SECS5: The Counterfeit Euro is a Democracy-Destroyer

The euro is pulverising European democracy. It is destroying democracy not only in Greece but in all other members of the euro zone. It is also destroying people’s hopes for a real democracy at the European level. It has caused a huge rift from north to south and between the crisis-ridden Euro Zone and EU Member States outside the system. It has replaced trust by hyprocrisy. It has stirred up nationalism across the Continent from Scotland to Catalonia to Greece. In Greece, it has stoked hatred and memories of WW2 instead of understanding.
In the 1950s Robert Schuman and the Founding Fathers laid out the road to a democratic, solid Community currency. Its supranational principles are different from either intergovernmentalism or federalism.
Ask a politician today to define ‘supranational’ — and you will see why ignorance or arrogance has got Europe’s money in such a mess. In the 1990s politicians of a later generation chose the pseudo-federalist Delors Plan. It is destroying not only the consensus for a common currency but tearing apart European society.
The European currency was supposed to unite. It was supposed to bring harmony amongst the peoples. It was supposed to bring an era of prosperity and investment in a common future.
It has failed.
Why? It is what Robert Schuman called a ‘counterfeit’ currency! Schuman provided plans and institutions to create a real Community currency but politicians started dismantling them in the 1950s. Ever since they vie in further destructive acts against honest, democratic money.
It is a pathway to pecuniary perdition.
That is why the only alternative to the morass that European leaders have embarked on is to look again at the principles that gave originally Europe its longest period of peace and brought about its greatest prosperity.

The supranational currency system belongs to the people. It would provide full and open democratic input from

• businesses,
• workers and
• consumers.

It would safeguard the democratic rights of various regions so that the rich would not dictate to the poor. It would be based on open government, not closed door meetings of financial ministers.
It would allow governments to adjust their currency to the needs of their individual Member States.
The pseudo-federalist Delors Plan euro does none of these. It is controlled by the secretive, closed door EuroGroup. Who are they? They are national, not European representatives! They are not practically involved in the needs, fears and plans of industry, workers or consumers. They are party political. They come with a party ideology. And as history has shown, they have loose moral and ethics when it comes to doing what ordinary people have to do — balancing the household budget.
They are the people should be kept at more than an arm’s length from any currency — finance ministers!
The recent events on Greece has cut a swathe of earthquake-like devastation in European democracy.
Firstly, the ‘democratic leaders’ showed themselves completely inadequate to call out corruption in Greece for what it was. Initially they did not insist on anti-corruption measure before serious consideration was given to EU membership. Instead the EU leaders in the Council and also in the Commission dolled out masses of money that only added to the corruption such as in the Bank of Crete scandal.
Neither sides learned lessons. Major Mistakes:

• politicians should not be in charge of money regulation.
• Politicians should not be able in any way to influence a currency, as inflation is hidden taxation;
• politicians should not choose their central bank governor and certainly not in secret;
• Money is public property not the politicians’ plaything. It requires democratic supervision.

Let’s go back no further than the beginning of the month of July 2015. On the first day of the month, five European institutions published a report called: ‘Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union.‘
Called the Five Presidents’ report, it was meant to have all the authority of those who consider themselves Europe’s leading politicians. It was prepared by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the so-called Euro Summit, Donald Tusk (also president of the European Council), President Jeroen Dijsselbloem, president of the secretive EuroGroup, Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, and Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament.
It says:

A complete EMU is not an end in itself. It is a means to create a better and fairer life for all citizens, to prepare the Union for future global challenges and to enable each of its members to prosper.

Oh!
The report is the fruit of ten months’ work of eurocrats of these five institutions. It was launched at the October 2014 EuroSummit.  1 July marks the start of Stage One.  What is that about?

Stage 1 (1 July 2015 – 30 June 2017): In this first  stage (‘deepening by doing’), the EU institutions and euro area Member States would build on existing instruments…. this entails boosting competitiveness and … and enhancing democratic accountability.

Really?
The Commission in reply to my question firstly said that they could not give any details about ‘enhancing democratic accountability‘ as it was a technical matter! When questioned further about a referendum, the Commission said that it did not think referendums would be involved.
Days later, the Greek government announced that it would have a referendum. They urged the Greek populace to vote No. The peculiar motion included out-of-date and unfinished, technical, negotiating positions on euro zone and IMF loans as an annex in English.
Clearly the referendum did not meet Swiss standards of democratic accountability. It was a political operation equivalent to those used in left-wing dictatorships like the DDR or the Soviet Union. In this case it was cleverly crafted to get extreme right wing and centre parties to join in the parody of democracy.
Did the Commission denounce this referendum, because referendums were not part of their yet undisclosed ‘democratic enhancement‘? Did they say that such a farce could not lead to real ‘democratic accountability‘?
Not at all!
The Commission President urged the Greek people to vote Yes! But he spoke ominously about Grexit, the exit of Greece. But from what? the euro? But the politicians’ own treaty, the Treaty of Lisbon, makes it abundantly clear that there is no exit possible from the euro. The Commission as ‘guardian of the treaties‘ repeated that many times recently. It was written in the earlier Maastricht Treaty, specifically to discipline governments to more-or-less balance their budgets and reduce debts. (Several States refused to join the euro as they considered it unworkable.)
Any student of human nature and of history would know that asking politicians not to devalue the currency (through inflation) as a hidden tax is asking the impossible of them. (Soon after the euro was launched, Germany and France were hauled up before the European Court for breaking the ‘Stability and Growth Pact‘.)
What happened in the referendum?
The Greek people voted massively No.
Thus Greek people lost any ability to gain from the extraordinary efforts the IMF, the EU and the European Central Bank had made in bending the rules.
What happened next?
The new Greek government finance minister came to Brussels and accepted all the onerous conditions (and much more besides) that had been rejected by the Greek people in their referendum.
The government then put all these difficult measures of extra taxation and austerity to the Parliament.
What did the Parliament do, seeing that the Greek people had spoken clearly against all of them?
It passed all the onerous measures! In the 300 seat chamber, 229 voted for them and only 64 were against. The puzzled observer might ask: What sort of democracy is that? The same people who had enthusiastically voted for a dubious referendum with the great hope of everyone voting No, were now turncoats against the democratic vote of the people.
What can be more pernicious than the secretive EuroGroup and its secretive political acolytes grinding down any sort of parliamentary and popular democracy into fine dust of public hypocrisy and Brussels-based serfdom?
But that was not the end of it. Far from it. The new vastly increased loans have to be paid for by other European taxpayers. The loans have to be passed in all parliaments of euro Member States. An emergency loan was needed to pay off the IMF. The euro Member States agreed to €7.16bn in short term financial assistance to Greece under the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM).
Was the IMF happy? A few days later, an IMF press release expressed their view: Greek debt was ‘highly unsustainable‘.

The financing need through end-2018 is now estimated at Euro 85 billion and debt is expected to peak at close to 200 percent of GDP in the next two years, provided that there is an early agreement on a program. Greece’s debt can now only be made sustainable through debt relief measures that go far beyond what Europe has been willing to consider so far.

So what do we have of ‘enhanced democratic accountability‘ even before the first month of Stage One ends?
We have the European Commission, which is supposed to be an impartial, guardian of the treaties, saying:

• enhanced democratic accountability’ is a technical matter,
• a referendum is ruled out,
• a referendum is ruled in,
• the Commission President can urge Member States which side to vote on,
• it can impose conditions on the people and government against the clear result of the referendum,
• it can insist that the Greek Parliament vote in favour of these conditions that the referendum has rejected.

The Greek government can

• call for a referendum at short notice, which legally means nothing,
• take the result of the referendum seriously,
• re-negotiate the EU/IMF loan deal to the detriment of the Greek people,
• force the parliament to accept this democratically dubious deal,
• thumb their noses at Greek democracy and the European institutions.

Instead of doing down the IMF, the Greek government was forced to repay the IMF loan. The IMF in return announced that Greece is heading for economic meltdown and the European institutions are going to have to pay through their noses for the foreseeable future.
We have the other Member States of the euro zone, who vote in their parliaments who are ignorant

• whether referendums on the euro are permitted,
• whether the Commission is supposed to speak out urging Europeans vote Yes or No in referendums in general,
• whether euro-loans and imposed conditions of taxation and structural changes under such conditions are legal in EU law,
• and despite this ignorance, their own parliaments are being forced by Brussels to vote according to its timetable,
• and in practice these other ‘democrats’ show they are willing to vote in their parliaments in this state of financial, democratic and legal confusion on the future of the whole EU.

The reality of the counterfeit euro is much worse. There are several other Member States who could end up in a similar dilemma to Greece. Prepare yourselves!

SECS4: Greek Crisis shows the need for a New EU Currency system

In world monetary history, some currencies have lasted more than a thousand years. That won’t happen with the present euro. Its self-destruction is as certain as anything in politics.
What is now urgent is to reform the currency on a solid basis. It will be a world-beater. A sound currency must retain a long-term store of value. Like tax it must have means for taxpayers to have proper representation in its destiny.
This eurDemocracy commentary predicted more than three years ago that the present euro will collapse. It is not due to Greece alone or other failing economies. The conclusion is based on Robert Schuman‘s own analysis of monetary systems. It was also clear from debates in the 1990s. Then the currency’s essential democratic foundation envisaged by Schuman and others was eliminated from the new euro design by politicians who willfully ignored warnings of a future calamity.
The present euro system is fatally flawed democratically. It is not only the extreme left-wing Greek Syriza party (which is nominally pro-euro) but the growing, powerful movements against Brussels-based party political cartels that will dictate its fate. They are vehemently anti-euro and in the foreseeable future will, in governments, kill the project from within.
Only a higher degree of democracy can save a European currency. It must show itself to the benefit of all. It must demonstrably improve the common good. The European currency must be

'in the service of the people and must act in accord with the will of the people.'          (c.f. Pour l'Europe, p55)

Secondly the present euro also has an economic illogicality in its foundation, making it unworkable. How did it arise? Today’s failure culminates from politicians arrogantly deciding that they could design a better European monetary system than Europe’s Founding Fathers. They at least were aware of the lessons of monetary history. The contradictions are now bringing turmoil on the money markets and threatening the political cohesion of the European Union.
Does that presage the end of the European Union? Not at all! The supranational Community system is stronger than its currency — even a flawed and suicidal one.
A new euro system will have to be built up based on sound economics. In effect Europe’s leaders have another chance to change their present failures into success and make the European currency the envy of the world. The Founding Fathers wanted to see their currency not last just for five or ten years but be stable for centuries. As designed, it would outclass any currency in history– even ones that lasted a thousand years!
What currency applies in a Community system? A Community currency. A supranational Community needs a Supranational Economic and Currency System. A real Community currency would bring wealth and investment unseen since the early Communities. Schuman, working as France’s Finance Minister, Prime Minister and architect of the European Community, helped initiate the ‘Thirty glorious years’ after WW2.

• A system based on intergovernmentalism won’t work. (Europe is more than intergovernmentalism!)
• A system based on federal principles won’t work. (The EU is not a federation!)
• A system based on Optimal Currency Area theory won’t work. (Europe is based on freedom of choice!)
• A currency that requires a fiscal, that is tax, union, without proper democratic representation won’t work. (The euroGroup is not even classified as a European institution in Treaties and yet has become the governing body of the EU!)
• A European currency whose value and Central Bank policy are dictated by politicians and not by the market will always fail.
• A system without a proper supranational democratic control of its economy and currency won’t work.

The euro has had only five or six years of stable interest rates across its Member States. It has been in crisis ever since.  The following graph from UCL gives the interest rates in excess of that offered by German bonds in euro.

The Greek crisis is only one of many challenges attacking the economic foundation to this euro system. It will certainly not be the last. Other Member States are likely to present Brussels with similar or worse problems in the near future.
A currency has to be based on public confidence. The flight of confidence and trust is as fatal as the flight of capital from banks.
The present crisis, and those with Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy have already exposed the fragile foundations. The process is under way and the outcome is inevitable.
The European public is now divided into those who see the euro continuing and those who see it failing. Those critics losing confidence in the euro are gaining in numbers. Hence the numbers of those who see it lasting longer are on a downward slope. The movement is in the direction of continual loss of confidence. Consider the consequences.
Those who in countries like Greece fear for their future have already involved in the multi-billion euro capital flight. They borrowed as much as possible, then stored notes or transferred them, buying where possible material assets abroad. They feared both that the Greeks might bring in a new Drachma or that their euro deposits in banks might be riffled as the euroGroup threatened to do during the Cyprus crisis.
European institutions sometimes made the matter worse. When European Central Bank tried to support Greek banks, directly or indirectly, it only accelerated the flight capital. Greek debts rose to some 325 billion euros, a third of this is flight capital.
What’s behind the Greek crisis? Three possible causes stand out among others:

• corruption,
• political immaturity or
• political sabotage.

The first factor is political corruption. That is far bigger than most people think. By corruption I don’t mean just the Greek system. It was obvious from before Greek entry into the three Communities in 1981 that Greece remained highly corrupt after the dictatorship of the Colonels.
Parties of the Left and the Right tried too often considered electoral victory as a means to load the bureaucracy and the governmental system with their own supporters. Giving Greek bureaucratic posts to party loyalists is as corrupt as turning the Commission into a party political secretariat. An effective civil service must be above politics and political ideologies.
Greeks have a long history of what is called in Brussels ‘party political parachuting‘ their buddies into the civil service. It also leads to internal rivalries, turf wars and bribing. Externally it leads to paralysis.
Robert Schuman warned:

‘Amassing more officials is no guarantee against abuse … but is often just the result of favouritism‘ He said: ‘Administrative rigidities are the prime danger that threaten supranational services.’ (Pour l’Europe, p146.)

Greece also remained undeveloped as an economy, without proper attributes of a modern economy. For example Greece lacked a proper land registry system. Brussels paid some 100 millions euros so that they could have one. The money disappeared without a registry appearing. Brussels gave more money! Who owns land in Greece? No one knows! Nor does it have a fully working tax system. Yet these and many other failures were known to all the politicians of the time, including the Commission.
In 1978 the then European Commission President, Roy Jenkins, said that of the three Member State candidates, Greece was the least prepared and the least qualified. Which then entered the Community system first? Greece! Was it reformed? Judge for yourself! Joining the Community, Greece availed itself of handouts supposedly to reform its economy. The Brussels largesse led to the Karamanlis and Papandreou scandals involving dirty dealings in the Bank of Crete.
Thus corruption englobes the Greek governments of all stripes. But corruption also engulfs the European Commission. During the Gaullist years, France lied about the Community’s origin, and denied Schuman’s key achievements. The Commission played Gaullist tunes. France milked the rising German industrial power and the European Communities for all they were worth.
Under Roy Jenkins, a British Liberal politician, no real reform took place. Governments decided that the Commission should be populated only by party politicians, excluding all other citizens. This undermines public trust.
It is fundamentally dishonest. How? because none of the Commissions — who are supposed to be the ‘honest-brokers’ of Europe — were honest with Europe’s taxpayers.  Commissioner-politicians dished out European taxpayers’ money without proper controls. Commissions watched with open eyes and closed lips while fellow politicians in other countries committed fraud to buy votes. (They wanted to do the same.) They did not insist on reform over Meat Mountains, Wine Lakes, phantom autobahns going nowhere, fraudulent national statistics, and the fraudulent misuse of taxpayers’ money for political purposes. Meanwhile they embraced corrupt politicians of left and right as comrades and colleagues.
Under Jenkins the Commission decided to consider itself overtly party political. The Commission was always a political body but the Treaties forbade Commissioners to retain any interests,

• whether commercial or not,
• especially lobbying or other interests,
• party political membership,
• jobs, whether paid or not,
• and for three years after retirement not take up any employment in sectors of their Commission expertise.

In short they were forbidden from involvement in anything that might undermine public confidence. They have to show they are totally independent as honest brokers. Clearly politicians who insist on retaining membership of a group (like a political party) that lobbies and is ideologically driven will lose public confidence and trust. Their political enemies and non-party opponents of the general public consider them ‘partisan‘.
Honesty is paramount. The Commission as Europe’s honest broker has to be honest. During the 2011 Greek crisis on the euro, the then head of the euroGroup said: ‘When  it becomes serious, you have to lie.‘ Other politicians besides Mr Juncker colluded in this nefarious mission that undermined all public trust in the Community institutions. It only made the Greek crisis worse and worse. Mr Juncker was not alone either when he said of the referendums on the Lisbon Treaty/ Constitutional Treaty : ‘If it’s a Yes, we will say ‘on we go’, and if it’s a No we will say ‘we continue’, we go forward.’
A travesty of Magna Carta and Community Charter rights! The treaty drafts were soundly defeated in referendums in France and the Netherlands and were set for catastrophically higher rejections in other States before they were denied the public.
And now Europe is faced with its most serious Greek crisis and another on/off referendum. In November 2011 Greek Prime Minister Papandreou proposed a referendum on the euro crisis but was dissuaded from carrying it out. A referendum is supposed to be democratic but the Syriza coalition government called a no-time-for-real-debate Blitz Referendum. It seemed quite content to modify, postpone or abandon it and maybe their people and pensioners too in their polemic against Brussels ‘blackmail‘. So much for Greek democracy.
What of the second factor. Is the Greek government composed of immature politicians?
The IMF chief Christine Lagarde famously commented that negotiations is only possible ‘when there are adults in the room.‘ Does this indicate unwillingness to negotiate or perhaps an alternative strategy refusing to come to an agreement? The Greek government had to pay 1.3 billion by the end of June to cover the IMF loan and avoid a default. By not agreeing to anything the Greek government lost billions of euros due to be returned to it on condition some sort of agreement was made. These funds would have paid off a great deal of the Greek debts, far more than the sums due before 1 July. This money is now lost for ever.
What of their skittish behaviour? For the IMF’s negotiator Christine Lagarde:

“We have received so many ‘latest’ offers, which themselves have been validated, invalidated, changed, amended, over the course of the last few days, that it’s quite uncertain exactly where the latest proposal stands,” she told Reuters.

Is this apparent confusion and incoherence due to the fact that the Greek government is a coalition and the Syriza party itself is a coalition. It is a grouping of

social democrats, democratic socialists, left-wing nationalists, feminists, anti-capitalists, centrist-environmentalists, as well as

Marxist–Leninists,

Maoists,  Trotskyists,

Eurocommunists,

Rosa Luxemburgists and

Eurosceptics.

Some of these radical neo-Marxist/ Communist groups have not raised their heads in public in the West since 1968, others since WW1! Others form part of the alter-globalist movement aimed to fight the ‘neo-liberal’ IMF, International Monetary Fund.
We now come to the third possibility. Is there a neo-Marxist strategy in the Greek action? The Marxist system has internal contradictions that led to analysts like Robert Schuman predicting in the 1950s that the Soviet Union would collapse before the end of the century. Classical economists and historians also predicted that the Soviet system would tear itself apart as it had no means to value objects, products and services on the market. Hitler’s economy made similar errors and ended in absolute failure.
The Soviet system had a ‘Gosplan’ setting production targets by quantity (and often neglecting quality and demand). It also set their prices (without market information!) It had no consumer feed-back! (Complainers were class traitors!). As there were no free consumers, the Gosplan had to copy prices on the free western markets. The private enterprise system of the free market not only reduced prices but incorporated technological improvements that left Soviets in a cloud of dust. Maoists took an opposition stance against progress and Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward‘ ended in de-industrializing China and killing upwards of 40 millions.
Is the new Syriza working according to a common anti-banker plan? The apparent changes of drafting documents, late arrivals and changes of negotiators may be explained by coalition disagreements. They might equally be consistent with a strategy to unnerve the Brussels negotiators to gain time and ensure maximum capital flight and nuisance power. This is also apparent in the violence of denunciations of Brussels: ‘blackmail‘ and fiscal ‘water-boarding‘.
When one party accuses the other of blackmail, it often means they are really the blackmailer. In this case three financial institutions and 17 euro Member States independently believe that they are negotiating in good faith. Some like Ireland, Portugal, Latvia and Spain have had similar conditions imposed on many of them. Now they are being as flexible as possible to Greece. They are not blackmailing. So who is blackmailing whom?
Why nuisance power? According to Marxist dialectic the new agreements with Brussels on the euro involve a new synthesis that resolves the old problem (for example, debts, government overspending, unworkable pension schemes, overpopulated civil service, untaxed industries and corruption). The opposition force, (Brussels and the bankers' 'neo-liberal' creditor Troika) is called the anti-thesis. The Marxist dialectic resolves the thesis and anti-thesis into a new synthesis.
What then is the anti-thesis of the Marxist radicals? One new synthesis would be the reinforcement of the link to the people against the fiscal ‘water-boarders‘. In other words, a referendum. Sufficient extra complications, extra documents, new proposals and fresh negotiation calls were submitted so that the Syriza government might even withdraw from the referendum if they felt public opinion was turning against them with the wrong answer. The referendum could be cancelled if the Brussels Troika betrayed trust!
Was the referendum an act of desperation or part of a strategy? The clues indicate that it was part of a strategy. First clue was their reaction to the unexpected euroGroup meeting that Europe’s heads of government declared AFTER the European Council of 25-26 June. It is clear the Greeks were taken by surprise. In the middle of negotiations on Saturday, the Greek negotiators were called out of the meeting. Their Prime Minister was about to announce the referendum.
They were stopped mid-negotiation. What sort of ultimatum/ blackmail is that?
The second indication is that the referendum document where the people are urged to vote NO, has, as its annex, documents which were being discussed on Saturday and are incomplete. Furthermore they are now useless. The basis for the documents was an agreement to be made on 30 June at the latest. Thus the Annex on which the Greek voters are to vote is legally useless!
The conclusion can only be that either the Greek government did not read the text itself and they are incompetent, or that the Greek government planned the referendum well in advance and were taken by surprise. They assumed that they would have a legally valid, final document published after the European Council that they could claim was Blackmail.
What is the end game for neo-Marxists? The final synthesis for Marxist theory is the collapse of capitalism due to its internal contradictions and the rise of the Workers’ State. In this, everyone would get a minimum wage from some sort of fiat currency with no material backing. The Soviet ruble was such a Workers’ currency. It was neither stable (it was devalued several times) nor did it reflect real values. It did not stimulate innovation by being a store of value. It was also not the currency of the workers, as workers who had saved their earnings immediately lost them in devaluations when the decimal place was moved in their bank accounts. Nor was it controlled by the workers. The Soviet Politburo decided when and how such decisions were made.
Many members of Syriza have long-standing relations with Russia, many in families back to Soviet times. Curiously when Prime Minister Tsipras visited Mr Putin the question of a Russian loan was not discussed. A Russo-Greek gas pipeline was. The Russian monopoly gas supplier, Gazprom, is now coming under scrutiny by the Commission for abuse of dominant power in the gas market, where in some EU Member States it supplies the totality of the gas.
One thing that Russia and many in the Greek government have in  common is the destruction of the European supranational law and Single Market system. Russia could then play of one Member State against another and gain the highest price in its bilateral contracts. Through its energy geopolitics it could dominate all Europe.
Russia and Greek debt are a major threat to the EU’s euro system. But if you think the present crisis is bad, be warned! Worse is yet to come before politicians see sense and it will get better.

Euro11: Ombudsman condemns European Council cover-up on legality of euro's Fiscal Compact

Maladministration on a grand scale! Who controls multi-billion funds that dwarf the EU’s annual budget by three or four times? Who ultimately controls the multi-trillion stranglehold that the Brussels institutions have on the budgets of national governments in the EU?  Who controls the Bank? Why are such mega projects excluded from Court action for fraud and crimes that the euro crises have already exposed across the whole euro zone?

If you thought some fiddling by MEPs or even small States like Greece, Portugal, Cyprus or Ireland was of concern, take a stiff coffee before reading on.

The European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, has condemned the European Council and its secretariat in the Council of Ministers of maladministration for a cover-up and refusal to provide promptly legal information for public discussion on the  Fiscal Compact Treaty controlling Europe’s multi-trillion euro economy. The documents, essential for a proper democratic debate and consultation were requested two years ago in January 2012.

In spite of the Ombudsman’s ruling, the documents in question have still not been provided.

The Fiscal Compact is an international treaty and has not been signed by two Member States. Both the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom refused. Its relationship to the EU justice system is therefore questionable. For the European Court to act all Member States must have the measures agreed by democratic vote in a European treaty of all Member States. Then all the European institutions have their right to discuss and amend the treaty. The Council, Parliament, Consultative Committees all elected by democratic vote have to have their imput and rights on individual decisions and measures undertaken. The Commission should have clear independence. It should not be treated like a skivvy or slave of the Council of Ministers. It is not their Secretariat! Then the European Court of the EU can make its judgements when their is a complaint from any citizen, organization or State.

Signatories of an international treaty conversely, for example, NATO or the Council of Europe, cannot ask the European Union’s Court of Justice in Luxembourg to make judgements for them.

So what is the status of the Fiscal Compact?

It spends nearly half of its many pages with a Preamble with many indents or tear-jerking appeals of its Europeanness: Conscious of this, Desiring that, Recalling this that and the other of European goals and even institutions. The truth is it is not a part of the European Union or the Community. It is a separate international treaty, fixed up by some politicians in a fix. They have used all the lawyers’ skills and deceits to give a facade that it is part of the European legal system, as best they can. But they can’t. There are two members missing and only treaties inside the Community system embracing all members are EU legal treaties.

How can outraged European citizens or duped Member States appeal if other States do not comply with the Compact’s strictures? What can anyone do if some politicians treat the other States as financial patsies? That is just what the monetary crises in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland and others are all about. The public’s conclusion is obvious. Some politicians are not honest, nor do they act honestly with the people’s money. Money deranges their judgement. They treat it as a slush fund to dole out to people they hope will vote for them. If they can’t get away with it at home or run out of money they tap into the prosperous countries that keep their books in order and have a surplus.

The full title of the Fiscal Compact is Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union. It tries to add additional bandages on the badly conceived and crisis-ridden Euro project.

The euro was made by politicians for politicians, hoping they would get away on a European scale with overspending and hidden financing they had all been doing since the 1970s. Then surprise, surprise, the public found out that the politicians cooked the books, not only in Greece but practically everywhere. In a commercial company that sort of duplicity and malpractice would have been considered criminal. But politicians say it is normal for them. They are only dealing with public money!

No wonder that the politicians’ main scam, the Euro, has experienced only 7 or 8 years of stability and convergent national bond interest rates.  That is a blink of an eye in the lifetime of a solid, stable currency. Why did interest rates explode again? It does not have solid monetary or democratic foundations.

The euro’s worth has fallen to a quarter or  fifth of what its value should be worth against stable stores of value. Its conception and management by the secretive EuroGroup, which is not an institution of the EU, flies in the face of any real Community democracy. A Community currency requires Community democratic control.

The other bandages that the Council politicians concocted in the privacy of their meetings, the European Stability Mechanism and the European Finance and Stability Facility with half a trillion euro and its Mechanism that leverages a few more billion from the EU budget. This created a company in Luxembourg to draw billions of loans and liabilities from international financial markets. Who is this money for? Why, the same States that are already seen as betraying the public’s trust in cooking the statistics and overspending their budgets. In other words the taxpayers will have to pay for any mismanagement in these operations too.

And what do we find in these treaties? Surprise, suprise! We find an assurance by the same politicians that anyone involved in these multi-billion operations, when seen to be obviously guilty of malpractice, is offered total legal immunity from prosecution!

Not only that no document will be available for public scrutiny. No document will be able to be controlled and judged by any court of law whatsoever! This is what the relevant article of the ESM says about its staff and their paper trail:

“ARTICLE 35
Immunities of persons
1. In the interest of the ESM, the Chairperson of the Board of Governors, Governors, alternate Governors, Directors, alternate Directors, as well as the Managing Director and other staff members shall be immune from legal proceedings with respect to acts performed by them in their official capacity and shall enjoy inviolability in respect of their official papers and documents. ”

Who are the governors? Why, the politicians! That is a paradise for crooks and crooked practice. It is an invitation to mega crisis.

The Background with my last commentary on this case can be found at Euro10.
The Ombudsman’s judgement on the Fiscal Compact cover-up can be found at
http://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/cases/decision.faces/en/53191/html.bookmark

SECS3: Why your 2002 Euro is now worth 25 cents: the Commission

Europe’s political leaders have debauched your money. Imagine that in 2002 instead of exchanging your national currency into euros you bought gold. Today that gold would buy four times the number of euros. The same goes for oil. If you had bought silver, you'd have even more euros, wheat a bit less. Globally the euro is massively debased.

All along  history, politicians have debased currencies and spent more money than treasuries receive in taxes. Money is supposed to be a store of value. All pensions and investment require that what is saved should not be eaten away by government action. Politicians say they need inflation. That is theft from citizens. A globally-traded Community currency must be able to retain long-term, world value in spite of politicians.

A solid supranational currency cannot be constructed without a fully independent European Commission. The reason involves European ministers who were the first to legally debase the Euro currency. They even broke the inadequate rules in the Stability and Growth Pact. France and Germany then disobeyed European Court judgements. Yet they expect citizens to obey the Court.

The Commission brought this case before the Court. That is probably why the politicians make extra efforts to control it. They have now tried to turn the Commission into an exclusive club for politicians. Previously and according to all the treaties, no politician with a party card should hold the office of Commissioner.

Now politicians want a complete take-over of the Commission. Making it a joint secretariat for European parties would stop it embarrassing governments as lawbreakers in Court. Politicians have created their own complex rules to replace Court action. They want the freedom to debase the currency the way they choose, without Court judgements if possible.

Now composed almost entirely of card-carrying politicians, the Commission has tried to make its own internal rules to ‘permit’ political entryism. They are hardly valid. The treaties are the only legal touchstone that matters. The conduct of national politicians who parachuted their card-carrying friends into the Commission is self-condemnatory.

The citizens of Europe are perfectly able to see this misconduct for what it is. Flagrant violations seem not to deter politicians. Politicians seem addicted to party political nepotism. Normal citizens are despised as second class. The honest citizen scrupulously following treaty law who abandons compromising interests to become a Commission candidate is excluded by the political rascals who don’t.

What has happened is ILLEGAL. The Commission and its President are not reserved posts for party political fodder. It is not a political retirement home.

It is illegal for any politician under all treaties since 1951 including the politicians’ own treaty, that of Lisbon. At best only EX-politicians are allowed. The same applies to others:  EX-businesspeople, EX-trade-unionists, EX-professionals or EX-workers of any stripe. He or she has to resign previous functions.

Today we have three treaties governing the European Union. The Treaty on European Union, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union of Lisbon (these two replacing what was previously called the Customs Union, the European Economic Community or the Common Market) and the other treaty of Rome, Euratom, (also called European Atomic Energy Community treaty).

All of them state the same thing, that the Commission must be independent. No article of any treaty says that the Commission must be composed of politicians or national representatives of Member States.

They say the reverse. Anyone having membership of a political party must resign it. No one must take any instruction from a Member State government or any one else. TEU Article 17 says Commission members must be chosen on the ground of

‘their general competence and European commitment from persons whose independence is beyond doubt.‘

In any court of law it would be clear that if someone signs up to an ideological programme of a political party expressing different interests of lobby groups, then the Commissioner’s independence is more than in doubt. Any businessperson who on becoming Commissioner retained his business or other interests would also be guilty of double standards. Proof of guilt is furnished by party membership cards. The holders are not independent. Attendance at party meetings and participation in party organization is further condemnatory evidence.

The Lisbon treaty says that the Commission shall be chosen after parliamentary elections. Nowhere does it say that a politician involved in the elections should be made Commission President. Article 17 TEU rules it out. It specifies that the Commission must conform to its paragraph 3 and 5 restricting it to persons

‘whose independence is beyond doubt’ and who would ‘not take instructions from any government, or other institution, body, office or entity’. The person must ‘refrain from any action incompatible with their duties.’

That excludes an MEP or party leader whose ideological prejudices are amply proven by the parliamentary election. Nor should Commissioners be composed of national representatives. The Euratom Community commenced with FIVE Commissioners.

No professional activity other than Commissioner duty is allowed, whether paid or not. Lisbon’s Article 245 of the FEU reflects the supranational democracy of the 1951 Treaty of  Paris article 9. All other treaties have confirmed the independence criterion to this day.

Members of the Commission may not, during their term of office, engage in any other occupation, whether gainful or not.

Thus the Community system requires Commissioners to abstain from political parties or any other body whether ‘gainful or not.’

The first impartially chosen Commission was empowered to nominate some of its own members (article 10, Paris). All should have the impartiality of judges in Court and need to resign from bodies that might influence their judgement. Thus any citizen who has independence, experience, the public trust for seeking the European public good and honesty should be eligible.

Choosing Commissioners exclusively from those with party membership cards (2% of the population) is an offensive discriminatory act redolent of Nazism or Communism. It violates the human rights of 98 percent of citizens who are not party members. The majority of the European population refuses to vote in EP elections because of such flagrant abuse.

Sound European money and public confidence starts with the independence of its institutions.

Monnet8: Is Jean Monnet to blame for the euro crisis and the EU's financial black-hole?

Is Jean Monnet responsible for the euro debacle? Did a flaw in the 'Monnet Method' bring about today's financial crisis and the black hole into which billions of taxpayers' money are being poured? That's what one Eurocrat implied, as quoted in the Economist newsmagazine: 'The European Union was not designed to deal with a crisis'. Blame Jean Monnet, says the Economist's columnist, Charlemagne.

Eurocrats should know better. They should know more about the institution they work for, its values and its real history. Unfortunately Monnet and his over-enthusiastic fans and publicists set Europe on a false track. What exactly IS the 'Monnet Method'? You need to know: your bank balance may depend on understanding the facts!

Some politicians still believe that Jean Monnet was the architect behind the European Union. This is false, as any competent historian knows. Monnet did not invent the European Community; it was in existence before he even first uttered the term on 21 June 1950, regardless of the false claims of his Memoirs. Schuman announced the European strategy at the United Nations in 1949!

States can form international currencies with other States either by force or by means of a solid agreement. Alexander the Great used the first method 2300 years ago when he conquered the Medo-Persian empire and imposed his own monetary system, based on gold and silver. In nineteenth and early twentieth century some States agreed to the gold standard. But the Latin Monetary Union (1865- 1926) fell apart on disagreements about silver. Then first the UK (with the Sterling zone) and later the US, 1971, took their currency off the gold standard.

Any bad management of the dollar -- which is designed mainly for a domestic electorate -- has worldwide implications, and that includes wars and bloodshed. So does any other corrupt currency. (Monetary dishonesty encourages internal and external opponents to exploit the politicians' vulnerability.)

The depreciation of the dollar meant that Arab oil producers gained a little bit less for a barrel of oil. The Americans got the same barrel of oil. Although they were already hyper-rich, the oil sheikhs wanted more. They used this as one excuse to launch an attempted war of annihilation against Israel. The Arab exporters then realised that Americans and Europeans were 'hooked' on petroleum. They nationalised the oil companies. From then on they formed a cartel and succeeded to blackmail by the oil weapon and oil embargoes throughout the decade. Now Europe's Human Rights values are under threat by such States that wish to establish a Christian-free and anti-Semitic entity based on Saudi style Sharia law that they would call Palestine.

(Palestine is actually the name of the Jewish State that all the world's governments agreed to after WW1. It was a mandate given by the League of Nations to Palestinian Jews and confirmed by the United Nations in its Charter. The government of Palestine changed the name to Israel in 1948 when a State of Israel was proclaimed. When false or depreciating money reigns, Truth more easily becomes 'lies' and lies become the 'truth'.)

Thus any weakness or fraud in a monetary system has untold and often mammoth implications in politics. The reverse of this is also true. A solid, well-founded monetary system, based on sound ethics, has a major decontaminating and purifying effect on politics. Robert Schuman used to quote the Baron Louis, Finance Minister under France's Second Empire:

Make sound finances for me and I will make for you a sound policy.

Schuman confirmed this truism from his own long study of the monetary history. Based on those principles, a new system was introduced in world history with the creation of a supranational Community system. Without it, Europe would be in no position even to think of a common currency.

IF it is properly implemented, this Community approach provides the best hope for the future. The idea of a new European currency was announced by Robert Schuman in his Declaration of 9 May 1950. Schuman had great expertise in finance and monetary affairs and stabilized France's ruinous finances as Minister of Finance and Prime Minister. He criticised Hitler's ramshackle financial and monetary sysyem of the 1930s. Before the war he helped Austria defend itself financially against Nazi aggression. It nearly cost him his life when later he was arrested by the Gestapo. After the war he helped create the European Payments Union in July 1950. The politicians later abandoned this but had to try to re-invent it when they wanted to create the euro.

The creation of a supranational monetary system depends on fully understanding a supranational Community system. It is based on trust, that is democracy writ large. Here Monnet made a grave mistake.

Monnet's flawed action is another proof that he did not conceive of the idea of a supranational Community. When Paul Reuter, Schuman's legal aide, presented him with a draft document of the Schuman Declaration he crossed out the word, supranational, saying he did not like it. Nor was Monnet able to explain how the European Community was able to bring peace to nation States that had been at war almost continuously for 2000 years. Schuman could and did.

Some politicians say they are proceeding on the basis of the so-called 'Monnet Method'. What is the 'Monnet Method'? No one can properly define it. It is pure PR -- public relations hype. It is foisted on a public by a political class that did not want to deal with the spiritual fundamentals of democracy. It is a chimera that allows politicians to do what they like, without principles or even democratic accountability. That makes it an international system, not a supranational democratic one.

The supranational Community, in contrast, is a scientific discovery, to use Schuman's term, that requires education, training and another quality, humility, listening to others. It does not involve foisting treaties on people who have refused them in many referendums. Democracy, said Schuman, is at the service of the people and acts in agreement with the people.

What is a more serious accusation than aggrandisement is: Was Monnet responsible for the mess we are in? Was it his lack of understanding of the Community system that has led to the financial and monetary loopholes and hence the abuses now costing hundreds of billions of euros?

Monnet was only at the Commission (High Authority) of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) for a couple of years. His responsibility there was to see that the Treaty of Paris was fully implemented. It was not. He was to serve the people, all the people, including organized civil society. His period there was long enough to cause a loophole that the politicians made into an entrance and climbed in to do damage and get their fingers on to European money.

Monnet was instrumental in cutting out (in collusion with the politicians/ ministers) the democratic representation of organized civil society in the consultative committees. This was one of five essential organs for supranational Community.

In Monnet's time the first European Community had a Consultative Committee which was designed as its successors to be in close liaison with the Commission. It was divided into three sections: consumers of coal and steel products, entrepreneurs and trade unions working in the sectors. They kept a close watch on the money, how it was raised and how it was spent. They made sure that the budget was balanced. In those days there was a European tax and it was spent according to the wishes of the taxpayers.

The Treaty of Paris said that the Consultative Committee should be elected on a European basis. However, there were no European associations in some areas. The treaty said that the first Consultative Committee could create a system especially for this in the near future. In the interim the Committee was composed of a mixture of various national organisations.

European organisations were formed. But the Commission/ High Authority under Monnet never changed the system or encouraged the responsible people to do so. The politicians were happy at this because it meant that they nominated or decided who should be on this crucial debating chamber. They also managed the membership to the European Parliamentary Assembly. That way they could control the criticism by electing more placid members. The three great seats of European democracy will eventually all be independent: the Council representing national States, the Parliament representing the individual and his or her rights and the Consultative Committee representing all organizations in the sectors.

Any professional organization, whether a professional organization of steel makers, or an association of steel consumers or an association of European trades unions, has democratic rules. They are not the same as parliaments but not inferior to them as they have to be agreed by votes of the membership. This is an essential layer of democracy that should be independent of political parties and, amongst other tasks, can keep an eye on them.

De Gaulle and many other politicians did not like the idea of consumer organisations, together with entrepreneurs and labour unions holding politicians to their word. That is why de Gaulle arrested their development. He did not stop them developing, merely froze them for a time. Schuman and Reuter (who wrote the Schuman Declaration), declared ILLEGAL the politicians' subterfuge aimed at not having a fully democratic consultative committee with its own European elections. And sure enough, de Gaulle got away with illegal and corrupt measures such as Wine Lakes and Meat Mountains.

In the Gaullist period of European stagnation, the Parliamentary Assembly was nominated by a clique of politicians, its revisions to legislation ignored. The Consultative Committees including the Economic and Social Committee and the Scientific and Technical Committee of Euratom, were frozen and ignored. They are still at the infantile level of development that the European Parliament was until around 1980.

If Monnet had set up the Consultative Committee on a fully democratic European basis, a powerful democratic institution would have existed that would have resisted de Gaulle's attempts to destroy and freeze the Community system. We would be living in a much more successful and prosperous Europe, even than ours today. And it would have been a shining example of democracy to the world, including the States on the south bank of the Mediterranean. Democracy and higher civic standards would have flourished across the whole Mediterranean zone and as far north as the Arctic. Instead under nationalists and Gaullists, Algeria -- which was part of the European Coal and Steel area -- entered a period of bloody strife and warfare.

None of the euro crisis would have arisen if the members of a currency zone had proper civil society scrutiny of the fraudulent statistics and toxic buddy-buddy deals that the politicians come up with at the closed door Council meetings and eurozone rencontres.

Schuman also said that these meetings should all be open. The Lisbon treaty also says this but the politicians do not care a hoot when they close the doors. The next step is to use the European Court -- one of the five institutions that Schuman said was essential. Some actions in the 27 national courts could also stop much of this abuse. Discussions on the Budget -- that is taxation -- are also closed to the press, something which is both illegal and would be totally intolerable in any of the democratic Member States. (see www.schuman.info/budget8.htm ) No taxation should take place without FAIR representation and OPEN debate. That is central to European civic values.

There are three main types of international currency systems. (A fourth involves the informal use of a national currency like the US dollar by external trading partners.)

Firstly there is the international system (agreement of States) that Europe now has, thanks to Monnet's indecision. There is the imperial currency system of a non-democratic authoritarian system like the ruble of the Soviet system or the closed system of Mao's China. The banknotes cannot circulate much beyond the borders of the empire, because they are artificial. In the 1930s Hitler had a similar system where the Nazi party dictated the monetary policy on its neighbouring or trading partners. Europe has aspects of this monetary authoritarianism, because the euro rules are made and then ignored by a small cartel of politicians. The politicians think that they alone should impose their choice on who runs the system, not the public, nor the companies or workers, nor the buyers, traders and consumers.

Thirdly there is a real supranational currency. Supranational means a European democratic system, not imposed authoritarianism. It is so defined in the treaties and by Schuman -- see www.schuman.info/supra5.htm . Solid monetary policy will be made once this democratic foundation is followed. It involves agreement at three levels: the States that is not just the Council of Ministers but their 27 national democratic systems PLUS organised civil society (the Consultative Committees entrepreneurs, workers and consumers, of the treaties which need to be democratically elected as the treaties say) PLUS the individuals' interest (through the EP and Court petitions and judgements).

The euro crisis will not be solved by a further smoke and mirrors approach of eurobonds involving either the ECB or some other artificial institution without democratic legitimacy. Moritz Kraemer, Standard & Poor's managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa sovereign ratings, speaking at the Alpbach European Forum, said, “If we have a euro bond where Germany guarantees 27%, France 20 and Greece 2% then the rating of the euro bond would be CC, which is the rating of Greece." That applies also to shuffling the cards in a new card trick or rather paper con trick.

Politicians have already tried to dispose with elements of the supranational system. Now some want them back, having seen their great utility. At the beginning, the supranational European Community system had not only its own European tax system with democratic control down to a local level but also a European loan system. This was not based on a fiat system of some politicians acting within the secret chambers of the Council or the 'informal' eurozone committee. In the 1950s the loans were raised on world markets based on real economic achievement and a real programme. That delivered real goods for the future. The loans were based on solid evidence of economic progress, improved employment data and general economic integration with real cost benefits.

The ECSC loan system -- which was a bigger operation than the European Investment Bank -- had outline supranational democratic control. The politicians did not like it. Around 2000 they egotistically got rid of this loan system and the European tax system by deciding not to renew the ECSC treaty. They wanted tax, loans and money without proper democratic representation. Their word would be enough, they said. Then the politicians abused their own buddy-buddy system. The markets saw its toxicity. They had been doing dirty deals for decades. Banks of course did the same thing, saying that if the politicians could get away with fraud, so could they in a property bubble and financial market fraud.

The way forward is to put the democratic control and the support of half a billion Europeans behind a reform programme. Only thus can a solid European money be agreed, formed and circulated.