EHC2 Schuman's European Health Community would have brought Europe-wide benefits

How should politicians unify Europe for the health of all its citizens? How can Europeans best gain the maximum of benefits with a minimum of disadvantages? Schuman‘s presentation of the European Health Community demolishes several myths about the European Community design and also its origin.

OEEC Headquarters at Chateau de la Muette in Paris established during Schuman’s first Government in April 1948.

The first striking feature of the EHC explodes the myth that all efforts must be centred on the same Member States. The first Community of Coal and Steel had six member States: France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy. Later Communities, Euratom and the Economic Community, with treaties signed in Rome in 1957 also had the same six countries as members.

Hard core Europe is wrong

Must a Community be based on these States only? The ‘hard core Europe‘ idea is wrong. The Community is provably based on values not geography. It reinforces those values in a positive way, wherever they are found.

The EHC shows that this idea of restricted membership was not part of Schuman’s thinking. It derives from later politicians who misunderstood or purposely wanted to change the design and founding concept. Their mistakes have proved costly. So it is important to study the original principles that brought Europe peace and prosperity.

The EHC also shows that it was even further from Jean Monnet’s ideas, vague though they were. (Documents that Jean Monnet Foundation subsequently released show that Monnet had little to do with the political and legal scheme behind the supranational Community idea. His office and relationship to the Prime Minister’s office allowed Schuman to bypass hostile interministerial committees. Other accounts of the Schuman Declaration co-authors, like Schuman’s legal adviser, Paul Reuter, show the same thing.)

Europe in its diverse needs and challenges

On 12 September Foreign Minister Schuman and Health Minister Paul Ribeyre presented the plans to the French Cabinet. The Cabinet agreed. But the decision was not to present it to the Six alone but to the much larger OEEC, Organisation of European Economic Cooperation.

The OEEC was the body set up in 1948 following the US Marshall Plan. The French Government invited all its Member States to join in this common European effort of well-being. Besides the Six, it included Austria, Denmark, Greece, Iceland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Turkey. Ireland was the only State to decline.

Thus the invited countries included:

• One country that was still partially occupied by the Soviet Union (Austria),
• One country extracting itself slowly out of dictatorship (Portugal),
• Several countries that later joined the Economic Community including UK,
• Neutral countries like Switzerland and Sweden,
• Two States at the opposite extremities of Europe (Iceland and Turkey).

Geographical Spread
By making the Community open to countries like Turkey and Iceland, Schuman, Ribeyre and the whole French Government were saying that all European countries were potential members. That should not be surprising. But it is to modern ears.

Schuman’s original proposal for the European Coal and Steel Community was open to all European countries without exception. That included Russia.
Schuman was asked at the press conference on 9 May 1950 whether Russia could join. He answered: Yes, of course (Mais oui!).
Why did Russia not join? Simply because the European Community was based on the human rights provisions of the Council of Europe. Human Rights were the foundation for healthy rule of law. But Russia then part of the Communist system of the Soviet Union, did not allow freedom of thought or freedom of religion. It refused to join the Council of Europe.
The announcement of the Schuman Government on 20 July 1948 proposed that Europe should be built on a free Assembly and a Customs Union. The Assembly saw life as the world’s first international parliament in the Council of Europe. It was aided by a Committee of Ministers, representing the States. They decided conjointly that in order to establish a lasting European Union, all States must agree to the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

The European Coal and Steel Community started with a Single Market of the main resources. This made a move to a Customs Union inevitable. At the time of the Schuman Declaration, Germany was not a member of the Council of Europe. In fact the Adenauer Cabinet were discussing whether they should join and many of the German politicians were against it. Adenauer saw the human rights guarantees as the most important decision that Germany could make as they would make a resurgence of Nazism impossible and they would block a Communist take-over of a Germany re-united with the Soviet occupied ‘German Democratic Republic’ DDR in the east. The Proposal made the Cabinet’s acceptance of membership to the Council of Europe possible. Human rights and a Community of resources with its own institutions were intimately linked together.

The Austrian anomaly

Austria occupied by UK, USA, France, USSR 1945-55

The European Health Community proposal proves that Schuman considered that the Community system is not an exclusive operation for the founding Six States. Nor must all future European integration be concentrated between Member States which had already joined the first Community or the EEC.

If human rights in the Council of Europe was vital for assuring the rule of law inside the Community, what lies behind the Austrian case? Austria did not join the Council of Europe until April 1956.

Did Schuman relax this guarantee on human rights for Austria?

No. Diplomatic papers of the time show that Schuman was leading the way in order to get Soviet troops to leave the country. He wanted Austria to have a chance to redeem itself as a normal country. After all Hitler had come from Austria and the Austrians had warmly welcomed the union or Anschluss with Nazi Germany.

The choice was to postpone the rehabilitation of Austria or to welcome it into a European Community that would help it get back on its feet again. Even though Austria was not yet a Member State of the Council of Europe, the potential of entering the Health Community would have boosted that possibility. That was already the case with its membership of the OEEC.

By making the offer for all States of the OEEC to join the Community, Schuman showed the positive aspects and benefits of a Community solution. Even though politicians did not persevere with the Health Community idea, the offer of membership to Austria underpinned its potential to have guarantees on human rights via the Community institutions. Portugal did not join the Council of Europe until 1976 but was not threatened by the USSR.

This shows the pragmatism of Schuman’s politics. The supranational institutions of the Health Community would have acted as an accelerator in the process of regaining human rights and ending dictatorship.

With all the advantages of arresting epidemics and solving health problems across Europe, and also reinforcing human rights, why did the European Health Community fail to gain the persistent support of politicians?

Eretz2: How to tell an obvious fraud -- Call a "nation" PALESTINE!

Calling for the creation of a State of Palestine in 2011 is an obvious incitement to political FRAUD. It has all the hallmarks of what Robert Schuman warned democrats would lead to a disaster. 'Nothing is easier for political counterfeiters to exploit good principles for an illusion, and nothing is more disastrous than good principles that are badly applied.' In that he was agreeing with two French philosophers, Bergson and Maritain.

In 1948 the government of the Holy Land changed its name from 'Palestine' to Israel. Previously it was the Jews who mainly bore the name Palestinians. The Arab population preferred to call themselves simply as Arabs, or Bedouins but more often villagers of a certain place. Nationalism was not a factor.

After World War One, the lack of any strong national identity presented western nations with a problem. When the victorious Allied powers divided up the Ottoman empire and freed the peoples from the yoke of control from Istanbul, they had to carve the borders according to lines on a map, not natural or ethnic boundaries. Ancient Persia had also lost its geographical identity. The other nations had had their boundaries completely changed by the invasion of the Huns, Mongols and Arabs. Massive migrations of populations took place in the first millennium.

The only indigenous people who were sure about boundaries were the Jews. Western people educated in history were also familiar with the boundaries of ancient Israel.

Some of those living in Palestine called themselves southern Syrians. Then there was a large influx of Arabs in the nineteenth century from neighbouring countries who wanted to benefit from the economic revival under the Jews. Many accounts speak of how barren and bare the land was before the immigration of educated Jews.

In this post-Ottoman period after WW1, when the world powers agreed legally to a Mandate to return the land to the Jews, the term Palestine was used. This was because it was the 'normal' but anti-Semitic term that Europeans had used for the land of Israel since around the time of emperor Hadrian in the second century CE. Many in the so-called 'Christian' West did not consider that the term Palestine was abusive.

It was a Latin word used of a long-extinct troublesome mini-state of the Philistines in the extended area of Gaza. The use of iron instead of bronze was known in ancient times, but the Hittites in what is now eastern Turkey were among the first to produce iron goods on an intensive scale. Iron was previously found in meteorites, the mysterious stones that fell from the heavens. They had religious significance. The Egyptian pharaoh, Tutankhamun, had a magnificent steel dagger obtained by his father from the Hittites.

Iron technology is quite different from copper or bronze. The early iron was an oddity. It was brittle and of little practical use, unless special and secret techniques were applied. It also required higher temperatures. It was later found iron ore could produce the same results if special furnaces funneling the prevailing winds could cause the charcoal to blaze extra hot. A range of other trade secrets were developed by the iron-smiths who learned how to make the metal stronger than bronze.

The Philistines in the Gazan towns seemed to have made a cartel agreement with the Hittite empire (or Hatti). That way they could deal with the Egyptians and traders to the east. While the Philistines were not particularly numerous, they were powerfully backed and the iron monopoly gave them power over the Israelites and far beyond in the Grecian islands. They were able to forbid the Israelites from even owning iron tools at the time of the Israelite judges such as Samson. With more abundant iron they could not only make swords but chariot wheels and other armoury that helped them easily to subjugate the surrounding nations.

The cartel power was however as fragile like the early, unskilled iron. The Philistines were also the weak point of this international military-industrial complex. It is there that the Samson, a Danite judge, attacked and brought the cartel-complex down.

Archaeologists have discovered that Philistine houses were often supported on central pillars. Samson destroyed the assembled Philistine leadership by demolishing the two central pillars of the crowded temple of Dagon (Judges 16). With hundreds or thousands of the leaders killed, Philistine power collapsed and they were reduced and eventually exterminated by the Assyrians. The Hittite Empire which also had a highly central administrative structure was invaded and collapsed around this time. The surrounding nations that had suffered cruelly under this oppression made sure that the Philistines disappeared from existence.

The Romans applied the term Philistia or Palestine to the land of the vanquished Jews because of the enormous efforts the Roman Empire had had to destroy Jewish freedom of thought under Vespasian, Titus 67-73 and Hadrian 132-4 CE. The Roman name Palestina implied that it was the land of a totally extinct empire. It had been dead a thousand years. It could be interpreted to mean Dead-as-a-Dodo land.

The Roman enemy name, Palestina, applied only to the land. Nearly all Jews were cleared out. The land reverted to the name of the state of the Philistines that had existed a thousand years before the Roman-Jewish Wars. The state and all its people, the Palestinians or Philistines, were long extinct. Nobody in Roman times called themselves Palestinians even though the land was called Palestina. It was just a bad, anti-Semitic joke. The people called themselves Syrians the name of the Roman province. Some of the Jews who managed to live there were also called Syrians. There are gravestones of 'Syrians' around the Roman Empire, some witness to the fact that some of the 'Syrians' were Jews.

The use of the term Palestine for the Mandate of the League of Nations was bizarre and insensitive. Yet that was how the League and the United Nations created an international legal system to return the land of Israel to the Jews. Palestine was the name of an extinct race, dead for 2800 years. Geographically it defined what must be returned to the Jews, not "Palestinians".

If there were no Palestinians in Roman times how can there be ethnic Palestinians today? Did the people who were dead for the best part of a millennium, spring up and beget children? 

If nowadays people call themselves Palestinians it shows (1) they are ignorant of history (2) they are a complete fraud because the Palestinians or Philistines were extinct in 800 BCE; (3) they are anti-Semites because the name of Palestine since Roman times is anti-Semitic abuse. We can add a fourth conclusion: They think that the rest of the world are as ignorant and fraudulent as they are.

Anyone who claims a Palestinian State is an utter fraud and anyone who says he sincerely supports them is foolish. The Europeans set on this self-delusion when after the massive deployment of the Oil Weapon it agreed to the Venice Declaration of 1980. Oil prices in the 1970s were quadrupled and quadrupled again by the oil cartel. A total embargo of oil was targeted on European States who refused to trade the truth for lies under these blackmail conditions. The Europeans agreed to pay for the 'Palestinians'. They began to pay, and pay, and pay. Now European taxpayers are paying for more than half of the cost of all Arab Palestinian refugees, their children and their children's children. All Jewish Palestinian refugees arising from the illegal invasion by Syrian, Egyptians, Jordanian and other foreign armies that were registered under UNRWA have been re-settled more than sixty years ago. The displaced Arab Palestinians were refused a proper home in Arab countries.

Consider an equivalent potential fraud case. The Celtic Britons have been in the British Isles about three thousand years. When the Romans left, some Anglo-Saxon tribes were originally invited to support the Britons in the fifth century. They called the native Celtic Britons the Welsh. What does Welsh mean in Anglo-Saxon? It means Foreigner!

Now consider someone who arrived in the last few years and says I am owner of the British Isles and I can prove it. I am of a tribe which calls itself, Foreigner! That is a double fraud, the use of a name initiated by a later arrival and the name itself obviously fraudulent for an indigenous people.

It is obviously a fraud to claim to come from an extinct nation. Anyone who calls himself Palestinian is a fraud who does not know where the name came from -- the Romans.

If a group, a would-be nation, does not have a history, then it is not a nation. It does not deserve to be considered a nation. It is merely a group of peoples, some who have lived there plus many who arrived only a year or two before 1948.

If this type of fraud becomes a common place other nations had better watch out. Turkey for example. Maybe some group will claim they are descendants of the Hittites, another empire that disappeared from history. No Hittite appears to have been around for more or less the same period. There is no genealogical connection. No trace of continuity. No trace of the blood-lines. How would Turkey react if some Arab migrants now said they were ancient Hittites and claimed all of eastern Turkey? What if they bought favours with oil largesse and blackmail and took the case to the United Nations? Would the other nations in the United General Assembly know or care that the Hittites, and their empire disappeared 3000 years ago?

The reason the nations of the world decided that 'Palestine' should be returned to the Jews was simple. Jews had continuously prayed that they would return to the land during the two thousand years of exile. They mourn the loss of the Temple many times during each year. They remembered the loss of Jerusalem and Israel for more years than most of the States of the world have existed. 

Those who managed to move to their ancestral land despite massive persecution tended the graves of their patriarchs, there. Joseph's and Joshua's tombs were tended at Shechem. Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Israel and other patriarchs were honoured near Hebron, and Rachel's near Bethlehem. They kept up the rituals for celebrating their forefathers that had with extreme difficulty been handed down over centuries by courageous Jews who returned. The presence and the claim for the land of Israel has been continuous for two thousand years.

King David is also commemorated in Hebron as he is in the city of David, Jerusalem. Under David the cartel was broken and iron was produced in abundance, 1Chron 22. The earth of the land is full of archaeological treasures proving this Israelite connection, including seals of personalities mentioned in the Bible. The 2000-year old Dead Sea Scrolls containing parts of nearly all the books in the Hebrew Bible were found in the Judean desert, on the so-called 'West Bank'. Today some Hebrews can trace their genealogies back to the twelve tribes of Israel. It is an obligation and condition for priests, Levites and Israelites when they participate in some the synagogue rituals of the community worldwide.

There were no finds of Philistines dating more recently than 2800 years ago! Palestinians and Philistines are extinct.

Eretz1:Democracies Beware! The Declaration of a SECOND Palestine is a Declaration of War!

If the European Union leadership supports the recognition of a new State called Palestine, it will be co-responsible for further conflict and war. The area has already seen too much death and destruction, hate and ignorance.

The Government of Palestine already exists. Its name is now Israel. Making a SECOND Palestine is a recipe for disaster. It will bring rivalry, conflict and a war of legitimacy. Encouraging this folly is encouraging a bloody catastrophe!

If European or other leaders recognize a SECOND Palestine, based on Saudi-style Sharia law and excluding Jews, Christians, Baha'is and other religions, it will initiate an endless conflict. It could well end in embroiling the EU and North America in a new Middle Eastern war. Ignorance is no excuse. Two Palestines cannot claim the same land. One is legitimate and the other is an outright fraud. One is tolerant, the other praises its martyrs or suicide bombers.

Which Palestine is the real one? Like the two women who came to King Solomon for judgement, only one can be the real mother of the baby that they disputed, 1Kings 3:16. Is it the one whose charter would eliminate all Jews and Christians?

Look at this document.




Note the letterhead: GOVERNMENT OF PALESTINE ! Note the city : JERUSALEM.

Before the State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948, a Government of Palestine existed with its capital at Jerusalem. This is a British Mandate official document. Note the British seal. The Mandate of Palestine was set up by international law to return the government of the Land of Israel to the people of Israel, who had been scattered, persecuted, tortured and terrorized for around 70 generations.

The text reads:

Dear Mr Erlanger,
This is to introduce Mr Josef Pollak a young Palestinian Singer who is to visit Paris.

It is signed by an official called Salomon.

Mr Josef Pollak is Jewish and a Palestinian. At this time everyone in Paris and in Europe understood the term Palestinian to mean Jewish citizen under the Mandate living in the former Land of Israel.

What does PALESTINE mean? It is a Roman term. It is the Roman way of pronouncing Philistine. It was applied after the Roman Empire had wiped out the last effort at Jewish independence in the second century. It is anti-Semitic abuse. It was used to show that the land was cleared of Jews. Israel or Judah became Judenrein, (to use Hitler's term). That is Jews were for a time cleared out and banned from entering the own home territory. However over the succeeding centuries, the Jews re-entered and always maintained a presence there, not only in Judea and Samaria but also Gaza, the home of some Jewish sages.

Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople, nowadays called Istanbul. The Roman Empire finally fell when its capital at Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. In Europe people still used the term Palestine. It is found on old maps and those in many Bibles. It is not a Biblical name. The Christian 'New Testament' uses the term Land of Israel, even when the Romans were in control with the Herodian dynasty. (See Matthew chapter 2 v21).

Who were the Philistines, the Palestinians?

They were a small group of a few tens of thousands of people who occupied four or five towns in what is now the Gaza strip. They gained their power because of alliances with Egypt and some other Mediterranean powers because they sat on the gateway of the trading route between Mesopotamia, via Israel to Egypt. They also maintained a monopoly of the iron industry which was then the latest war technology. They succeeded in creating a cartel system in iron production with the Hittite empire in what is now Turkey, but this empire also disappeared from later history.

After wars with the Israelites and others, they were wiped out or absorbed three thousand years ago. The remaining Philistines living in the towns of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, Gaza and Ekron were killed in the time of Joash king of Israel in the eighth century (see Amos 1:8). This was accomplished efficiently by the brutal Assyrians when they invaded from the N.E.

'I will send a fire on the wall of Gaza ... and I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod, and him that holds the sceptre from Ashkelon, and I will turn mine hand against Ekron and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish.'

Today there are no Philistines in Ashdod or Ashkelon, nor Gaza or Gath. The Philistines no longer exist. Nor had they existed for centuries before Rome itself was founded. The Romans had to dig far back into history to find a insult big enough to abuse the Jews.

Why? Because the Jewish revolt in the first and second centuries involved the mobilisation of many of the Roman legions and a huge amount of imperial resources. That a small people could defy the Roman Empire was a huge insult to the imperial Caesars. It was not enough to slaughter them and render the remainder slaves of no worth. They chose to name the land after a small trading people of a few thousands that was a cause of irritation by their culture and war over the centuries.

The term Philistine still exists as an insult. It means uncultured person. Perhaps it derived its force from the fact that the Philistines ate dogs and pigs as archaelogy shows. The masses of drinking vessels show they were enthusiastic beer-drinkers, which was probably also a source of trouble.

In the same way the abusive term Palestine, that is, Philistia still existed as an insult until the last century. It is no surprise that Jews did not want to keep this vile name. There was never a State called Palestine nor a Government -- until the British revived the term and used it to create the Government of Palestine for the Jewish Homeland.

The British passports before the end of the Mandate are stamped
Palestinian Citizen.



That is exactly how the family of Moshe Dayan are classified. Information is written in English, Hebrew and Arabic. Both parents of Moshe Dayan, Dvora and Shmuel, and General Dayan himself were classified by the British under international law as Palestinians.


When foreign armies tried to invade the land, Dayan and other leaders resisted. (The black eye-patched Dayan lost an eye in Syria during WW2 fighting under British command.)

In 1948, the new government changed the name of their beleaguered country officially to what it had been two thousand years ago: ISRAEL.

Like the previous Government of Palestine, it comprised Jews and Arabs, Baha'is, Druzes, Muslims, Christians, atheists and agnostics and other religions in a multi-cultural Jewish State. It became the State and Government of Israel by the proclamation of a name change on 14 May 1948. The idea of tolerance comes directly from the Torah and the rest of the Bible.

You shall love your neighbour as yourself, Leviticus 19 v18.

Democracy, said Schuman, derives from exactly the same Biblical principles.

Some, perhaps most of the 'Arab' Palestinians as Ben Gurion observed were actually Jews who had for generations been in the land and had been forcefully converted to Islam. Recent DNA tests and analysis of their customs indicate it may be the majority of the residents.

Thus the Government of Palestine is now called the Government of Israel. This was the original intention of the Mandate system. After WW1, it was set in law by the Allies and agreed by nearly all the States of the world, who became members of the the League of Nations and then members of the United Nations. It is written in the UN Charter. Other States such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq which were part of the Ottoman Empire owe their legitimacy to these legal agreements as much as Israel.

The only thing that was not clear was the final designation of the name of the State. The choice of the name Israel was hardly a shock as it had been published by the British and other States for decades.

Thousand or millions of paper and metal documents attest to it. The identity of the Palestine with Israel was long recognized since the 1920s by the British and world authorities. How can Europeans, Americans and others know today? How can the leaders of the democracies be absolutely and legally sure that Palestine = Israel?

All they have to do is to look at any stamp or any coin of the Mandate period. There you will find Palestine in English, Hebrew and Arabic. You will also find two Hebrew letters Aleph Yod. This stands for Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel.








Every coin and every stamp of the period is living proof that Palestine Mandate territory and the Land of Israel are identical.

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.

12 Cyprus-2 Should an Asian island be part of Europe?

For centuries Europeans have argued: where are the limits of Europe? Professors and writers have battled on the subject. So have armies. Europe as a political and organisational entity would never exist if citizens had had to wait for experts, academics and politicians to agree.

"The definition of Europe as a geographical entity has long been a topic of academic debate," Robert Schuman told a meeting of foreign ministers and ambassadors in London’s prestigious St James’s Palace. "But Europe cannot wait for the end of a seemingly interminable discussion. She will define herself by herself by the willingness of her populations."

Schuman was speaking at the signing of the statutes of the Council of Europe on 5 May 1949. By their votes and those in their parliaments, Europeans began defining Europe. France, under Schuman’s premiership, had been largely responsible for the creation of this, Europe’s first international democratic institution. It allowed European citizens through their elected ministers and their politicians to express European public opinion and democratically define policies of cooperation.

Thus Europe's ultimate borders are defined in the minds of Europeans and an act of political will about human rights and fundamental freedoms. (See Holocaust2 Human Rights vs Final Solution) The adherence to these principles in the Human Rights convention are the touchstone of being European.

Robert Schuman’s initiative helped break the centuries-long log-jam made by wars, competition and dominating sovereignties. Europe would be defined, he said, through a democratic act of will of its citizens mutually reinforcing humane, moral values for peaceful development.

More than half a century later, some politicians have reopened the ‘interminable’ debate. They insist that states and citizens of the European Union, must conform to their definition of European geography and their concept of history. It is too late to turn back the clock. The Founding Fathers would not agree with the statement of a politician that European "geography sets the frame."

In May 2004, Cyprus became a full member. In its "geographical frame," it is not in Europe. It is entirely in Asia. Up to 1878, Cyprus was part of Turkey's Asian Ottoman empire. Over the thousands of years of its history, Cyprus had been part of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian empires. When it was part of the Egyptian empire, it did not become African. Nor did its geography change later when conquered by Roman plots and arms. Some argue that because its culture is "European," it is part of Europe. But that would make Australia and the USA equally "European". In 1961 Cyprus became "European" when it joined the Council of Europe. Member States agreed with this definition. It was voted in all parliaments of the European Union. Greece and Turkey together became members of the Council years earlier, in 1949.

Europe's Asian footprint is now irreversible. This is not an accident. 'Europe' has long had irreversibly global geography. The official map of the European Union shows that its legal borders already extend to Africa and the Americas too. The French departments of Reunion (Africa) and Guyane (South America) Guadeloupe and Martinique are internal territory of the EU, as are the African islands of Portuguese Madeira and the Spanish Canaries.

It is the act of will or consciousness which Robert Schuman mentioned that decides the "limits of Europe" in today’s fashionable term. Schuman had a broader vision right from the start. ‘Europe’ is a dynamic project, not an empire or state. It was concerned with what he called Europeans duty to prevent "global suicide."

This may sound a vague and imprecise hope to some politicians and academics but in fact it has a solid intellectual basis which is little discussed today. It has real power. It is stronger than armies. The philosophical and scientific concepts he enunciated in the 1940s are the driving force of today’s enlargement process. He predicted it would be so, based on logical deduction. It created "a well spring of unexploited energies to take advantage of," he told the Council of Europe in 1950. He said that on the occasion he presented to the Consultative Assembly the details of the Schuman Plan, creating the European Community.

Schuman supported the Turkish adhesion to the European values of the Community system. He also made clear that northern, central and eastern European countries, including Russia, must be considered "European" when they embrace European values. These involved supranational rule of law protecting democracy and the human rights and fundamental freedoms.

These include not only freedom of speech but the freedom to hold a religion. Most importantly for any community based on supranational --that is eternal -- values it assures the right to change one's religion without let or hindrance. The Community is focused on a long-term democratic debate on moral improvement including personal values like truth and honesty and society values for physical, mental and spiritual health.

Schuman, together with the foreign ministers of the other European states, signed this Convention on 4 November 1950. The Council established working relationships with other democracies like Australia and New Zealand. And importantly for the future, it sustained and supported democracies under pressure and aspiring for more freedom like Finland and Israel.

The real difficulties of today’s debate arise only when people misconceive Schuman's Community system as a club leading to a super-state or federation. These politicians want to be the leader, whether wanted or not. This is a major intellectual block in discussions; people still talk in terms of federations and confederations while Schuman, a lawyer and constitutional expert, announced in the 1940s that he was about to create a third, system, the supranational, totally new in practice and in the history of political constitutions. Schuman's design was aimed at strengthening the open practice of democracy and the guarantees of the rule of law. He intended the impact of this supranational, democratic revolution to be planetary.

9 The Cyprus membership mess and its resolution

Intensive talks on the unity of Cyprus are underway again. At the eastern end of the Mediterranean, the island of Cyprus presents an enigma to other Europeans. Firstly it is a witness against today's politicians in Brussels and elsewhere. Why could they too not make war 'not only unthinkable but materially impossible' -- as Robert Schuman said he would do in the Schuman Declaration, sixty years ago? Do politicians know why Europe's first Community was created?

Secondly, Cyprus is geographically in Asia, so what is it doing in the European Union? Should a part of Asia be a member of Europe? The answer is Yes. We will explain why, later.

Thirdly, Cyprus has been a member since the Great Enlargement of 2004 when it joined with Malta and Central and Eastern European Countries, newly liberated from the Iron Curtain. The latter previously had regimes that were ruled by political parties that lacked public support, and denied the public right of effective expression in politics. The governing elite (who thought they knew better) ignored public opinion, demonstrations, even mass revolts against their "people's democracies", as they called them.

Look at the mess the accession negotiators came up with. In theory the whole island of Cyprus is part of the European Union. In practice it is divided. Democracy, not only the Single Market, is broken. The European rule of law is ‘suspended’ in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The Greek Cypriot south lacks the democratic legitimacy and voice to speak for the entire island. The present division of the island is a disagreeable public reminder to these negotiator/ politicians — it indicates that something was gravely amiss in the way they went about enlargement. It shows that they did not understand the basic, democratic principles of the Community process.

The resolution of the decades-long remnants of war, killing and displaced populations is a challenge to European politicians. Behind it is a shocking story of dissembling. If the founding fathers of the first European Community in the 1950s were able to make ‘war not only unthinkable but materially impossible’ between the most belligerent and hate-filled states of Western Europe FIVE years after the horrific World War 2 with millions of dead and millions of displaced people — among people who fought each other for millennia — why cannot today's European politicians resolve the problems of one island?

The original negotiators did not resolve the problem. Don't today's politicians have the means and power to do so -- do they remember how the Community model works? Hardly. They abandoned it, or where they could not, they have hidden it!!! They spent millions on a propaganda campaign for the Lisbon Treaty that said that 1957 was the birthday of the European Community! Utter Rubbish!

Unfortunately today's party politicians are still trying to bury the real history. They have now created a political oligarchy for parties not people -- calling it the European Union. It has not destroyed the European Community but it has added a great deal of expensive and undemocratic, political fog and mirrors. They refuse to recognize referendums or even opinion polls showing how much the people disagree with them.

Today Western Europe is living in the longest period of peace that it has ever experienced since before the time of the Caesars. Have today’s politicians lost the plot? Do they lack the will and would prefer to see the problem fester? Are they Machiavellian, ignorant or incompetent?

The politicians’ abandonment of European principles is clear from the EU protocol for Cypriot accession. It shows something is seriously wrong. It does not talk about people being ‘free to choose’ — the essence of democracy — but it talks of places where the Greek Cypriot government ‘does not have effective control’. That type of terminology — control when talking about a democracy — recalls the Iron Curtain not a normal democracy.

This restriction to the citizens includes not only the Turkish Cypriots but the grey area of British Sovereign Bases of Akritiri, Episkopi, Ayios Nikolaos and Dhekelia. The Sovereign Bases fall under different international law. They have a land area about 5/6 the size of Malta. There, the people with Greek social security were considered to be resident of Cyprus.

Given the past dishonest compromises that politicians have made against the clear democratic principles of a supranational Community, is there any hope for Cypriot unity and a healthy eastern border of the EU? Will the island ever become unified and a viable Member State? The prizes for such an improvement are great.

The Europe Declaration, made by the founding fathers on 18 April 1951, the foundational document for the entire EU — which incidentally the European Commission still refuses to publish on its website europa.eu — says that membership of the European Community system is open to all peoples who are ‘free to choose’. If the European Commission won’t even acknowledge and publish the founding democratic principles of Europe’s supranational Community, that gives free reign for politicians to cheat, chisel and make closed-door, undemocratic deals.

The present talks
Having made this membership mess by compromise and not a little bit of political blackmail, European politicians — who should understand what a European Community means — are less than visible in the present intensive series of talks. Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots wrapped up last week the first of two intensive three-day discussions scheduled for this month. The next are set for 25 January.

The President of the Greek Cypriots, Demetris Christofias, a Moscow-trained historian and the Turkish Cypriot President Mehmet Ali Talat, an Ankara-trained electrical engineer, conferred in the neutral zone of Nikosia under United Nations auspices. Observers say that evidence for concrete progress is small. The UN Special Adviser Alexander Downer who is brokering the talks said that the two had ‘a free and very open exchange of views on the issue of governance and power sharing.’

The Australian diplomat would not be drawn on details whether the UN had met its objective of achieving progress. ‘As I said, and I choose my words carefully, these talks are being held very much in a positive spirit and in a very good atmosphere.’

There are ten dossiers on the table. Amongst the thorniest are property and plans for a unitary state based on a mixture of federal and confederal ideas.

The talks are being somewhat hindered, if not hamstrung, by both parties having to look over their shoulders as they confer. The Turkish president is anxious about his re-election chances in April. His popularity is falling due to higher unemployment. A recent poll puts his popularity as half that of his rival for the post, Dr Dervis Eroglu. That gives him little room to make concessions under the eye of an opponent wanting to take a harder line.

The Greek Cypriot President is also under the watchful gaze of the Greek Cypriot National Council – composed of the president and leaders of all political parties represented in the House of Representatives. They too express disapproval of concessions. Further afield the leaders of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Greek Republic of Cyprus take frequent soundings from and trips to Turkey and Greece respectively.

Should Cyprus be a member of the EU? If so why? And can any progress be made about bringing unity to the island? The only concept that has a hope to unite the island are supranational values that transcend political manipulations. That is the founding principle of the Schuman method. If the people were given the right to be able to be ‘free to choose’, what would they say?

These issues will be dealt with here in future commentaries.