#EU70: the triple birth of Europe

What was the most important date in post-war European history? Some historians would say all European history as it changed Europe for ever.
Who made the real turning point where his government created a democratic solution for the whole Continent, its politics, economics and its defence?
Robert Schuman in 1948!
EU70 comes the year after EU’s Brussels “elite” mistakenly celebrated EU60!
The distinguished French professor of history, Jean-Baptiste Duroselle said that the date of 20 July 1948 must be considered as the real turning point of European history. It was a new point of departure.

“For the first time a government officially presented a project aimed at the construction of Europe. While the idea of supranationality was not clearly delineated, it seems that the project implied it. Before 1914, Europe was only conceived in terms of equilibrium or balance of power.”

At the start of the 20th century, the system of alliances Europe into two blocs, he wrote. The European equilibrium, was, as US President Wilson stated, the deep cause of the Great War. The interwar initiative of Briand tried to shape an entity called Europe within the global system of the League of Nations. Aristide Briand did not propose something new. To attribute the paternity of a governmental initiative for present-day European construction to Briand would be to commit a dangerous anachronism, warned Duroselle.

After World War II ended, Europeans started to turn their minds to rebuilding the ruins of broken cities and industries. But they were immediately faced with other matters of life and death. The Soviet Union, USSR, occupied eastern and central Europe. During the war, Communist party cadres from Germany, Poland, Hungary and other countries were trained in Moscow about how to seize power at war’s end. They knew where the main levers of power were in each country and how to subvert parliaments even with a small Communist party.
As Winston Churchill put it in his famous Fulton, Missouri speech on the Iron Curtain on 5 March 1946:

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in some cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. … The Communist parties, which were very small in all these Eastern States of Europe, have been raised to pre-eminence and power far beyond their numbers and are seeking everywhere to obtain totalitarian control. Police governments are prevailing in nearly every case, and so far, except in Czechoslovakia, there is no true democracy.”

He added:

“The safety of the world, ladies and gentlemen, requires a new unity in Europe, from which no nation should be permanently outcast. It is from the quarrels of the strong parent races in Europe that the world wars we have witnessed, or which occurred in former times, have sprung.”

A few days later on Bastille Day that year Churchill met with Robert Schuman in Metz, France and delivered his first great European speech. Schuman was then Minister of Finance for France. France was in deep danger of being sucked into the Soviet sphere. The French Communist party was the country’s largest. It tried to take over parliament. US diplomats warned President Truman that France too could fall. But by late 1947, Schuman had become Prime Minister. He showed iron-willed opposition to Communist threats, revolutionary strikes and sabotage.
Schuman also prevented a future war by gradually changed the nationalistic policies of the Gaullists who wanted a land-grab of territory up to the Rhine. De Gaulle was no longer in power but was still a powerful influence in parliament and in mass rallies. De Gaulle’s followers tried opportunistically to bring down the Schuman government by voting and working in lock-step with the Communists’ insurrection.
In the last days of his first government, Schuman made a decisive step that has affected all Europeans ever since. First, his government, working with UK’s foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin, created a defensive pact, known as the Brussels Treaty Organization. Ostensibly, the pact of France, UK and the Benelux countries was to guard against further German aggression. Schuman’s foreign minister Georges Bidault was very nervous about openly declaring it was to prevent Soviet invasion. Schuman much less so.
On 19-20 July 1948 Bidault delivered Schuman’s message to the foreign ministers of the Brussels Pact, meeting in The Hague. It astounded them too. Bidault described Belgium’s foreign minister, Paul-Henri Spaak as a man hard to surprise. On making his speech, Bidault said his eyes were extraordinarily round with shock.

“We are at a moment, perhaps unique in history, where it is possible to create Europe,” said Bidault.

He made two propositions.
The first proposition was to create a European parliamentary assembly. It would be made up initially of parliamentarians of national bodies and also open to other nations who wished to apply. The second was for an economic and customs union for the six countries, to which other nations could apply to join.

“Thus in the economic sphere the Common Market was created and from the political perspective, the Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. In spite of all later obstacles and violent opposition to these two ideas, both of them have flourished,” Bidault wrote.

A third major institution arose out of Schuman’s initiative at the Brussels Pact. Washington required a demonstration of Europeans’ willingness to defend itself before it could politically commit its forces to Europe again. With the Berlin blockade that year, and following Schuman’s lead, talks began with USA and Canada to create NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It entered force around the same time as the Council of Europe began its sessions in summer 1949.
This year 2018 represents the 70th birthday of that positive turning point, #EU70.

Brexit Letter: Why the sadness?

“Damage Control” That is the first priority in the EU’s guidelines.  The terms for the negotiations on Brexit were announced in Malta on 30 March by European Council President Donald Tusk. Everyone is damaged.

That at the face of it, seems an extraordinary negative reaction to what apparently the British people have decided.

Where’s the joy?

On receiving the six page letter from UK Prime Minister Theresa May on 29 March, Mr Tusk said: “There is no reason to suppose that this is a happy day, neither in Brussels, nor in London.”

Why no joy?

It is difficult on the either side of the Channel to find a rational explanation. What are Britons going to gain by Brexit?

The British government or even the British pro-Brexiteers have not yet produced a list of the enormous assets they have found in their utopian Brexit Land. Others say it is a Dream Land.

What has been exposed before negotiations start is a list of commitments that must be paid for, a legal jungle for transposing European legislation into British law, a paucity of real trading alternatives and above all an absence of any real plan by the Brexiteer ministers for the future.

What is the healthy path for the future? It is neither Whitehall’s bumbling obstinacy of extreme exitism, or Brussels opaque politics of closed doors and secrecy.

The clue is in the phrase of Mrs May:

“The values we share as fellow Europeans”

What are they? Do they have their core in trade and merchandising? Are the main European values centered in enrichment and profits like the long-gone societies of Carthage and Tyre?

Clearly not. Europeans boast first of all about their freedoms. Freedom to trade is some way down the list after

·         Freedom of thought,

·         Freedom of expression,

·         Freedom of Assembly and other

·         Freedoms such as owning property.

Without freedom to own property there can be no freedom to manufacture or trade.

It is also clear that some of these European values are lacking on both sides of the Channel.

Firstly look how the British voted. In the 1975 Referendum they voted enthusiastically to join the European Community. Recently they voted again tepidly in the 23 June 2016 referendum to leave the system now changed into a “European Union”. That is not the same as a democratic Community.

They sensed their freedoms were being violated. Which freedoms? Freedom to trade? No. They wanted to be free of two areas of autocracy. Geographic areas.

However painful it is to say it, these two culprits are: Whitehall and Brussels.

British Governments had behaved disgracefully. The political parties of various hues had colluded in changing the treaties against public opinion. They promised the public referendums at each of the many stages. They refused to deliver on all subsequent occasions.

This 23 June 2017 referendum was not about the treaty change. It was a referendum about exasperation.

“Are you not really exasperated enough about the Governments’ lack of good faith?

“Will you let the Government get away with it?””  

Britons expressed a growing sense of frustration at their governments, both Labour and Conservative who changes to Schuman’s Community system into something radically different. The promised referendums at each stage never came -- from the early deformations of Maastricht to that of the totally unacceptable “Constitutional Treaty“ of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. Then they were forced to swallow the same unacceptable, rejected treaty under the name of the Lisbon Treaty.  

Brussels should not be smug about this. The Brussels “System” is the source of these frustrations. The British and other seemingly democratic countries were seduced by the neo-Gaullist system in Brussels. Public decisions are taken in private, in secret and with the collusion of what de Gaulle hoped but never achieved. 

This first additional anti-democratic instrument is the European Commission turned into a political Secretariat. De Gaulle tried to do this in 1961. The scheme was called the Fouchet Plan. It was resisted by strong democrats like Joseph Luns of the Netherlands and Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium. They exposed the folly of a sort of Politburo secretariat, supposedly based on international cooperation, but in reality dominated by France and Germany against the smaller powers. They insisted that the Commission be impartial, non political and follow supranational role as an Honest Broker for all European citizens and interests. 

The second is the European Council, what de Gaulle called the Summit. It was at the summit de Gaulle sat as the only Head of State and autocratically directed everything from its peak.

De Gaulle’s interests where not Europe’s interests. Nor were they even France’s interests. He was opposed ferociously by European-minded Frenchmen and women.

Party interests are not European interests. The interests of 28 governments meeting in secret are not European interests. They are governmental interests. Europe comprises the interests of citizens and associations of citizens. Associations are not usually party political. And then there are the interests of individual citizens.

The job of the Commission and the institutions is to conciliate all these interests, honestly. That is why the Community has five institutions.

Community Europe has been blocked. Instead Europe is dominated by de Gaulle’s second invention, the Summit.   

The meetings of the heads of Government keep secret what has been going on behind closed doors. They have a flock of spokespeople who spin the decisions to the frustration and growing distrust of the public. Witness the discordant parties springing up across Europe. UKIP was just one of these but sprang from the democratically fertile soil of Britain. Brexiteers populate the main government parties too.  

It would save much money on the European budget if all these Council spokespeople were eliminated. How? Simply introduce video cameras into all these institutions. Illegal or intrusive? No. The treaties require it.

“Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies shall conduct their work as openly as possible.” Lisbon TFEU article 15.

That way Brussels and Whitehall could trade political dishonesty for honesty. They would rebuild trust in Democracy among Europe’s saddened citizens.   

USE1 Why a 'Federation of Nation States' is a NONSENSE and a FRAUD!

European Commission President Barroso, in his 'State of the Union' speech to the European Parliament on 12 September 2012 called for a Federation of Nation States. Was he confused or just ill-informed? His proposal was to try to solve the EU's politician-generated woes, both falling trust in politicians and skyrocketing debt mechanisms mortgaging future generations.

On 18 September Mr Barroso repeated this call for a Federation of Nation States to a German audience of his political party, the EPP. We can say that this silly idea of a federation was no slip of the tongue. It is a ploy, a distraction.

I call as witness to my case an eminent lawyer, twice prime minister of France, and its longtime foreign minister. Robert Schuman made a lifetime study of democracy before he proposed Europe's first Community based on supranational principles and universal values. Schuman called such ill-defined, emotional talk of a federation of nation states an illusion.

In his May 1949 Strasbourg speech he called for a supranational union and gave cogent reasons why this great scientific experiment in supranationality must succeed. He cited a thousand year history of such unrealistic ideas of federations and concluded they were all 'a utopia'. This analysis was made in one of the greatest speeches on European unity of the postwar years.

Why is the concept of such a Federation not only a nonsense but also a political fraud? The simple answer is that: No federation in the world has anything similar to to an independent Commission. The suggestion to change the European Community system into a Federation would therefore involve elimination of the European Commission. Mr Barroso's spokesperson assured the press that Mr Barroso is not suggesting that. He is keen, she said, to retain the supranational character of the Commission.

That underlines the FRAUD that the politicians are trying to perpetrate. It is impossible to have a Federation and a SUPRANATIONAL system at the same time. I say this on the highest authority -- that of the initiator of the supranational system for Europe, Robert Schuman. This is how Schuman defined the three terms Confederal, Federal and Supranational. The first two terms follow the definitions well known in international law, in which Schuman was a world-renowned specialist.

No other term (but supranational) is able to express as well the significance of the new idea that it is necessary to explain, in distinguishing it from all the traditional terms of juridical categories. The supranational is situated at an equal distance between, on the one hand, the international individualism of States which consider their national sovereignty as untouchable except for occasional and reversible contractual obligations; on the other side, Federalism of States which submit themselves to a Super-State doted with its own territorial sovereignty.

The supranational institution, such as our Community, represented by the High Authority (or Commission) does not possess the characteristics of a State, but it retains and exercises certain sovereign powers. It is independent as regards the national Governments within the limits of the Treaties; this independence is irreversible as is the transfer of competence of which it is the source.

The Treaty confers on the Community its own function; it does not exercise it as a delegation for the States that adhere to it. The Commission (High Authority) is not responsible to the Governments, but to the institutions of the Community (such as the Assembly and the Court); the Declaration of 9 May 1950 already spoke of these 'means of appeal' against decisions of the High Authority.

The vague concept of Federation of Nation States was raised by a previous Commission President Jacques Delors more than a decade ago. But he warned then of ideas of reducing democracy by pushing for qualified majority voting of politicians 'against the will of the people'. But that is exactly what has happened since then when the politicians chose to ignore the referendums of several Member States who voted soundly against such measures in the Constitutional /Lisbon Treaty. Mr Delors warned then that it would lead to 'big trouble'.

The 'BIG TROUBLE' has arrived with a vengeance. That is because since the time of de Gaulle, politicians refused to have proper elections for the Parliament and the Consultative Committees. And to this day, sixty years later, NO SUCH ELECTIONS HAVE EVER TAKEN PLACE. De Gaulle and many other national politicians were happier cutting deals behind the closed doors of the Council, than organizing the elections required in the treaties.

Democratic control would only hamper their autocratic ways. Democracy is useful, for example, for controlling budgets and overspending. Politicians are nowadays trying to borrow five to seven times the EU's annual budget to prop up the misconceived euro. Meanwhile trust has plummeted to historic low points, not only for politicians, but in the EU and also in the European Central Bank, which is bending the rules to buy government debts and offering to substitute it with 'fresh' inflation-ridden euros from a central printing press.

That mistake was obvious to the experienced Founding Fathers such as Robert Schuman and Paul-Henri Spaak. Both had to deal with problems of monetary stability after WW2. It was why they said that a supranational Community approach, not a federation, was essential. Nowadays few politicians know or it seems want to know how the Community system is supposed to work. It has FIVE democratic institutions.

Some of these same politicians want to reduce that to three main ones Council, Commission and Parliament plus a host of other groups which have nothing to do with a democratic Community system, which are called institutions in the Lisbon Treaty! Thus the Court of Auditors is considered an institution! The Council became 'more equal than the others' and now controls the Parliament by selecting its president, and turning the Commission into a Secretariat and restricting it to buddies having party cards.

In a real Community system the accounts are properly balanced and the money is supervised carefully by the five institutions and there is no need to call some accountants in as a separate 'democratic' body! Having frozen (temporarily) elections in some of the institutions, the politicians of Delors generation created a single currency without the proper democratic competences and checks. Hence the trillion euro manipulations of the ESM and ESFS are discussed and decided in secrecy, far from the public's eyes.

Why do I call the jelly-like Federation of Nation States a FRAUD? Firstly, a federation of nation states means nothing. Some States are Republics and many are monarchies. If Mr Barroso was serious, he would have explained how he was going to be the emperor who would rule over such monarchies as the British Queen, the Belgian King, not to mention the Scandinavians, Spanish and the Grand Duke plus the French, German and other Presidents.

Secondly, Schuman said we should be aware of the danger of politicians who expand the bureaucracy and create a COUNTERFEIT democracy. That is exactly what a Federation of Nations States is. It has no real meaning and cannot be defined in terms of responsibility and competence. It cannot be defined as to how the politicians can be SACKED.

Thirdly, if Mr Barroso were sincere about real democracy he would as representative-guardian of the treaties have reminded the Parliament that they had not once in the sixty year history of the Parliament had an election in conformity with the principle in all the treaties that elections should be under one statute for all Member States. There should not be 27 statutes where each biases the results in favour of the government parties. What a strange coincidence!

Fourthly, the proof that this is a fraud and an attempt at counterfeit democracy is clear from last week's events. On Wednesday 12 September 2012 we had the theatre of the Commission President speaking to the European Parliament in Strasbourg that has forgotten its history and purpose. The Commission still vaunts itself as being 'Guardian of the treaties'. It is there to see the Treaties are remembered and respected. The 'Guardian' did not even remember when it first met as a College! 

  We have the spectacle of the European Parliament that does not recognize that 11 September 2012 was the sixtieth anniversary of the first meeting of the European representative body. Its president then was Paul-Henri Spaak, after whom the Parliament has its main building named in Brussels.

The day following this unmarked anniversary, the President-Guardian of the Treaties, Mr Barroso came to speak to them about the need for democracy and a Federation. Did he mention that they should be celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of European Democracy? Not a word. The silence remains deafening. Of all 753 MEPs, not one got up to mention the fact. Why? Simply because all the heads of the main political parties made it clear that this was not acceptable.

Do you know why? After the first assembly of the Community met under the dynamic leadership of Paul-Henri Spaak, he created an enlarged Assembly called the Ad Hoc Assembly with some members of the Council of Europe. They were tasked to draft the European Political Community, a democratic system based on supranational principles.

Schuman refers to this European Political Community treaty in the same passage cited above. The legal term 'supranational ' appears in the very first article. So are both the Commission President and all the MEPs ignorant or less than sincere? Anyone who really wanted democracy would have recalled the early principles of supranationality that was designed to bring to Europe the most democratic, fair and just system that had been conceived.

Fifthly if this approach to a new democracy were sincere, the Commission would have reminded Europeans, like Schuman did, that the Great Charter defined the principles up on which any Community of Europeans must be built. Instead to my knowledge the Commission has yet to publish this Great Charter. It refuses to publish this foundation of European law! For Democrats who wish to understand the principles which notably say that no treaty can be put into effect without the full acquiescence and support of the peoples, they can read the original French or the English translation on www.schuman.info.    

Euro6: Greatest crisis in EU history? I don't think so! Greatest BUNGLE perhaps!

'We are facing the the greatest challenge that I believe our Union has ever faced in its history.' That was what the President of the European Commission told the European Parliament in what he called the State of the Union message.

Is it true? I don't think so, unless Mr Barroso is hiding some utterly disastrous facts from everyone. He was not talking about the destruction of the Community system. The challenge did not involve the elimination of supranational democracy.

It only involved, at worst, the postponement of plans for a single currency called the euro. The euro plans are not yet tossed into the bin. It is yet to be seen whether Statesmen can reform the present euro system on a more rational and moral basis, rather than cover up of what some politicians call 'skyrocketing debts and falsified statistics'.

The destruction of plans for a European currency has already happened once before. It was very painful. But Europe survived it. Trillions have already been lost because of political duplicity.

Imagine! Now politicians want to borrow a few more trillion. Have they learned their lesson? Have they ensured that 'skyrocketing debts and falsified statistics' have been stopped by democratic supranational control? Or do they want more secret 'governance'?

The earlier debacle involved:

• turning huge European trade surpluses into mammoth debts,
• the loss of multiple trillions of euros or dollars,
• major upheaval to the European commerce and the world economy and
• the loss of European leadership in the world emphasizing moral, European values,
• an imposed delay of more than a decade in re-starting the effort for a single currency
• destruction of major industries, galloping inflation, massive unemployment. Industries stopped production because of energy shortages. Motorways were empty of traffic because of fuel legislation. Rampant inflation destroyed capital and pensions. The West contemplated going to war against the perpetrators.

Are we facing a greater challenge today? I don't think so.

Let's be clear. If the currency fails, a better one can be built. It is not a case of 'It's the currency, stupid'. It is more the case of 'It's a stupid currency'. Politicians should be saying: 'Sorry we got it wrong, folks. We messed up. We did not follow the Community rules.' Honesty must replace duplicity.

The euro is not solidly built on democratic supranational principles. It is not worthy of 27 countries which are supposed to shine as democratic examples to the world.

'Europe must be built on a democratic foundation,' Robert Schuman said. That goes also for the currency. (Pour l'Europe, p145).

What was the greatest challenge the European Community and the later European Union? I assume Mr Barroso includes the Community in his history, as it is the origin of modern Europe, the unification of the Continent. It is the origin of the European Commission for which he stands as the latest president.

WHY did not the President's advisers remind him of the FACTS about Community history? Were they not concerned that such a statement makes the President of the European Commission look ignorant or deceitful?

In its history Europe has faced THREE past challenges, far greater than anything we face today. The Euro crisis is far from being the most severe. Even with a multi-trillion euro debt overhang, it does not stack up to Europe's biggest problems that leaders have had to face in the past. In most of them they succeeded in finding the right solution of solidarity and moral justice. In the last one in the 1970s and 1980s they were less successful and the problems are now coming back to haunt us. Serious thought, cooperative action and solidarity of all the people is required.

First, what were Europe's most serious crises, the Continent's most severe postwar challenges? Unless we are aware of them, Europeans are less likely to solve the present crisis. They are more likely to go through the same problems again in a more painful form.

The first major challenge to a democratic Europe was perhaps its most subtle and underhand one. The Eden Plan was introduced in September 1952 soon after the first Community, the European Coal and Steel Community, was under way. The British wanted to undermine the supranational principle which involves INDEPENDENT democratic institutions. They suggested that instead of the Community being independent with its own FIVE independent democratic institutions, the Coal and Steel Community should be subject to the political control of the Committee of Ministers.

What Committee of Ministers? This was and is the body that is part of the Council of Europe. In those days it was often called the European Union and was meant to be the main democratic framework for the new Europe. It does so by ensuring Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of all individual and is able to criticize European States for not adhering to democratic principles.

If the whole apparatus of Europe were controlled by the politics of a Committee of Ministers -- that met behind closed doors -- then it would become a Europe of ministerial apparatchiks, an oligarchy of politicians. It would have been a similar system to that behind the Iron Curtain. We can be thankful that Robert Schuman, Paul-Henri Spaak recently elected as President of Europe's supranational Assembly of the Community and Jean Monnet, together with a host of other European democrats refused to let that corrupt idea happen.

What would have been the consequences? Nothing short of dismantling the supranational idea of democracy and replacing it with political squabbles. The Committee of Ministers would issue its own politically compromised deals -- totally lacking in any democratic support or legitimacy.

Instead of the longest period of peace and prosperity in Europe's 2000 plus years of existence, Europe would have soon degenerated into conflict and probably war.

If the British plan had succeeded Europe would have had no peace and its hopes for peace might have been dismantled. We would not be experiencing the unity of two halves of Europe, the western and the Communist-controlled systems. German nationalists would have been plotting the Kremlin to try to unify their country. We would probably be at war or recovering from another destructive, ruinous war, probably a world war!

That is why this first crisis was far more important than the present currency crisis. PEACE is far more important than the currency. Peace is far more important than immediate prosperity and gratification of consumer desires. Without peace it is difficult even to discuss a common currency.

When the democrats stood firm, the five key institutions of the European Community were able to be built. They are by no means fully developed today. They are still exhibiting infantile and immature tantrums. However, this first crisis was the most serious because without a solid foundation of those institutions, democracy would have disappeared from some of Europe's countries and some under dictatorship such as Spain, Portugal and Greece would never emerged so soon from authoritarian regimes. Britain did not immediately join the first Community but became an Associate Member in its first years.

The SECOND crisis of Europe was the attempt by France's General de Gaulle to take over the Community institutions by stealth and make them become the instrument of his undemocratic power. His intentions were published later by his spokesman, Alain Peyrefitte. His aim was ‘to suffocate supranationality.’ He wanted to boycott all Community collaboration as far as possible and to ‘deactivate the treaties of Rome’ and specifically to ‘chloroform Euratom’. (Peyrefitte: C’était de Gaulle, vol 1 pp66ff).

De Gaulle revealed his hand in two open strategies, the Fouchet Plan to turn the European Commission into a Secretariat for which the French would assume political primacy. When this did not succeed the second plan was the Empty Chair Strategy when French ministers refused to participate in European decision-making. De Gaulle hoped this would bulldozer Community Europe into the ground and he would remain in the driver's seat. It did not work either. French ministers came sheepishly to the table some six months later after the more democratic States had given the would-be bully the face-saving measure of the so-called Luxembourg compromise. The lesson was that democratic European law prevails not arm-twisting in secretive ministerial councils.

The Community cannot allow one strong nation that thinks it is superior to dictate the policy for all the others. That is the lesson Europeans should have learnt from their history. The States are equal in a Community Europe. (We do not have a hundred or more Germans or French in the Council of Ministers compared to one Maltese or one Luxembourger.)

The next, the THIRD crisis should be a burning lesson for all politicians. Europe partly succeeded and partly failed. Europe's economy was cut to ribbons. Europe should be aware of those failures because they lie at the core problem of the present currency crisis. This third crisis was an external one. It attacked two aspects of the Community: solidarity and its resistance to blackmail threats. It also destroyed the basis for a European Currency. It attacked at an area where the Community had not developed a competence -- its Achilles' heel: ENERGY. It had disastrous consequences on the FIRST attempt at a European currency, the Europa.

Yes the first attempt at European currency were set back decades because of this crisis. If the present crisis means that the currency will have to be started again from scratch, it is not the worst thing in the world The Community system will not crumble. It has already happened once before. Europe survived.

Heads of State and Government decided in 1969 on Economic and Monetary Union. The Council of Ministers defined a programme of structural reform, indicators and economic guideposts on 27 January 1970. The Monetary Committee had been set up in 1958 under article 105 of the EEC Treaty (in conjunction with articles of the Euratom and Coal and Steel Community treaties). With the adhesion of UK, Ireland and Denmark, the Commission and the Council reconfirmed 1980 as a goal for introducing a single currency, the Europa. However USA devalued by 10 percent in February 1973 after having closed gold sales earlier. Worse was to come.

First the context. Western Europe should have been the centre of gravity for world monetary affairs. The Communities' trade with the world was three times bigger than the USA. Europe had built up huge surpluses. The Communities represented 37.2 percent of wold exports and 35.6 percent of imports. America had 11.9 percent exports and took in 12.9 percent of imports.

They were hit nearly lethally by the Oil Weapon. Under de Gaulle, France had recklessly discarded the idea that the Community must become energy-independent to avoid energy blackmail. Then Arab exporters struck. In conjunction with other oil producers like Iran, they quadrupled the oil price. Israel-friendly countries were most heavily targetted. A total embargo was applied. Europe and its democracies were to be taught a lesson about the need to lie in foreign policy.

Instead of a further surplus, 1974 brought a triple-size deficit. Developing countries were hit by a bill greater than all the aid the received from OECD countries. They got little help from the mega-rich oil cartel that had pillaged the world. Instead Africa descended into worse problems of debts, corruption, wars and the murder of myriads. Terrorism proliferated. Inflation raged worldwide.

This hammer blow had many consequences. One of these was the abandonment of the plan for a single currency by 1980. Arab militants and jihadis in OPEC found that blackmail worked against Europeans! In 1979 the OPEC cartel again quadrupled oil prices. They got Europe to sign up to the 1980 Venice Declaration.

Europe had to wait twenty years before it got to the stage where a single currency could be substituted to support what is today the world's greatest economic and commercial power.

The Treaties created supranational institutions. That does not mean international. It does not mean that the European Commission should be composed of NATIONAL representatives. The early treaties forbade that. It means the Commissioners should be fully competent with (1) expertise in relevant European affairs and (2) proven independence of thought and action.

That means according to the original treaties that they should have no further links with political parties or other such lobby groups, national governments, industries, finance house, trades unions, consumer activists or any body in sectors where they will legislate. All European institutions should be democratic. All should be independently democratic. Only that way will the contagion of corruption be stopped.

Party membership has been the common thread in the present financial scandals that involves taxpayers' money issued and spent without proper control, skyrocketing debts and falsified statistics. Party politicians have been the ones that have continuously tried to block the free and open elections of the Parliament across the entirety of the EU area.

They have blocked the Europe-wide elections of Europe's organised civil society in the Consultative Committee of the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of Regions and the Scientific and Technical Committee. These Committees, if independent of national governments and party politics, would be the principal vehicles, outside the Court of Justice, for seeing that fraud did not take place with European budgets and national accounts.

The Commission cannot be the guarantor of fairness if it is composed of people tied by loyalty to Nation States and political parties. It will not work if the Commissioners are constantly taking instructions from political parties and Member State governments, the principal culprits in the euro crisis. The Commission, under the Lisbon Treaty is no longer accountable to the European Parliament. The Lisbon Treaty annulled Parliament's vital and primary powers to be able to sack the European Commission.

When a politician says that this is the greatest crisis in history, democrats should beware! That generally means that the political class is going to try ot pull a fast one! They should be warned that democrats, in the spirit of Robert Schuman and Paul-Henri Spaak, need to rise and denounce acts to take further money from public coffers, to mortgage the future, to make children and children's children pay for their folly and corruption.

Why do politicians try to deny the THREE major crisis involving far bigger challenges that what we have today? War, political oligarchy, energy blackmail are far more serious. Does it indicate that they do not want to enter into a democratic dialogue with the citizens. Don't they wish to debate with democrats? Do they want to adopt scare tactics to introduce UNDEMOCRATIC methods? When did anyone hear a Commissioner explain how the supranational system works and how it stopped wars in Europe?

Public apathy and ignorance will lead to ambitious and unscrupulous people trying the same dirty tricks again. Vigilance is eternally needed to protect freedoms.

Imagine, if in the past Europe had not faced up to its greatest challenges. Consider what dangers Europe would have faced.

Imagine, secret committees of 'democratic' ministers making deals about TRILLIONS of euros, without any democratic supervision! Does that remind you of anything today? Imagine politicians meeting in secret trying to cover up each other's skyrocketing debts and falsified statistics. Imagine, instead of an independent Commission, it would be entirely composed of political NATIONAL nominees from each of the Member States. Does that ring a bell? Imagine if possible that this change in the fundamental structure of Europe had been done without any democrat able to object, in the darkened corridors of the European Council. (Such a change is strictly forbidden in the treaties).

The Commission is supposedly the 'guarantor of fairness', yet its members are best described as a political cartel. They are chosen in the most discriminatory way possible by excluding every citizen who is not a paid-up member of the political clique. Imagine how 'fair' Commissioners could be selected not from Europe's best qualified people for the job but be only party nominees and sometimes the throw-outs of the political parties!

Imagine. Does that remind you of any dangers we face today?

17 Are passports an expensive scam? Do they enhance security? A lesson from History

Governments have raised the costs of passports enormously. The new biometric passports with hidden electronic data were supposed to be really, really secure. The Dubai incident shows that all these super-sophisticated passports have been BUST. Private data has been stolen. British, French, Irish and German passports have been falsified. Where is your personal data being sold to? If not to national or foreign governments for their spies, are the Mafia, organised crime and terrorist groups involved in this lucrative market? A cartel operation of governments has pocketed additional millions without blocking fraud. They have perhaps created a new danger, more difficult to resolve. A war of blood, killings, scams and passports possibly using YOUR personal data.

A Hamas terrorist was found dead. He was staying at a plush hotel. He had a passport that did not have his family name. Where did his very generous expense account come from? Who gave him a false passport? Two Palestinians were arrested. As for the falsified European passports, the Dubai police chief would not say who had falsified them, nor who he thought was responsible. Some of the passports contain the real personal data of Europeans but false photographs.

This is nothing new. In 1985 the French President authorized an operation involving forged Swiss passports. French Intelligence operatives attached two explosive bombs to the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, in New Zealand, killing one person. The operatives were later promoted.

The citizen who is faced with this governmental monopoly practice, must ask: Is this another rip-off? A system uniquely in the hands of governments has no absolute security because quite often the governments do not respect their own rules. No one is there to check them. The monopoly fabrication and sale of passports are an anomaly in what should be a Single Market. It has created a secret black market with much higher pickings in the murky world of terrorism, hi-tech crime and spies.

The uncomfortable truth is that citizens are living under a technocracy -- where passport "experts" dictate how citizens should be made secure. Are they infallible? Obviously not. Further millions are wasted on airport security systems -- which do not work in practice to catch suicide terrorists. That is scare politics -- spending money on machines out of public fears and insecurities. But the citizen is paying for technology that does not do the job! That is a scam. Normally, court action would be expected. Instead the innocent public -- nearly 100 percent of travellers -- is humiliated by both searches and "expert" systems.

The founding fathers warned that a democracy -- the public -- must always be in charge of the policy not "passport experts". See http://www.schuman.info/passport.htm. The experts like to consider everyone guilty until their machine says no. Is that a healthy attitude?

The European founders wanted to regain real freedoms for the citizens after the restrictions of WW2. They wanted to break down unnecessary barriers. Before the First World War, citizens travelled without the need of passports -- even though there were major problems of terrorism.

These Statesmen established the Council of Europe in 1949, the basis for our Human Rights today. Schuman and the other founders set another goal to roll back unhealthy State power: get rid of passports wherever possible. Remember these Statesmen made this proposal at the worst time of the Cold War scare, when some even feared that an Red Army invasion was imminent. They did not see a contradiction with eliminating passports and making Europeans more secure.

'Why create a European passport,' asked Britain's Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin. 'Wouldn't it be simpler and more efficient to eliminate all existing passports?' The first efforts to make common passports were held up by committees of national ‘experts on passports’. Italy's Foreign Minister, Count Sforza, said prophetically: 'What on earth are 'passport experts'? If you put administrative people who make them inside a committee, you will never solve the problem. They will show that it is impossible to get rid of passports!'

Sure enough, it reached a bureaucratic logjam. The committee of experts had started complicating matters which both ministers and parliamentarians had just succeeded in simplifying. Then some enlightened politicians including Belgium’s Paul-Henri Spaak insisted that the technocratic horse should not be leading the political masters. ‘Once democratic politicians have decided that something must be done, experts have the duty to find the means to do it. If they raise technical objections, they must then find the remedies.’

But the technocrats persisted. A new generation forgot that citizens actually have a choice. They should be the masters. 'Passport experts' became guardians of this technocratic heritage.
Governments brought in new universal biometric passports -- without having a discussion on the alternatives. Yes, there are alternatives. And if citizens were given the choice about how to spend the enormous amount of money that firms and taxpayers spend on the system, they might come up with cheaper and more effective means of security. We now know what has been apparent for a long time. Mechanical security will always fail because of the human factor.

Interpol has in its database over 11 million stolen or lost passports. These passports are being used, fraudulently altered and are being given to terrorists, war criminals, drug traffickers, human traffickers, says Interpol chief Ronald K Noble. The solution, he said, is better intelligence, and better intelligence sharing, among countries.

Under a Community system as envisaged by the founding fathers, there would at least be a public debate on the misuse of passport data by governments. A functioning Parliament and Economic and Social Committee would have their word in any abuse of power. Technocratic dictators would have to answer some pretty probing questions by other technical experts representing consumers who were equally technically competent -- and did not have commercial, profesional or personal prestige interests to promote.