EU continues its CAP scam that UK failed to reform

'UNACCEPTABLE!'
That's what David Sassoli, president of the European Parliament called the draft €1 Trillion budget for 2021-27, prepared by the Commission and the European Council. He was addressing a press conference at the European Council meeting of 20 February.

Why was it unacceptable? He earlier told the Council meeting that 'No one wants to burden our fellow citizens with new taxes.'

Was he defending the taxpayer against this extravagance? No. He wants more money, more taxes for spending on European projects.

Cutting the money on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) leaves citizens ‘undefended‘, he said. ‘The Parliament is vigilant,‘ he added. ‘We will defend the citizens of Europe. We will make sure that the Union’s programmes are financed in a way that is adequate for that purpose.‘

So what is adequate? How much money should be designated for agriculture?

The same message came from French President Emmanuel Macron. The European Council was called to deal with the European budget, 2021-2027, he said. The first priority that he mentioned as he entered the European Council building was the CAP.

'The CAP has allowed us to provide food for Europeans since the 1960s,' he said. 'It is a great success for France and Europe.'

Then he revealed that there were plans to increase the budget to give realisation to further plans.

Let’s stop at Agriculture, seeing this is the priority topic. The drafts of the budget from the Commission and the Council all foresee more than 30 per cent of the budget going on agriculture. Parliament would like to see an even bigger budget in general.

So how much does the Agriculture sector represent in the total economy of the EU? Thirty percent? Nowhere near! Not even close to twenty percent or even ten.

Agriculture represents a smidgen above ONE percent of the economy. European agriculture is efficient. It does not employ many people. So why does it need so much of the European tax-payers’ money? What about Technology and jobs for the future? What is the reaction of European tax-payers? Is it discussed inside the luxurious chamber where the heads of government meet?

The truth is we do not know. The sessions are secret. Doors are closed and governments divide the tax money according to how they wish to influence their most important people — their voters or rather their bosses.

Since the 1960s France has led the other States by the nose. It was the big nose of General de Gaulle. He decided to sabotage the democratic system of Robert Schuman. 

De Gaulle decided that the majority of the European Communities‘ budget should be spent on agriculture. His voters were men of the soil and it was the way he could show he was a patriot– getting the Germans to pay for French cheeses.

Money would go to the big landowners. Up till recently the list of who got the CAP money was SECRET! Is something smelling foul? -- and it's not cheese!

Far from a success story, the CAP really got out of hand. In 1985 70 per cent of the European budget was spent on agriculture. Brussels used the budget to keep buying French and other farm products as if there was no tomorrow. That is when all the agricultural products built up into huge unmanageable stockpiles and lakes. There were beef mountains, wine lakes, milk lakes. These meat products were shoved into more and more fridges, wine of all sorts was converted into alcohol or other products and milk into powder. All the alternative uses for these products was sought until Europeans were bloated and distended.

Europe was stuffed to the gunnels with farm products — all thanks to the CAP. Export markets were full too. So the Brussels people sold off what they could at knock down prices to the Soviet Union — the enemy of the Cold War! So the poor citizens paid high prices for their food while at the same time subsidising the Communist take-over of Europe!

The CAP was a corruption bomb that the UK was unable to defuse. When UK joined the European Communities in 1973, the British agricultural system was supported on an entirely different system, deficiency payments. UK did not have enough land to sustain its people entirely for their food needs. During the world war, Britons tried to grow as much as possible. Afterwards, the UK relied on the Commonwealth for imports, whether grain from Canada or lamb and butter from New Zealand. These countries were far more efficient than the Continent.

Couve de Murville receives instructions from President de Gaulle

The sly Gaullist Foreign Minister, Maurice Couve de Murville, told Britain during the negotiations that they would have to change their buying habits and buy from the Continent. He did not have to say that that meant France above all. Everyone knew it.

So the origins of the CAP are not exactly built on the best deal for the people. CAP meant more expensive food. it also meant votes for the Gaullists.

The British vowed that they would stop this crazy scheme before it got out of hand. The amount of the Community budget spent on the CAP reached SEVENTY PER CENT in 1985 before it started to decline a little. France and Italy and some other countries had choice land and had some of the most corrupt practices including wine made out of chemicals and olive plantations with no olive trees.

The British had within easy reach a possible success story for reforming the out-of-control CAP. It was the Treaty of Rome itself. All they had to do was to get the other ministers to follow the treaty articles that specify that the CAP must be under democratic control.

UK failed. Hence Brexit. 

The European Economic Community treaty signed in Rome in 1957 has a whole chapter on the Agricultural Community. It calls for full democratic control in a common organisation — an agricultural committee under the Economic and Social Committee — to supervise prices and supplies for the benefit of three categories:

• farmers,
• workers and
• consumers.

They were never implemented! Consumers have never had a voice! But they paid for the corrupt practice and high prices!

Thus the European Council is celebrating behind closed doors one of the greatest international fraud machines of all time. They are also celebrating the exit of their greatest, but in the end ineffectual, critic, the United Kingdom.

And today on 20 February 2020 they are preparing for seven more years of the same scam in the Multiannual Budget 2021-2027.

BREXIT3: What UK must do before its exits the EU!

UK’s LEAVE vote result of 24 June 2016 visibly shocked EU Presidents Tusk of the European Council and Jean-Claude Juncker of the European Commission. It should not have.
UK has been fighting up-hill against a Gaullist wave since the 1950s.

Currently the UK and all Europeans are facing a Politburo takeover of the institutions that continues de Gaulle’s efforts to block the supranational democratic principles written into the Treaties by Europe’s Founding Fathers like Robert Schuman.
Britain’s first application to join was made in July 1961. UK only managed to join in 1973. Instead of applying Schuman’s Community principles of the Common European Interest, the negotiations were dominated by the anti-British Gaullist French. In negotiations led by arch-Gaullists, Great Britain saw its agriculture, fisheries and industries turned upside down.
Robert Schuman wrote that Democracy is not reserved to republican States.

“I would regard certain monarchies, such as Great Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands, just to speak of our near neighbours, as more openly and more traditionally attached to democratic principles than some republics. In republics the people have only a little direct influence on the orientation and the political decisions of the country. But we do not have to discuss the choice that a democracy has to make among the different forms of of government. We should limit ourselves to avoiding those which are obviously anti-democratic.”

Robert Schuman with Winston Churchill

Maurice Couve de Murville squeezed UK’s negotiator Edward Heath as if he was minutely defending only France’s Gaullist voters. How do I know? He told me so when I interviewed him in his Paris apartment. “It’s was just a negotiation like the others.”
That meant to grind the “opponent” and take every advantage, fair or foul, that you can. Couve was an expert. A European journalist described him in another context as :

“a man who would have taught Machiavelli’s Prince much about the art of diplomacy.”

De Gaulle humiliated the UK’s membership application as much as he possibly could. He used a ‘casual’ question at one of his press conferences to veto it. This he did not once but several times. De Gaulle preferred having dictatorships like Spain’s Franco, join rather than democracies.
In the late 1940s Couve de Murville was a Director General at the Foreign Ministry. He did his utmost to sabotage Foreign Minister Robert Schuman’s policy for European reconciliation. Later he tried to destroy the Community system.
Couve insisted on closed doors at the Council of Ministers. By twisting the arms of the ‘small nations’ he made Germany’s industries and the other States pay for French agriculture and thus bribe its voters to vote Gaullist. This corrupt use of the EU budget is still a constant problem.
This background should be borne in mind. The Brussels institutions, meant to be impartial, have never been reformed since the Gaullist distortions and blocking of the democratic clauses in the European treaties. Too many politicians have acted as little de Gaulles, insisting on closed doors still and secretive package deals.
With this background in mind, here is some advice about how all Europeans should proceed. The following was published two years ago.

………………………………………

31 March 2014
BREXIT: FIRST Build Supranational Counter-Instruments! (Part three of series)
What would be the nature of the instruments that UK would need for the negotiations? Here are some of the issues needing action BEFORE the UK Government sends its letter of withdrawal. The strategy requires implementation as soon as possible, even before the referendum.
If not the institutions may make implementation more and more difficult for serious negotiations. The eventual goal must be borne in mind. The negotiation has to provide honest and fair solutions.
A bitter barter deal won’t cut it. It will be subject to endless renegotiations like the British rebate and the common fishing policy. Iceland has always maintained that sustainable fish stocks were the rock of its policy.
Not the EU. Secret political deals in Council ignored scientific assessments. Fish stocks were wiped out. Britain needs sustainability or it could be decimated by secret attacks at the Council of Ministers like the fish stocks.
How can UK negotiate with Brussels when the institutions are not impartial? Take the Commission as an example. It has to act for 27 Member States plus the UK at the same time. Which side will it Commission favour since one member will leave and 27 will stay? How can it be impartial? Can the UK trust it?
The Commission should provide an impartial overview of UK’s needs within Europe’s needs and interests. It doesn’t. How then can it be impartial when later it represents interests of States who are trying to displace UK and assert its supremacy?
In a recent outburst against the British Conservative group, President Jose Manuel Barroso said that unless they conformed to his idea of pro-European policy, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) would become the ‘first force’ in British politics for Europe.
Mr Cameron retorted the Commission is not respecting the UK’s government party and lecturing it. The strategy must counter the negative proclivity of the Commission thinking that it alone is right. It must do it before and not try to change the highly political Commission during negotiations.
Then there is the Council. Britain has Europe’s strongest banking and financial sector – which many would like to see moved to the Continent. How can British multinationals be assured that they have fair and open access to the European Single Market without being coshed again?
The Council takes its instructions from the European Council of heads of governments. So what lessons are to be learned their about impartiality? After the 28 June 2013 summit, P.M. Cameron denounced as ‘unacceptable and ‘frustrating’ the one a.m. ambush on the UK rebate issue, supposedly finalized in February. “I just think this is no way for an organisation to conduct itself.” he added.
The atmosphere could become far worse. The UK should not forget the de Gaulle’s NON. He refused Britain’s entry. Not once, but twice. He caused havoc to international negotiation. He did not discuss it in the Council of Ministers. Or his own Cabinet! Nor by formal letter or in an international conference but at a press conference! He ran the Community like it was his own backyard to exploit for agriculture and bribing politicians and voters.
Then there is the European Parliament. De Gaulle considered it a cipher. Today has gained powers with major financial powers of codecision from the Lisbon Treaty. This could wreck a carefully sculpted negotiation made with the Council. Anyone watching the debates in the EP can scarcely believe that it will take the negotiation lying down and with a benign smile. The Council’s Legal Service concluded that the Financial Transfer Tax was not legal. This did not seem to deter MEPs.
One political group declared in a press release:
Appealing to governments to stick to proposals for the introduction of a financial transaction tax (FTT), despite ‘cynical’ legal manoeuvring, Portuguese MEP Marisa Matias said the EU has a clear choice:
“Either we rescue politics and our society from financial markets or we can start to say goodbye to a common European project.”
The Court is another hidden danger. An appeal to a Court that favoured integrationist and ratchet federalism could years later strip off key decisions of the negotiation result. All hard, detailed work would be in vain if, years later, the Court reversed key aspects.
The EU has hardly improved democratically since de Gaulle’s day. The fruit of de Gaulle’s corrupt anti-democracy was the misdirection of Community funds into Wine Lakes, Meat Mountains, and Cheese Bergs. Millions of Europeans’ money were wasted on local politicians’ pet infrastructure projects of bridges and autoroutes that went nowhere.
The entire budget system which takes taxpayers’ money and spends it as the political Politburo decides lacks transparency and control by taxpayers. Today we have airports that have no passengers and other much more expensive wastes of taxpayers’ money.
Even worse the politicians’ ill-founded Euro project (intended by many southern States to get Community funding for governmental mismanagement) costs around seven times the entire EU budget by its European Stability Mechanism ESM, European Finance and Stability Facility, EFSF and other dubious operations of the Fiscal Compact. It is often said that ‘EU is not prepared to make changes.’
It has continuously lost public trust as it has changed from the original idea of a democratic Community of equal partners, equal governments, equal enterprises, unions, consumers and equal individuals. Today it run by party political machines, who are lobbyists for who knows whom. It is a political club run in secret by a politburo in the closed-door European Council and the EuroGroup.
It chooses the Parliament president in secret.
It makes Foreign Policy in secret.
It names the European Central Bank president in secret.
It appoints the Commission president in secret from among its own, ignoring 98 percent of the European population.
But the UK has real Membership leverage to bring reform BEFORE the Exit Letter. How? The second key aspect of the negotiation is the pre-reform of institutions to make them really democratic. Only when the basic conditions are settled for a democratic discussion, should the UK government think about sending its official letter about leaving the EU.

Budget7: How EU's Council of Ministers stole YOUR money in the E Coli scandal!

The Council of Ministers just slid a stealthy hand into your pocket -- and stole a euro. Think about it. Act 1: a score of people die in Germany from E Coli bacteria poisoning. Many more are hospitalized. Curtain for intermission. Act 2, the Council of Ministers quickly doles out 210 million euros of taxpayers' money to many countries around the EU. What happened in the intermission?

Who is to blame for the infection? An authoritative German source says it came from Spanish cucumbers. Let us call this source Herr Schmidt so we do not have to be personal. Many irresponsible people are involved. Herr Schmidt is a minister, an elected democratic representative.

Herr Schmidt says Spanish cucumbers are to blame. The Spanish farmers protest. Nonsense, they say, there is no trace of infection here. To no avail. The market collapses. No one will buy Spanish cucumbers, nor in fact any vegetable or fruit from Spain.

Then under questioning from the press and the agricultural interests, Herr Schmidt retracts his remark about Spain. But it is really a bit late, all fruit and vegetable markets around Europe have been hit. The public does not want to eat them out of fear of ending up horizontal in a morgue.

We now have a European crisis. What should we Europeans do? The Community is built up on the principle of solidarity. So would it not be a good idea to help the farmers from Community funds? In the meantime Herr Schmidt has gone on to blame bean sprouts, also without proof, and, who knows, a meteorite shower of bacteria from space!

But hang on! Who is responsible for the debacle? I would say Herr Schmidt is largely to blame for the scare. He did not say:

'What all consumers should do with all fruit and vegetables is to wash them well and cook them well as required. Bacteria die in boiling water. Wash your hands too! Eat safely like your mother taught you!'

No, Herr Schmidt started to blame an innocent party, causing hundreds of millions of euros damage. If any one is responsible it is Herr Schmidt. It makes better TV to blame and accuse rather than advise people on hygiene. If he was speaking for the German government as an official or employee then the German government -- and their budget -- is responsible too.

So how did the Council react? Does it lay the blame where it lies -- on Germany? No. It decided that all taxpayers in the whole of the European Union should pay for this German mistake. Why?

Like the quick movement of the magician's hands comes this very old trick. It has been done many times in the past. It is called political collusion. They call it Solidarity. They assume the people will be so dumb to think it means solidarity of all the citizens. In fact it is not that at all but solidarity of the political clique acting against the citizen, his money and his rights.

Consider the implications. The politicians are set to blame the citizen and say 'Collectively all the citizens are responsible financially'. That is rubbish. The politicians are responsible for the rumour. The politicians, so-called democratic representatives, do not honestly represent the citizen because they can point to no link of blame between the citizen and the agricultural market loss. In this case most of the citizens' real rights are best represented by consumer groups, taxpayers' associations or economic analysts and health-care groups, not the politicians. That is why Schuman and the Founding Fathers declared that organized civil society, such as these associations, should be a formal part of Community governance.

Financially there is a causal, financial and legal link between Germany, that is Herr Schmidt, bridging (1) the cause of deaths and injuries by E Coli and (2) the collapse of the market for cucumbers and other products across the EU and probably much further afield. There is no link with the taxpayer in the Outer Hebrides and the problem. Why then should a Hebridian crofter pay?

As far as I know, the Scottish crofters had personally nothing to do with it. They did not export lethal E Coli. They did not spread rumours or accuse anyone. Why should anyone in the Hebrides, or Rumania or Bulgaria compensate for a German problem? Why not the real culprit who started an authoritative but false scare?

Notice how the political class in the Council of Ministers defends themselves and takes YOUR money. Very quickly before anyone can reflect, all is decided. No debate in public. They decreed that 210 million euros should be taken from the European budget -- the taxpayers' money -- and be given to those farmers in Spain and elsewhere who were hit by the scare. Did the Council of Ministers ask the citizen? No. Did the European consumer express an opinion through the institution set up for this?

The body that should be defending the citizen and the consumer as well as the taxpayer, the Economic and Social Committee, is asleep on the job. In a supranational Community, democratic debate and legal opinions are required for all financial decisions. That involves governments, organised civil society, regions and the European Parliament. Under de Gaulle the Council tried to short-circuit this system. It is quite illegal and immoral to do so.

E Coli caused the initial problem. The rest is a man-made problem. More precisely, a politician-made problem. It has nothing to do with the weather, a flood or drought. Solidarity can legally be expected there and is welcome to help the hard-pressed farmers. But this case involves a single origin: ministerial 'foot in mouth' disease by Herr Schmidt. There is a clear causal relationship to Herr Schmidt for the real blame.

The Council compounded this problem with a crime. They stole money from the citizen, big time. They took money from all the citizens and gave it to someone else without asking the citizen. They took a euro from your purse or pocket! With 500 million citizens, 210 millions represents practically all the adult wage earners in the European Union. They stole one euro from just about everyone contributing to the European budget.

It is hush money. A bribe for silence. Just consider how unethical this is. What about the EU's neighbouring counties? Many countries, perhaps candidate countries for EU membership, also suffered from a loss of appetite for vegetables and fruits. They could not export into the EU. Many of them also suffered financial losses when all of a sudden the EU citizens said: "No vegetables on my plate and certainly not cucumbers!" Russia blocked its imports of EU agricultural products. Many exports were affected. This caused a problem for EU farmers but also the Russian consumers. They had to pay higher prices. Should the Council of Ministers -- who are very free and easy with other people's money -- send them a subsidy too???

Why, if this 210 millions subsidy was a just and fair policy, did the Council of Agricultural Ministers not spread taxpayers' money much further abroad? Why did they not send European cash around the world to places in Africa, South America and elsewhere -- which also took a financial hit as the German cucumber falsehoods were taken seriously?

The conclusions we should draw:

• Ministers and governments officials whether elected or not should keep their mouth shut on matters they do not understand. (That should save a lot of TV time! Public education about bacteria on TV is lacking.) The job of politicians is not to fill the airwaves with nonsense but to do their job. Sometimes this means keeping quiet. They should hush. The political class must be held responsible for what they say if it causes damage.
• Legal blame should be placed where the fault lies, according to the law. If some one is wronged he has access to the court. Why did the Spanish government not take Germany to Court? Each farmer has the right to take a case to Court in Germany. Now the Council has made a decision, they can also go to the European Court. The treaties say that European Court of Justice in Luxembourg is open for such cases, whether by the individual, an association, another European institution or a government.
• It is not the business of the Council of Ministers to short-circuit due legal process.
• It is not their job to give other people's money to resolve the problem of Herr Schmidt.
• Taxpayers’ money of the Outer Hebrides crofter or the Rumanian farmer should not be used as a bribe. The Council does not have a right, without democratic approval, to use the budget and give it to other governments to dissuade them from taking legal action against Germany or any other Member State in such circumstances.
• The Council should ensure as soon as possible that the Economic and Social Committee is elected on a European basis as a representative body for consumers, producers and workers. A non-party elected body is needed to give democratic legitimacy to any Community decisions so that a political clique is stopped from abusing Community funds.
• Government controls should see to it that irresponsible rumours are not started or if they are by accident, a quick denial should be published immediately.
• The media should act responsibly and not propagate rumours from irresponsible sources. They should analyse what shenanigans the politicians are up to.
• The German government should be responsible both financially and democratically for correcting the spread of rumours that cause Europe-wide or worldwide problems.
• Bacteria are not political. Scientists, not politicians, should determine the origin of E Coli strains. Impartial European scientific bodies should handle the scientific questions.
• The Council of Ministers is not authorized by the citizen to pay out European money to deal with problems that should be handled by national governments according to proper democratic systems.
• The Council of Ministers should investigate how they can recover the money they have wrongly distributed from the citizens' purse for non-European problems.
• The Council should stop acting as if the budget they have before them is their private money. It isn't. It is not to be used for resolving the political embarrassments of fellow politicians.
• And most importantly of all. The Council of Ministers should remember they are only ONE of the FIVE major European institutions that have to be engaged in a real Community decisions. It is not for them to act like a political cartel abusing the public.

The ministers of agriculture in the Council should limit their appearances before the television cameras to one comment:

'Keep your cucumbers clean. In turn we will keep our hands clean!'