Counterfeiters and fraudsters. That’s what Robert Schuman called tricky European politicians who abused their powers.
“Nothing is easier that for political counterfeiters to exploit the illusion of good principles. Nothing is more disastrous than good principles badly applied.”Today we have a product that fits in that category of fraud: The EU’s White Paper on the Future of Europe.
How can any citizen prove it is fake?
1. The 1957 treaties of Rome do not mark Europe’s Birthday.
Clue: The Common Market means money. Politicians like money. But money had nothing to do with the birth of Europe! It is an old trick. President Barroso tried it ten years ago.
In his Forward, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker starts by saying
“On 25 March 2017 leaders of the European Union’s Member States will stand united in peace and friendship in Rome. That alone is an achievement that many would have thought unthinkable when the six founding Member States agreed on the Treaties of Rome 60 years ago.”This is Fake History. It is a ham-fisted attempt at a Fake 60th Birthday of Europe. A schoolchild should know it is historically incorrect. The author got “facts” wrong. It is deception.
Firstly “Peace and friendship” were not generated by the Treaties of Rome.
Peace. What did the Common Market do for peace? It is a customs union. Bismarck used the concept of a customs union to declare war on France and rob its iron ore and other riches of Alsace-Lorraine.
Secondly, ask: “Would those at the signing ceremony in Rome in 1957 have “thought it unthinkable” to have peace and friendship?” Obviously not. Why? Because they had already created a peace-enhancing compact years earlier. Those who signed the Rome Treaties (Schuman was not one of them) recognized a miracle. They were already experiencing lasting peace. It had been achieved with the 1951 Treaty of Paris. This peace-making treaty made possible the second and third European treaties at Rome.
Proof?
The very first words of the first treaty in 1951 are:
“Considering that world peace can only be safeguarded by creative efforts commensurate with the dangers that threaten it;”
The unnamed author of this White Paper deception clearly understands, consciously or unconsciously, that he is writing a lie.
One clue is in the word “unthinkable”.
Why is this important? Because it is a word rarely used in relation to treaties. However, Robert Schuman used this word in relation to the launching of the European Community in 1950 – when in fact diplomats, think tanks and the military were preparing the public for what they considered to be an inevitable war with the Soviet Union. It would be a war in which the position of Germany was still ambiguous. Would it support the West? Would it lean to the Soviets in order to unite with Communist East Germany, the DDR? Would it try to play off both sides to its own advantage?
On 9 May 1950 Robert Schuman declared that his Plan would
“make war between France and Germany not only unthinkable but materially impossible.”He succeeded. Immediately after the creation of the European Community, the signature of the Charter of the Community establishing the Rights of all its citizens to Freedom of Choice, and the functioning of the European Coal and Steel Community, he confirmed that the Community of coal and steel with its innovatory system of democracy had made war impossible. Impossible not just for a few years but for the long term – perpetual peace.
2. Misuse of Schuman’s quote
The Schuman Declaration, the Schuman Plan, the European Coal and Steel Community are not mentioned anywhere in the White Paper. After Mr Juncker’s Forword, one quotation of Robert Schuman is made and then all that follows tries to contradict it!
“Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.”Schuman showed that public opinion both national and European must agree with each step for unity. He created the first European Community which provided a working example of the democratic five institutions. He read out the same day of 18 April 1951 the great Charter of the Community. This declared that all citizens of the Community must be free to choose in accordance with the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms that had just been signed.
Each step involved the creation of a new Community that had to be agreed by all democratic States. The Economic Community or Common Market was just one of these. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Euratom, signed in Rome the same day, was another. Other sectors need such democratic control but are, due to the malfeasance of politicians, lacking them.
So what is the politicians’ fake for the Community? The reader has only to turn the page to find out. It is the plan of the Italian Communist, Altiero Spinelli to create a federation, not composed of steps but driven by a highly party political central government!
Would Schuman have approved Spinelli’s federation? No. In his speech of 16 May 1949, he analyzed a series of such immature federation follies from AbbĂ© de St Pierre of 1308, Rousseau, Kant and Proudhon. His conclusion as a realist politician? He plonked them all with Thomas More and his fiction called “Utopia”. None would work practically. Neither would Spinelli’s. The governments binned his draft treaty.
Yet the White Paper spends much wasted space on this. And how much space is given to the innovatory concept of a supranational Community that actually produced the longest peace in more than 2000 years? Nothing. The White Paper tries to indicate that this extraordinary pace arose from hazard and “false starts”!
“Our troubled past has given way to a peace spanning seven decades,” it says.Whaaaat! “given way to”! If only the Middle East knew how this peace could happened so easily. Europe’s politicians would be hard-pressed to define “supranational” and “Community Method”.
3. Options with no democracy.
The White Paper ends up by giving five options about how the Brussels autocracy should define its future policy. They are all pretty useless. Why? Because there is not a word about democratic accountability. The authors seem to be totally oblivious that Europe is in an existential crisis of trust. This is not just about Brexit. When the British threatened to leave Brussels treated the news with scarcely concealed glee and demands to do so immediately.
Brussels should ask itself: Is democracy going to be improved when the British leave, and Mme le Pen and other anti-Brussels politicians sit in the European Council? Brussels is closing its eyes and ears. But the people are Europe are not.
