.

That this Elysée Treaty celebration is political fraud on a large scale is clear from other facts of history. The Founding Fathers of the European Community also made this clear. Europe was to be based on solidarity of common objectives with the diversity of resources and the equality of States. Socialists and Christian Democrats in France and Germany opposed the treaty. The Community precludes a Gaullist-style Directoire or a secretive tête-à-tête or Franco-German axis.

This present exercise is a highly suspicious political Public Relations operation, especially given the almost total silence about the celebration of the SIXTIETH anniversary of the beginning of the Democratic institutions of the first European Community in 2012.

De Gaulle was also petty and vindictive. He forbade Adenauer from attending the funeral of Robert Schuman in Metz 1963. Adenauer had already agreed to come. Jean Monnet was also not invited to Metz. Six former prime ministers of France refused to attend in protest at the Gaullist action. Neither de Gaulle’s prime minister nor his minister of foreign affairs attended the funeral. RTF, the Gaullist controlled radio and television, hardly mentioned the event. (see Rochefort: Robert Schuman, p362.)

Is de Gaulle’s dictatorship, as François Mitterrand called it in 1964, the sort of event that real Europeans want to celebrate?

Election6: The Council's President of the European Parliament: the Speaker for EU's UNDEMOCRACY

The EU leaders are now repeating their mantra: the solution to the crisis is the Community method. The Community method involves open democracy. We haven't got it! We have the 'Council method' which involves a political cartel, a Politburo, ruling Europe behind closed doors. It is an oligarchy of political party chiefs. It is the cause of the financial crisis.

Take the recent happenings in Parliament.

Since the days of the three European Communities, the president of the European Parliament has descended to typify the great farce of Europe. It is also its great shame. The President or Speaker is supposed to speak for what should be the flagship democratic body of 27 democratic countries united in peace and justice. Instead it is the dishonour of Europe. It is the laughing stock of the world.

Don't just take it from me. Check what the MEPs say below on video about how the developing world calls the EU hyprocritical. See what is said abroad about EU's fake democracy, especially when it preaches democracy to Africa, Russia, Belarus and elsewhere.

The 'Council method' provides succour to all the world's dictators who want to have a model to control parliament. It shows how Europeans' counterfeit democracy works. The Council method stops any form of elections or controls the outcome regardless of the election results. It provides a curtain, a burqa, over all the power-broking deals that are made behind closed doors.

The president is not elected. He or she is chosen by fixers in the morally darkened corridors of the European Council. Who chooses him or her? Not the European electors. The cartel of politicians in the Council choose the name of the person who is supposed speak for European Democracy and its 500 million citizens. The Speaker speaks mainly for the Council oligarchy, not the public.

1. Let us start with the elections. In 2009 I was with a number of journalists at the European Council meeting BEFORE the last European Parliament elections. A spokesman of the Polish persuasion announced to us all that the tricky mix of negotiations had successfully been horse-traded. The Poles had gained what they wanted. The next president of the European Parliament would be Mr Buzek, a Pole.

Let me repeat, this was BEFORE the European elections had taken place. Notice the COUNCIL according to the Council Method decided

• the NATIONALITY ,
• the POLITICAL PARTY and
• even the NAME of the President of the European Parliament
• WITHOUT A SINGLE MEMBER OF THE PARLIAMENT BEING PRESENT!

This is Politburo politics. Schuman condemned these Soviet-style politics of the "People's Democracies" as counterfeit democracy.

Isn't it ironic that the peoples formerly subject to the Soviets are now full-time players in the corrupt Gaullist system? Why are they no longer the fearless defenders of democracy and people's solidarity? Power. Power tends to corrupt.

This remarkable announcement presumes that (a) the elections are a farce and do not play a role in what happens in Parliament. (b) that the Council oligarchs know exactly who will be elected because they control the EP candidates of the party; some of course are elected on a list system; and (c) the Council or government leaders control the MEPs when they enter Parliament and discuss the presidency. They know that no independent thinker will be allowed, or at best only a few to brighten the decor. The mass of MEPs will follow exactly what the politicians in the dark recesses of the European Council have decided.

This is an act of a political CARTEL. It decides who and what, how and where with no recourse to the consumer, in this case, the voter, representing 500 million citizens.

2. In order to get this EP presidential candidate through the EP system, a vote of two-thirds is necessary. Neither of the big parties has this proportion of the vote in the EP. But two such groups have -- the European People's Party, EPP, representing what they call rightwing parties. On the other side is the group of Socialists or Social Democrats. They agree to a collectivist solution that cuts any dissident voter or MEP out of the circuit.

These two groups hold more than two-thirds of the seats and have the potential, the possibility, and I might add the undemocratic temptation, to join forces and impose their will. That would not really be fair or just to minorities or even some majorities. But it is a big temptation.

And if there is a big temptation, you can bet your cotton socks that most politicians will seize it with both hands. The undemocratic solution is that the two big parties impose their will -- whatever the election results say. They split the five year term in two. Half goes to an EPP politician and remaining half to the Socialist choice. The European Council is the body that makes the choice of WHO -- without a TV camera or without the public being allowed to hear the arguments. The horse-trading would make great television. But such sordid dealings are hardly edifying for honest citizens in 27 democracies, especially in the small countries.

The MEPs vote in a most unusual way. They use paper votes. Normally an electronic voting system is used. It is quicker and efficient. But it also traces the names of voters. This 'secret vote' system was brought in during the Gaullist period because the open voting system then could subject the parliamentarians to unfair pressures. Nowadays it just makes sure that the public does not not how their MEP voted in the corrupt system. However some hundred or so MEPs probably voted for candidates contrary to their party's and the Council's insistence.

This is the system we have had for many years and many elections, the cartel system of the Council in Parliament. De Gaulle has passed away. Many little Napoleons support the system in Council because it suits them to have an oligarchy.

3. Smaller parties, even the Liberal group or the ecologists, not to mention the more vociferous democrats who denounce the system are cut out. They may have people who would show no favouritism and have the most neutrality in becoming the president of the Parliament but they do not have a snowball's chance of attaining the office.

What do they do? The EP has long arranged it that such candidates cannot even speak. The election takes place under 'procedure' that forbids it. So what happens? The week before we had the spectacle of private organisations including the European Voice, an Economist newspaper, organising a hustings. Thus a non-parliamentary private organisation held the only meeting of major importance to Europeans. The Parliament refused to do what democrats view as normal. The three 'candidates' were invited to attend. They did but few other MEPs came. They knew things were already cut and dried by their party chiefs.

It was rather like naughty schoolchildren having a debate when the prefects said they couldn't. One candidate said the role of parliament is to control the executive, by which I believe he meant the Council. (It isn't in a supranational democracy.)

How can the EP control the Council if the Council decides who will control Parliament BEFORE THERE IS AN ELECTION?

I sat next to an American and explained that this was how the largest trading power in the world, far greater than the USA, organized its democracy. It took a newspaper to get a meeting at all.

Mr Buzek is also reported to have congratulated 'President' Schulz several days BEFORE the election took place!

For those who want, they can check what Mr Nirj Deva and Ms Diana Wallis said about the deplorable anti-democratic Council system of Parliament.

The European Parliament has never in all its nearly sixty years ever held a proper Europe-wide election according the the requirements of the treaties of Rome and Paris.

The Council says NO. The Parliament can't even organise itself.