Europe's Future: Autocracy, Technocracy? EU Commission must publish the Charter Treaty on Freedom of Choice!

Yesterday in the EU Commission Press Room, I raised a couple of questions about the inactivity and the lack of a direct response of the Commission on the need and legal obligation of the Commission to publish the Charter of the Community. Eric Mamer, the Spokesman, said he had no information. I asked him to help the services provide answers, and publication well before the end of the Conference debate on the Future of Europe. 

On 19 April, the Commission affirmed that they would publish this Charter Treaty and the full text of the Schuman Declaration so that citizens can discuss them at the Conference on the Future of Europe. The Commission ('Guardian of the Treaties') has not done so. 

https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-215453

President Ursula von der Leyen spoke in a Tweet for the Summit for Democracy about how democracy means freedom of choice for Europeans. The Charter or Joint Declaration is a Treaty that provides for citizens a legal instrument to expand the areas of liberty, counter technocratic or politburo-style imposition of regulations and reverse the disastrous Democratic Deficit of the EU that led to many recent problems including Brexit and Rule of Law issues. 

The Charter Treaty is held in legal deposit in the archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as designated by Article 100 of the European Coal and Steel Community Treaty.  The French Presidency of the Council starts next month and it will be embarrassing if the Charter Treaty and the full Schuman Declaration are not published by then.
The Charter of the Community signed by the plenipotentiary Founding Fathers confirms legally that the European institutions in the Treaty of Paris (Council, Commission, Consultative Committee, Court, Parliamentary Assembly) recognise that Europeans have God-given rights of freedom of choice.  This distinguishes a real democracy from the Fascist regimes or the false People's Democracies of the Communist Soviet bloc or any autocratic regime that imposes its own rules or a technocracy.

My recent article on the subject is at:
https://eurdemocracy.blogspot.com/2021/12/eu-document-transparency-real-problem.html

 

Europeans 'March on Rome' Wrong Time, Wrong Place, Wrong Map!

My message to all Europeans meeting in Rome on 25 March 2017:

Wrong Time, Wrong Place, Wrong Map!

The leaders received this message: 

” Today European institutions have fallen into a crisis of trust, disunity and confusion of policy.
Europe arose from the initiative of 18 April 1951 when six war-torn States signed a Compact of Destiny in Paris.

Signature of Treaty of Paris and Great Charter April 1951

It created the democratic institutions of a European Community. Democratic principles were that day defined in the great Charter of the Community. By rendering “unthinkable and materially impossible” a seemingly inevitable world war exploding for a third time from European soil, this compact saved, not only Europe but the world from ruin. Instead of war, Europeans planted the seeds of an unprecedented peace. It stimulated decades of growth and prosperity.
Today Leaders of the EU need to review and renew those high principles of a supranational Community. They should agree on applying them for the 21st Century.
This renewed compact is necessary to confront current crises and future challenges. It acknowledges the wisdom of our ancestors. It recognizes our responsibilities to future generations.
To help citizens regain full confidence in those institutions so that they rightfully represent and reliably serve Europe’s citizens, Europe’s leaders must re-focus on that original compact. They should then ensure they are fulfilling the letter and spirit of existing articles of the treaties.
These all stipulate:

• a single pan-European election for Parliament under a single statute.
• Doors in the Councils and Committees should be wide open to the public and the press.
• The European Commission should be reduced to around a dozen members so that it acts, not for lobbies, but impartially as an Honest Broker for all European individuals, nations and interests.

Confidence and trust are the reward free citizens give to open and honest government.”

1957 marked the signature of Europe’s second and third treaties. It also marked de Gaulle’s take-over of France. He wanted to “chloroform” or destroy the European Community system to establish an autocratic control of the European Continent. In this plan the United Kingdom would be excluded. He bamboozled the Germans into paying for the Common Agricultural Programme at the expense of all other Europeans and their democratic rights.
All the deals were made by an autocratic Council of Ministers meeting behind closed doors and excluding the public and press.
Are Europeans still being fooled by de Gaulle?

Elections5 EU's Treaty Change Blitz is a blitz against open democracy

I must admit I was a bit surprised when I received a press release from the European Parliament last week. It said tersely:

Communiqué de presse - 24.06.2010.
Eighteen additional MEPs a step closer to starting work

The 18 additional MEPs envisaged by the Lisbon Treaty are a step closer to starting work. The treaty change needed to enable them to do so was approved by Member State representatives at a brief Intergovernmental Conference on 23 June, after a green light from Parliament. The 18 MEPs can start work only after EU Member States have ratified the change (My emphasis)

A Brief IGC - you're telling me. A tad secret too. I was well aware that the European Parliament was aiming to add a few party friends at public expense. That was expected. They even had a debate and a motion. Enlarging Parliament was part of the secret deal made as part of the secret negotiations for the Lisbon Treaty. (Secret because the public was not asked about it. It was an agreement between party political leaders who take extra public money without asking the public's permission.)

All such agreements have to be agreed by the representatives of the nations. The public might like to ask: How would governments defend the extra expense at a time when governments of the PIGS are tottering trying to control their overspending and budget abuse.

However, the Blitz Inter-Governmental Conference shot past me. I was glad I wasn't hit by the lightning. I attended the European Council on 17 June. I listened at the press conference. Not a whisper about an IGC. An obscure reference to one of its internal  documents and 'necessary procedure' is in the conclusions. For democrats debate is also a 'necessary procedure.' By that I mean a debate between the politicals and the public, simply because a majority of the public has increasingly shown at elections its distrust for the politicals.

(By politicals I mean the politicians, the parties and the political party systems that say they are representatives of the people but act as a cartel against the people for their own career, financial or party advantage.)

So we have a secret, closed door European Council unwilling to have a public debate on vital matters of democracy. What does it do? Add further obscurity and secret meetings to avoid a public debate.

Why? Were the politicians afraid they might get some awkward questions? It might seem a bit inopportune to publicise the increase in MEPs. People might also ask about why MEPs are also asking to spend more on assistants and other matters during a financial crisis. Others might ask why more MEPs when at every election, more and more of the electorate is refusing to vote for any of them?

At the Council building I did not find any communiqué later about this IGC. I asked the Council for the communiqué. I was told there wasn't one. An IGC took place with no one knowing about it. So-called democratic governments did not deem it necessary to tell anyone about the IGC. No press release was published after it took place. At least the EP debated it in public before grabbing more money.

The IGC took place behind closed doors in the COREPER committee. This is a committee of civil servants called permanent representatives. They are not even politicians.  They were talking secretly amongst themselves about something else that would affect the European public. Then they changed hats, declared an IGC, and pronounced a Treaty Change 'in the margins' of the meeting, as they say.  That is the New Lisbon Democracy? Phew! Closed doors, civil servants making decisions on major issues, no press, no questions.

An Inter-Governmental Conference used to mean something. Now it means a rubber stamp by bureaucrats. Thus the European Council is confirming its disdain for democracy. It is saying its version of democracy or rather its system is what we say it is. No open debates. Another word for that is autocracy.

I have a proposal. Now the Council has developed a lightning technique for European decisions, I would like to know if the national politicians can start to catch up on the backlog of duties. Some urgent Treaty implementations have been on ice for nearly sixty years.; The Six governments signed up to these promises in 1951 and 1957 and other States immediately on accession. These Treaty articles said surprisingly that the European Parliament should be European. That means Europe-wide elections under a single statute for all.

A quick IGC could arrange that pan-European parliamentary statute. In other words the governments would forswear from cheating and having 27 national elections to the European Parliament. Each one is presently arranged according to national rules that curiously favour the main political parties in the State. A touch of honesty would therefore be helpful.

The Treaty of Paris, the founding treaty of the European community and the two treaties of Rome all agree. There should be a single election where electors can vote for any candidate in any country of the Community. Each elector should have one vote not up to twelve as some are now allowed to have.

The people must be 'free to choose' to quote from Europe's founding Charter. Half a century ago, Schuman wrote:

'In the not too distant future it is necessary to provide for elections with direct universal suffrage of the members of the Assembly which will exercise the powers of control, in conformity with the Charter of the Community. Article 138 (of the Economic Community) moreover gives this Parliament the mandate to draw up such a such a draft electoral project. The statute must be uniform for all Member States. It is certain that people's consciousness of a united Europe would be intensified and be more physically manifested if it could be regularly affirmed by a vote across the entirety of Europe,' (Pour l'Europe pp146-7)

Come on Council of Ministers. We know you can do it! Try getting your democratic priorities right!

And while the Council of Ministers is in the business of Blitz-IGCs, would it not be possible to give adequate notice so people could ask questions. And can the IGCs and the Council be open to the public as the Founding Fathers said they should be?
Thank you, Council.

21. Commission's vision for Europe 2020: they forgot Democracy!!

What makes a democracy more efficient than a dictatorship? Why did Franco’s Spain lapse into the economic doldrums? Why were Latin American dictatorships corrupt and lacking in vigour and growth? Why were Latin American currencies being constantly devalued? Why did Zimbabwe finally run out of noughts to add to the trillions on its useless paper currency? Why is violence the only means for dictatorships to survive?

It is because dictatorships cannot deal with the complexity of society. Businesses will not invest and workers will not work in an atmosphere of uncertainty. An autocrat can bring in changes overnight. He or she thinks he is being “smart” but it is in the end counterproductive.

Some dictatorships have remarkable growth — but only for an period. They fiddle the currency exchange rates and make their currency so cheap it causes a boom. Then it bursts. Reality sets in. The problem is far greater because a large population has greater expectation and huge disillusions. That is when civil unrest breaks out. A revolution might occur.

Dictatorships like to keep in cahoots with big business. They like to respond to their needs. They have an awe of business. Naively they think that if they please big business the country will all be rich. They are wrong. You can create a slave economy but you cannot make slaves rich. They will demand equality. Bye, bye dictatorship. Nor can you maintain constant growth and a contented population, if you do not allow citizens to have free expression.

Now let us ask the opposite question: Why are Western countries, in Europe, North America and Australasia, the most educated, richest and most productive societies in the world? Why do their currencies dominate world trade?

Doesn’t democracy have something to do with it? Clearly. And it is because they are able to deal with complex issues. The best democracies develop unprecedented freedoms for their citizens. They can criticize anything. They are not violent. And above all, in the very best of them, the citizens know how to exercise individual, associative and governmental SELF-DISCIPLINE.

Conclusion: the less democracy we have, the less we can expect to have prosperity, stability and freedoms. Given this elementary lesson of history, what should we expect from a Commission paper that calls itself EUROPE 2020 A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth?

I would hope that it would deal with how democratic European citizens could continue the example of our national democracies. Do the Commission SMARTSTERS deal with this core issue? NO

THE WORD “DEMOCRACY” DOES NOT APPEAR IN ALL THE PAPER!

Not very smart! There is one reference to democratic but it is nothing to do with European institutions. Instead they behave just like the disreputable gangs mentioned in the first part of this commentary. They say they will deal with stakeholders. That is another word for lobbyists. So this so-called SMART strategy for sustainable and inclusive growth will end in the dustbin of history in the company of tinpot dictators. The system they describe is an autocracy — that is a system in this case run by a three-party cartel that excludes civil society — surrounded by lobbyists.

Europeans should ask: IS THAT WHAT THEY WANT, EITHER NOW OR IN 2020? It is exactly what the people of the Iberian peninsula, the countries under the Soviet boot in Central and Eastern Europe, and the Greeks under the Colonels wanted to get away from! They thought they were joining a Community of shared valued and enhanced democracy! Instead the Commission paper promises them North Korean style government!

The paper fawningly recommends more powers to the secretive European Council and the Council of Ministers. What sort of INDEPENDENT, smart thinking is that?

“The European Council will have full ownership and be the focal point of the new strategy,” it says. Ownership?!! A European institution that calls itself democratic MUST open its doors so the citizens can see and hear those present and judge the quality of their interventions. The citizens should be able to judge their representatives.

If they can’t, then the the citizens are living in some modification, transmogrification or transformation of a dictatorship or autocratic system. Schuman called such shadow democracies “COUNTERFEIT” democracies. He said that a real democracy must be judged by two criteria. It must SERVE the people, not serve the leaders. And secondly it provide the means to allow the citizens and associations to disagree or to agree with any measure that is taken in its name. They should be able to make their own INDEPENDENT analysis.

Civil society, the key element, has been short-changed and short-circuited out of the paper. Is Parliament supposed to take on this job? That is absurd. It has not even set its own house in order. The Parliament has NEVER had an election according to the legal requirements of the original treaties. That says there should be ONE election for all Europeans not 27 national elections for the European Parliament.

For civil society, there are perfectly suitable institutions like the Economic and Social Committee that need to be developed democratically. They have never even had an election at all! It is increasingly URGENT that they should fulfill their mandate to hold elections among ALL organised civil society associations who are implicated in European legislation. A move to give the Parliament powers in this area is anti-democratic because it denies the citizen the right to be represented in a non-party political way as the Founding Fathers wisely decided.

The Commission needs to be reformed so that it is really INDEPENDENT. It should have as Commissioners personalities whose independence is beyond doubt. It should not be stuffed with people who represent only 2 percent of the population. That is massive discrimination and a violation of citizens’ human rights.

The Commission needs to get back to the drawing board. It needs to learn a bit about history. It needs to review its own history. And it needs to set a strategy not only to save European Democracy but also to save the planet.