Circus8: 2014 'Year of fooling the People' ends with Council's coup by press release!

Europe today is like a tennis club. Imagine you paid fees to a tennis club and that gave you right to elect the executive committee. All the membership agreed in a vote that the executive should be reduced in size and that it should no longer be composed exclusively of white, 60+, male, left-handed, millionaires. Then these same millionaires decided they would take absolutely no notice of the paying membership. They insisted unilaterally that the tennis club needed them even though everyone in the club paid equal fees and wanted change. Would you say it was democracy? The tennis club membership then took a vote of the whole membership. The executive committee refused to recognize the result of votes and referendums, not once but multiple times.
The year 2014 was declared the Year of the Citizen by the Commission. You might remember that 2013 was also declared the Year of the Citizen. No one asked the citizen in either case! The Eurocrats were not ashamed at a unilateral seizure of millions of euros of taxpayers’ money to pay a ‘citizen’s campaign‘. It brought them no success. According to the official report, it was ‘not effective‘ nor did it reach the ‘media or the citizens‘!
So what happened? Were these tricks of the Council and Commission sufficient to fool the people in the election ear for the European Parliament? Did it quieten objections to the political parties parachuting their favourites into the fat-paying Commission jobs?
The Juncker Commission wants to boost the economy by creating a 315 billion euro fund for loans to 'boost jobs and growth.' Will it work with an already devalued currency? How does it compare with the multi-TRILLION stimulus that OPEC, the oil cartel are giving to the world economy? Why is the Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi saying that he has convinced his fellow OPEC member States that oil supplies should manipulated together even if they have to bring the price down from well over 110 dollars a barrel to 20 dollars?
Have the euro crises and other distractions covered the politicians’ predominant moral turpitude? The latter arises where leaders fool the people on major issues while giving the impression from minor events that they are acting fairly and squarely.
What is European democracy‘s major problem? In contrast to our tennis club, there are no restrictions on candidates for the Commission. They can be black, yellow or white, over or under sixty years, they may be rich or poor and they may be right- or left-handed writers. All citizens can be possible candidates for the Commission. What candidates can’t be, according to the oath that all Commissioners take, is the following:

• They can’t be active members of a political party;
• They can’t be tied to an interest like a commercial company, a trade union or a consumer group.
• They cannot seek or take instructions from national governments;
• They must be independent like a judge in a Court of Law.

Governments believe they, against the treaty law, can give instructions to their Commissioners and others in closed door, secret meetings from which the public and press are excluded. Further, the governmental political parties completely ignored the treaty articles about how fair elections European Parliament elections should be run. They have yet yielded to treaty obligations for elections for organized civil society. These measures have been in the treaties since 1951.
The greatest political crimes are perpetrated when CLIQUES of ‘democratic representatives’ change the honest and just rules and allow the electors only to vote on minor matters. Thus they maintain power without proper supervision.
That is the disorder that the European Union is suffering from at the present.
Former French President Valery Giscard D’Estaing condemned the Council’s lack of respect for the Constitutional or Lisbon treaties he helped formulate. ‘There needs to be a more scrupulous respect of the treaties.‘ More than a decade ago it was agreed by all that the size of the European Commission was to be reduced to around a DOZEN people, max.
It was recommended by former members of the Commission. It was demanded by members of organized civil society. It was agreed by all in Convention on the draft treaty. Former European Commission President Jacques Delors said that European Commission must be not exceed about a dozen members plus the president and foreign affairs representative.
It was not only demanded a decade ago. It had been demanded for decades previously from the first expansion of the European Communities in 1973. A small independent Commission with four other independent OPEN institutions are the basis of the supranational system that brought peace to Europe.
So why does the Juncker Commission have 28 Commissioners?
Its size and composition is the BIGGEST democratic issue facing the European public. It is the key institution in the Community method. The Commission is not the politicians’ plaything. Democracy belongs to all the people, all the time.
Reducing its size to a small number of totally independent, qualified personalities has long been the most controversial of EU reforms. The public are sick and tired of party nepotism. Political party pals or defeated/ retired/ expendable politicians are parachuted into high-paying Brussels jobs. Why doesn’t Europe have a sleek group of highly respected impartial and independent Commissioners?
There is a simple answer.
The politicians have fooled the public. Have they fooled all the public? Have they fooled it all the time?
What are the implications of the European Council’s Decree to dismantle Europe’s Community system, made furtively over a fine meal at its 22 May 2013 closed-door meeting?

• It denies qualified citizens their democratic rights to become Commissioners (Art 10 TEU).
• It destroys any democratic purpose for voting in the upcoming European elections.
• It denies the vast majority of European citizens a voice in  Europe’s governance system.
• It  changes the Community Method into a party political Cartel, run by who knows who. This raises the danger that it might be captured by European of international cartels who act against the citizen’s rights and freedoms.
• It reverses all the treaties that say the European Commission should be totally impartial and that its members must not be politicians’ cronies or take instructions from any government, big or small.

Oh! perhaps you did not even hear or read about the Council’s Decree on 22 May 2013. You did NOT miss the debate! The EU’s 27 political leaders did not permit one. Democracy was changed without any public consultation.  The 27 politicians present did not expect you to debate it after they made their decision as Super-Citizens. They acted just like an economic Cartel acts on the market, they secretly control supply and demand of democracy! Like any Cartel it thrives on secrecy.
You did not read about it. It was not mentioned in the final communique of 27 Heads of Government and two of the EU’s many presidents.  You did not hear about it. European Council President van Rompuy and Commission President Barroso did not speak about it at their press conference. Neither did German Chancellor Merkel, nor French President Hollande, nor the British, in the person of Mr Cameron, who say they defend democracy.
I heard only the Irish Taoiseach make the briefest of statements about it at his press conference and quickly rushed on to other matters. The politicians purposely engineered the Agenda and Agenda Notes so that this major decision of the meeting would not appear in the Conclusions!
The control of the Commission by any group of political parties or States means that the Citizen can say Goodbye to impartial EU government. This key supranational institution is designed to safeguard freedom, fight financial fraud and corruption. It is the world’s first institution able to take on international Cartels of companies, international finance or workers and bring them to Court. Cartels involve, for example, business executives from different companies colluding in secret to fix prices and deny competition in the market. The consumer is ripped off.
Cartels may range from many small manufacturers that ‘fix’ prices of bathroom fittings to major internet operators who misuse monopoly powers to energy cartels like OPEC and its subsidiaries that raise the price of oil from a free market value of 5 to 10 dollars a barrel as in 1999 to 147 dollars recently, despite the huge Iraqi and other new fields coming on stream.  Raising of prices has had a depressing multi-trillion euro effect on the economy and employment. Dropping oil prices has destroyed industries (especially alternative energies to oil).
Now the cartel led by Saudi Arabia is dropping oil prices to record lows approaching 50 dollars and aiming lower. It does it simply by opening up the oil taps. A free market does not exist. (In 1999 when the oil price fell to below ten dollars, it exposed what was really a free market price.) When prices rose to 147 dollars a barrel, OPEC cartel was extracting about ten per cent of global GNP! Wow! That really is global blackmail!
How much does the oil/gas cartel filch from the pockets of European citizens by manipulating the price? When the price dropped just 20% to 83 dollars, the world economy received a stimulus package of 1.1 trillion dollars! With a price now fallen by more than 50%, the stimulus is in trillions not a few hundred billions. These enormous sums of money show the power of oil-drug Cartel to blackmail Western societies. Most of what the West gains now is what OPEC blood-sucks from industrialized economies by posting artificially high prices most of the time.
Why did the Saudis now purposefully lower prices? Don’t they lose profits? Yes. But they gain something far more important. A low price completely wipes out the competition of higher cost shale oil and gas. It makes North Sea oil unprofitable. Israel has also uncovered vast oil and gas reserves in the sea between it and Cyprus. The Saudis are so keen on the low price of oil at the moment that they are willing — perhaps for the first time in history — to sell their Saudi oil to Israel!
Why are the Arab oil-producers opening the oil spigots? (The Iranians are against this strategy. They need the money for their Iranian nuclear programme.) The Saudis and Arab oil-producers need to keep the West addicted to oil. The cartel action decimates alternative energy projects. It thus ensures longer lasting oil-dependence when they can eventually raise the oil price in the future. With a protracted period of low prices, financiers will refuse to fund any project that challenges Saudi oil and Gulf gas. Strategically, it wrecks their major competitor– Russia. Russia produces more oil than Saudi Arabia and its whole economy depends on it, including its political stability. Oil and gas are major levers in the global ideological struggle between Islam and Judeo-Christian civilization.
The effect of low oil prices will give a huge boost to the European economy. If Europe had a proper Community style government with an Energy Community as Schuman and the founding fathers recommended, it would have already been enjoying massive benefits for several decades. That is why a non-party political, totally independent European Commission is vitally important. Its election method, composition, and the means to dismiss it for incompetence and corruption concern every citizen and voter. In dishonestly attempting to seize control of it, politicians, themselves, acting in a political Cartel of major parties and excluding their many critics, have declared war on the citizen’s rights and liberties. They are not trusted. Opinion polls show record low trust ratings of  politicians, amid economic and financial corruption and the self-serving construction of the euro.
Party cartel control obfuscates democracy. No change of policy occurs. Politicians can milk the taxpayer’s golden cow. Politicians have selected themselves as Super-Citizens.
The party machines now illegally select the Commission from among their cronies. President van Rompuy himself declared that the ‘governments’ act more like party coalitions dividing up the Commission cake in secret. Instead of a Gaullist Europe it has become Europe ‘a la carte des parties‘. And the parties are now disdained by the European public. The electorate refuses to vote!
The crucial and unanswered question is: Who controls the party machines, pays them subsidies and in backdoor deals sets their policy agenda? Control of the Commission by national government representatives makes backdoor deals the rule to the detriment of weak and small States. Making only politicians eligible as Commissioners as a class of Super-Citizens is contrary to elementary Human Rights of 500 million citizens.
How did this abuse arise?
It is not who votes who rules the government. It is who writes the rules about the voting. The EU has 28 self-serving voting systems not ONE Statute as required by the treaties. That has been in the treaties since 1951 — without governments implementing it. First governments refused to have any election at all, until Parliament took them to Court. Instead of implementing the article, each EU government  fixes the voting system to bar opponents, not to help them.
The governments did the same sort of thing for the Commission which was originally a politician-free zone. Now the Council wishes to hold its thumb on the scales of the ‘honest-broker’ system, the Commission. It makes it dishonestly partisan. It wants to bias the magistrates. The European Council is making clear that no matter what people think, nor how they vote, nor how they protest, a small clique of politicians will decide the result. A Cartel of politicians controls the market of democracy.
Crisis will lead to further crisis. Politicians individually and collectively have failed their ‘stress tests’. MEPs seem quite willing to contort legislation when offered bribes by investigative reporters. Who knows what they do with powerful lobbyists and multinationals?  This is the reason that Schuman and the Founding Fathers insisted that the Council should hold open sessions, something it has refused to do. Why? What is so secret about discussing how citizens’ democracy should work?
The Cartel welcomed crony governments of the left, right and centre into the euro. The crony system does not seek to reform. It admits governments that everyone knew to be corrupt and who cooked the statistics. Then when the inevitable problems arose, they created new money institutions — not subject to the European Court of Justice — that involve handouts five or seven times the amount of money in the entire EU budget!
These same politicians feel they are above the law such as the European Court of Justice. It is their right to deny referendums on treaties, to ignore referendums that are negative, to close down national radio and television as they did in Greece — without even a parliamentary vote or legal power. The free press as the Fourth Estate is an enemy of cronyism.
Do you wish to place your future in the hands of a Politburo with powers without real democratic responsibility? When did it happen?
This latest antidemocratic and corrupt decision on voting was made as the Heads of  Government gathered at their lunch table on Wednesday 22 May 2013. It was a very short European Council, even though it dealt with tax fraud and energy — Europe’s major problem. The unannounced third topic was  to change European democracy — forever!
There was no public debate. Nor did any leader want to start one tomorrow with the public or the press.
The European Council acted like any tinpot dictatorship under Franco, Salazar, Stalin or Hitler,  under which many States formerly suffered . When everyone’s eyes were busy elsewhere it issued a fait accompli, a five- sentence press release!
Now we have democratic collapse by Press Release. This is a step worse than Democratic Abuse by Treaty that populations have thrown out by referendums!
Here is the release:

P R E S S
Dirk De Backer – Spokesperson of the President
Brussels, 22 May 2013
EUCO 119/13
PRESSE 207
The European Council decides on the number of members of the European Commission
The European Council adopted today a decision on the composition of the European Commission. This decision provides that the Commission will continue to consist of a number of members equal to the number of Member States. This number also includes the Commission President and the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice President of the Commission (176/12).
The decision, which in effect maintains the current practice, will apply from 1 November 2014.
In view of its effect on the functioning of the Commission, the European Council will review this decision well in advance of the appointment of the first Commission following the date of accession of the 30th Member State or the appointment of the Commission succeeding that due to take up its duties on 1 November 2014, whichever is earlier.
Background
The Lisbon Treaty provided that as of 1 November 2014 the Commission would consist of a number of members corresponding to two thirds of the number of Member States, unless the European Council unanimously decided otherwise.
Today’s decision puts into effect the political agreement reached at the European Council meetings of 11-12 December 2008 (17271/1/08) and 18-19 June 2009 (11225/2/09) where the heads of state or government noted the concerns of the Irish people with respect to the Lisbon Treaty and agreed to continue the principle of one Commissioner per Member State.

Like a typically ineffective dictatorship, this press release provides a link to the key document that authorizes this overturning of the ‘inconvenient’ Lisbon Treaty articles. Check 176/12 that is the Decision of the European Council. It is

• a document whose drafting dates from 2012
• it is undated;
• it is unsigned !!
• it makes no reference to any democratic authority, such as the European people’s voice, referendums, the European Parliament, national parliaments, the Economic and Social Committee or any other Consultative Committee. It refers to no economic debate except the bribe made on the second Irish referendum. Nor does it explain why under European Council ‘Democracy’ the first was invalid and a second was called for. Everywhere else in the world a No means No.

Where the document says ‘Decision of the European Council’ it really means DECREE. The Tsarist Russians would call it an Ukase. It has no democratic base, authority or legitimacy.
It is a bluff because the European Council is trying to pass off as EU law what amounts to a secret, unilateral fait accompli.
In other words, the European Council wants to change the democratic system of the original treaties by a Press Release and by an UNSIGNED, IRRELEVANT DRAFT document. Furthermore its authority is a Spokesman, a paid official not a democratically elected representative.
This press release also puts a deceitful spin on history. In December 2008, the Lisbon Treaty was not active.
It was dead! In fact it was twice dead. The European Council  declared it was alive! This is what the European Council acting as a Politburo declared:

The European Council re-affirms that the Treaty of Lisbon is considered necessary in order to help the enlarged Union to function more efficiently, more democratically and more effectively including in international affairs. With a view to enabling the Treaty to enter into force by the end of 2009, the European Council, while respecting the aims and objectives of the Treaties, has defined the following path.
On the composition of the Commission, the European Council recalls that the Treaties currently in force require that the number of Commissioners be reduced in 2009. The European Council agrees that provided the Treaty of Lisbon enters into force, a decision will be taken, in accordance with the necessary legal procedures, to the effect that the Commission shall continue to include one national of each Member State.

The treaty proposal had just been rejected by the Irish electorate in a referendum. A number of other countries had also rejected the Lisbon Treaty in its former appearance as the Constitutional Treaty — France (55%) and the Netherlands (62%). The British, Czechs, Irish, Polish and the Danish who had been promised referendums did not have one as the politicians expected even more crushing rejections.
The Cartel politicians decided to impose the Treaty by autocratic force. The Constitutional Treaty was shorn of a few clauses. Important ones? Judge for yourself. They deleted the article providing for a European flag and a European Anthem. They are no longer official. Hadn’t you noticed? The Commission’s Berlaymont Building and all other EU buildings are surrounded by DOZENS of European flags!
The Constitutional Treaty was rewritten as amendments to the Treaty of the European Economic Community. (The Rome Treaty of Euratom, the non-proliferation treaty, was not affected.) As a list of amendments, it was incomprehensible as a functioning system. Nevertheless, some Parliaments such as Hungary passed it even before the parliamentarians had received the consolidated text! The European Parliament to its great shame refused even to publish the complete text!
Then the French changed their Constitution so that the French government could refuse another referendum. The other governments refused to hold referendums again. Except the Irish! They voted. They rejected it. They thought the Lisbon Treaty rubbish or dangerous. They were told to vote again and this time Yes. If they did they could retain an Irish Commissioner (to guard Irish interests).  They would be more than OK. They would also get ample EU money to boost the economy. Tell that to them now!
The Lisbon Treaty was not agreed by many peoples in the Member States, either because governments refused to recognize the referendums, or allow one to take place or because they even changed the Constitution to refuse people the right to reject the Lisbon Treaty, as they had the Constitutional Treaty (with which it was practically identical, except for a flag and a song!).
This is the chronology of the anti-democratic slide to Politburo takeover:
1951 Treaty of Paris with 9 Commissioners, eight nominated by Member States and one selected by these eight without recourse to State nomination. This Commissioner is mandated by the others. The Community’s major principle was to oppose to any form of dangerous cartel and restive practice. Hence the Commission must be independent, non-ideological,  impartial and act as ‘economic magistrates’ to ensure rules are obeyed for the expansion of production and lowering of prices in a single market.
1957 Treaties of Rome EEC with 9 Commissioners; Euratom with 5 Commissioners from the six Member States. The treaty of Paris specified that numbers may be reduced. It did not permit an increased number for these States. Europe’s three Communities show that the Commission must be independent of national governments.  Instead, following de Gaulle’s war on the Community,  governments increasingly parachuted their own political representatives rather than selecting impartial Europeans.
At the turn of the century abuse was rife. The public objected to the constant parachuting of politicians into the Commission. Politicians were dominating and States offering independent candidates were fewer and rarer. Instead of a small independent group the Commission became bloated with overpaid political cronies.
An Amsterdam Treaty protocol and the 2000 Nice Treaty (article 213) then limited all States to one Commissioner only, forgetting conveniently that the treaties say nowhere that a State has a right to a Commissioner. (The treaties say the opposite — which is why when there were six Member States, the Euratom Community had only five Commissioners.) The Commission was becoming a club of wall-to-wall political cronies. With the major enlargement of 2004, something had to be done.
The Convention presided by former French President Giscard d’Estaing drafted a Constitutional treaty where the Commission had to be reduced in number. This made clear that the Commission was not a dumping ground for politicians, one for each State.
With the enlargement after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a Protocol to the Amsterdam treaty specified that the number of Commissioners should not exceed the number of Member States.
In 2008 the existing treaty of Nice required that the Commission must be reduced in numbers to avoid overstaffing and turning it into an international secretariat.
The Irish people were refused a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty in 2005 or 6. They rejected the Lisbon Treaty in June 2008 by 53.4 to 46.6%. In October 2009 the Irish were humiliatingly told to think again in a second referendum.
If you check the 2008 European Council Communique quoted by the Spokesman, you will see that the European Council admits it has no democratically solid basis for the Lisbon Treaty. Therefore no legally sound basis exists  either (a) to accept the Lisbon Treaty draft against the clearly stated wish of the people and  (b) to change a difficult article in the Treaty that the politicians had forced through parliaments by block votes.
The decision to accept the treaty (to be called the Lisbon Treaty) that had been rejected by Irish voters was made in the middle of the night. None of the CITIZENS of 27 nation States were consulted. The Communique admits that it was a political decision, decided by politicians. It does not say it was for their own benefit and not the public’s but that was obvious.
The big problem was Ireland. Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty. Under any normal democracy that would have dumped the Treaty in the bin. The European Council meeting after midnight also agreed to bribe the Irish electorate who had rejected the Lisbon Treaty as undemocratic. They said that Ireland must vote again— itself an extraordinary affront to democratic procedure. The bribe consisted of overturning the Lisbon Treaty’s stipulations that the Commission should not be European and composed of a small number of Commissioners. It would become international and composed of National Commissioners and by implication give party politicians in government the right to chose one of their cronies to be a Commissioner. No article of the Lisbon, constitutional or any other treaty gives governments powers to invest cronies with this office.
There are NO SUPER-Citizens in the EU who have preferences and exclude normal citizens. The Council's document supposedly

• supporting their ability to nominate national representatives (against treaty law) and
• only from political parties of the socialist, liberal and 'Christian democratic' persuasion lacks any democratic basis. (It goes against treaty law and a discrimination against the CITIZENS and their human rights to participate).

It is a fraud. It has no democratic approval or authority. It is merely a self-serving splinter for political fraudsters.
http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/12/st00/st00176.en12.pdf
This occurred after all in the first Year of the Citizen, one of two consecutive ones decreed by the Party Machines. Do you expect the party Machines to open up a debate with the Citizen about such a trivial matter as Democracy? This new decree says: 'European governance is the private business of government 'fixers' and parties! Citizens do not stick your noses in it!'
In short it says that the European Commission can remain a dumping ground of national politicians -- in complete violation of treaty law. Cronyism is to become the new law.
The British who say the EU must be reformed failed their electorate. They chose as their nominee for the Commission, a party politician who was formerly called a lobbyist. He was parachuted into Brussels with a high salary but no public support or knowledge. No matter what the public think of him or the Prime Minister’s choice, this is an egregious example of corrupt cronyism. The treaties exclude politicians from applying for the post of Commissioner as they say that Commissioners should

‘be chosen on the grounds of their general competence and European commitment from persons whose independence is beyond doubt.’

I will avoid saying anything about the general competence of politicians. However there are many, many people in Europe, in European NGOs, in the offices of the Ombudsmen, in Law, Business, workers’ and Human Rights who have a great deal more competence than many politicians show. They may also have independence, that is, the ability to be impartial, unprejudiced and non-ideological.
Politicians are automatically excluded from any candidature because a political party tends to be ideological. That is, it has preferences of one side in society over another. Such people cannot be considered ‘honest-brokers.’
It is a designation that thumbs its nose at the public.
The Governments continue their practice of a bloated Byzantine bureaucracy. This was initiated by de Gaulle and his anti-Community henchmen. Its aim? to turn  the Commission into a political secretariat.
The Community system is now being reshaped into a Dictatorship, not of the Proletariat, but of the Party Machines. The same party machines have failed to attract even a half of the electorate. New anti-cartel parties are springing up with large followings everywhere.
It is not only the EU that is reached a crisis of democracy, but the national governments too.

Lobby1 : Businesses take over the EuroParliament. It is OFFICIALLY debased as a House for Hire!

Quite often in the last years, going through the European Parliament is like entering a bazaar. In the spacious hallways you are faced with many companies, NGOs and interest groups each with their stalls. Quite often they hold major exhibitions. They show off what each group considers useful propaganda films. Enthusiastic 'sales assistants' press leaflets into the hands of MEPs hurrying to vote. Journalists and others are waylaid. Free gifts are pressed on the unwary walkers in the corridors of power.

This lobbying is not confined to European entities. This week there was an exhibition in the entrance hall by a major North American power. I have nothing against the Canadians. I rather like them in general. But would Ottawa open up the hallowed halls of its Parliament to an EU exhibition pubicising its anti-seal-killing policy? Yet the European Parliament has made its ample space available for distributing material on Canadian Arctic policy.

The Canadians are also more careful about corrupt parliamentarians using a revolving door with lobbyists. The Canadians have brought in rules that forbid any former MP from becoming a lobbyist for FIVE years after leaving parliament.

All this is rather paradoxical, when the European Parliament is holding a series of meetings and discussions on the Lobby Register, now called the Transparency Register. My, oh my. Under questioning from concerned groups it is clear that the register system is totally inadequate to deal with Lobby activities.

The Canadians apart, what other parliament in the European Union would tolerate such open lobbying inside the House? Is there any parliament of the 27 States that is run like this Brussels bazaar?

On 14 October 2010 the shameful and disreputable state of lobbying in parliament was affixed like a brand on its forehead.

'Businesses take over the European Parliament' was actually the title of a meeting of some 800 businessmen and women. They literally took over the Brussels Hemicycle, the main debating chamber. I was more than a little surprised to see such a brazen poster in the Parliament. It shows a shocking thick-skinned attitude to constant news items about corruption in today's politics.

Did they do all this surreptitiously? Not at all. The meeting was addressed by the Presidents of the main party political power-brokers: those of Parliament, the European Council, and half a dozen assorted European Commissioners. The Belgian Prime Minister came too. That proves one thing. Europe's political cartel is all in cahoots.

So all the European politicians are in agreement that business lobbyists should joined hand and foot to the parliamentary process. And have the same House. This concept used to be called the Corporate State. The fascist dictator Mussolini was a proponent of that contorted idea. He said that what was good for the big corporations must be good for all Italians. The Communist Russians, on the other hand, thought that what was good for the workers was good for all the world and would lead to paradise.

Both were wrong. They made a prostitute out of parliament. Parliament requires independence from interest groups. Democracies do not have a Hire House. It is the slippery road to a governmental whore house.

The meeting was nominally organised by Eurochambres -- that is European chambers of commerce. But in the debate the delegates spoke of their own companies. The entrepreneurs included property dealers and bankers. This is its second shameful appearance of the EuroBusiness Parliament in the Brussels Parliament. It is no accident.

With the full PR spin that businesses can muster, they called it: The European Parliament of Enterprises! Yes, really. They seem oblivious of the arrogance and impudence of it. They wrote that with a Euro-style logo on the session papers. They know about money.

The euro-entrepreneurs sat in the parliamentarians' numbered seats. Each of them stuck their own electronic voting cards in an MEP's voting slot. And they voted for their own resolutions. Fittingly they had sessions on such topics as conditions, resources and markets. They watched as they saw the results on the screens that the MEP's use in plenary sessions. What sauce! What audacity! Who gave them the means to make their own electronic voting cards?

Do the voters or the general public want the Parliament to be taken over by businesses? Do voters approve of such a take-over while parliament is still at work? That day a number of Committee meetings were in session.

What sort of message does this House for Hire give to other governments around the world?

Enter the United States Secretary of State. That day, with business interests actually sitting in the deputies' seats, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the Parliament to talk to its president and parliamentary group leaders. What were her impressions? I wonder. She has already visited some tinpot parliaments abroad.

With all their powerful lobbyists, would the Americans let their Congress be a convention centre for their business meetings? Could barons of industry enter the moment the senators left? Could the oil lobby take over and run a session in the Senate for all to see on public TV? That would be a bit rich.

How did European parliamentarianism sink so low? The answer is simple. In their hearts, European MEPs aren't proud of what they call democracy. With their ever-increasing salaries, perks and privileges, the don't care a hoot if the public thinks such deals stink. They have a bad conscience at what they see around their ministers get up to. The Council gets away with worse, behind closed doors. Secrecy and lack of accountability devalue the whole environment. The MEPs have never fulfilled their primary obligation to have a Europe-wide election as written in the treaties over fifty years ago. Power lies with political party machines, not the people. European democracy was designed to give a voice to organized civil society, not only political parties.

What about governmental systems that are supposed to be run by political parties? Would such business meetings take place in the House of Commons in Westminster, London? Would the chairman of the Confederation of British Industry bang his gavel while sitting in Mr Speaker's chair?

That would be a dramatic sell-out of the centuries-long traditions of the House that likes to call itself the Mother of Parliaments. It made its own noble rules including shutting out the monarchy from its premises. They told kings and queens they had no business in the Chamber. That also goes for any outside interest. The whole Chamber is cleared if one member yells out 'I spy strangers' at any intruder. No businessmen use the MPs' seats. That has remained so in unwritten law for the best part of four hundred years. Many hard and difficult centuries of struggle preceded it.

Even when the Lords are about to summon the Commons MPs to the House of Lords to hear Queen Elizabeth II in crown and robes deliver the Throne Speech at the State opening of Parliament, the Commons rebuff any intrusion. They deliberately shut the doors on the nose of the royal messenger known as Black Rod. He has to strike three times on the great doors with his staff and request their presence in 'the other place'. That is why the independence of parliament and defence of democracy is a common feature in Commonwealth countries.

The Black Rod tradition dates 'only' from 1642 when parliamentary independence was already well understood as necessary. King Charles I tried to have his men enter Parliament. They were shut out. When a few years later Charles went too far again, Parliament tried him in Court in its great hall and decided to chop off his head for treason.

Would the British public stomach the sight of banksters lolling on the red leather benches of the House of Lords? Could property speculators take over the Woolsack, the seat of the Lord Chancellor?

In spite of the recent scandals about expenses, British MPs would be ashamed to hire out the Westminster Parliament to sectoral interest groups. Many still feel they should represent all the people. They would not let the Houses be taken over by the traders, bankers, trade unionists, industrialists or consumer groups either.

The business of government and parliaments should be separate from the business of interests groups. It should also be seen to be separate. And reinforced by law as required.

However, Europarliamentarians feel that standards that brave leaders have over a couple of thousand years fought for with blood, reasoning and fervent appeals for justice may be all right for an off-shore island. Maybe also for some other national parliaments of EU States. But not for them. They feel they are above such common European values. When it comes to the main European levers of economic, financial and democratic control of the Parliament of the world's largest trading power, the EU, different rules apply. NO STANDARDS ARE NECESSARY.

The European Parliamentarians, apparently, feel no shame at this wanton display. Parliament is a House for hire. They seem to have lost any concept about having FIVE independent democratic institutions. The MEPs have lost their way. They should show the businesspeople where they should go. Unfortunately they do not seem to know.

Council5 : European Council secretly decides on secretive G27 Foreign Policy Process

'This is the beginning of a process for a European Foreign Policy,' declared the President of the European Council, Mr Herman van Rompuy. He was speaking at the curt and unilluminating press conference after leaving the secret conclave of leaders of the European Council on 16 September 2010. It was reportedly a stormy meeting. However the public does not know for sure, because the alleged shouting match took place in private.

The European Council wants ownership of the EU's foreign policy, Mr van Rompuy said. It would be implemented by other European institutions including the European Commission and the External Action Service. Policy declarations covered the Balkans, the Middle East and the Eastern Partnership.

Unfortunately, he did not explain why such foreign policy should be conceived and determined in secrecy. After all, we are dealing with public policy. When it comes to public policy Robert Schuman said that all the Councils and Committees and other bodies should be open to the public and subject to intensive public scrutiny. Economic and political integration must be 'based on a democratic foundation,' Schuman wrote in his book Pour l'Europe, p145.

What we have instead is an attempt to create public policy in secret. That is an oxymoron.

It is also a very dangerous idea. The world is convulsed by major global problems. Secretive banksters involved in trillion dollar frauds have sapped the economy. The legalities of sub-prime loans and toxic packages are still subject to court cases, affecting actions of all political leaders. Will further trillion dollar deals among the financial elites be again conducted in democratic obscurity? Should international budget matters amounting to thousands or millions of euros be subject to democratic scrutiny while those amounting to billions or trillions of dollars not get any? Shouldn't they get a few thousand times more scrutiny?

Other multinational trading companies have larger budgets than many nation States. They thumb their noses at international laws. Is this the time for leaders to make foreign policy without any democratic control?

'We can only be strong if we are united,' said Mr van Rompuy. However, it should be recalled that the European Community and the EU is not the G27. Uniting the leaders in secret (if that can be done) is not the same as European democracy. It is pure inter-governmentalism. It will not bring a coherent foreign policy. It will leave Europe vulnerable and weak.

Firstly, what do European leaders mean by European Foreign Policy? They seem to mean the policy that 27 people plus one chairman make in a closed room as far away from the eyes and ears of democrats as possible. Secret agreements between heads of government do not make Community foreign policy. It has little or no democratic legitimacy, no supranational foundation. It is purely an intergovernmental agreement. And not even that, because the other ministers are banned from the discussion.

The Founding Fathers knew that inter-governmentalism was too fragile for the present dangerous world. The Council-style decree has not been subjected to democratic criticism. It has received no democratic assent. It has not even been debated. Strength comes from public consent after a full debate and democratic law.

Council communiques are not the Foreign Policy of the European Union, that is, the values and interests of 500 million people with their jobs, families, organizations and values. The leaders may think themselves clever. But how can even the greatest brains work out what is in the interest as far as some citizen in the far-off Arctic and the islands of Greece? The idea that heads of government can formulate a foreign policy by themselves simply lacks democratic legitimacy. Unless they show a democratic assent, citizens must conclude there is at least a good possibility they are doing it all for themselves or their own PR glory.

It is Gaullism writ large. Charles de Gaulle said in 1946 that the State must repose on the interest and sentiment of the nation. However he wasn't interested in finding out what that was. He wasn't willing to listen. That was why he was kicked out. Then, ten years later, he seized power again in what another president called a permanent coup d'Etat.

A leader or leaders with flawed character will create flawed foreign policy. De Gaulle thought he was the only one who could decide foreign policy. De Gaulle did not tell his ministers what his foreign policy was .... until he pronounced it. Once this decree was made, his ministers had to rush around and tell everyone how good and great his decisions were. This often strained their "diplomatic skills" to find a positive spin.

He decided without telling his ministers that the United Kingdom, and by implication the candidate countries, Norway, Ireland and Denmark, should not be members of the Community of Europe. He did not tell anyone until he announced it. Not to parliament. Not to the Quai d'Orsay. Not to the foreign ministries of the candidate countries. Probably not to his wife or his dog.

He announced it to journalists, based on a planted question, at one of his fawning press conferences. He decided on another occasion that France should expel NATO Strategic Headquarters from French soil. Because of the reputation of Schuman in foreign affairs, France had gained this prestigious prize, so de Gaulle tried to undo it. It was only recently that France rejoined the NATO military structures. It was de Gaulle's expensive folly.

At other times he just popped major strategic policy out in a speech such as when in 1967 on an official visit he cried: 'Vive le Quebec libre!' inciting Quebec to break away from the Canadian federation. His diplomats then had to try to explain what he meant and support the Gaullist policy. Gaullism was foreign policy without the control of democracy.

The Council is now announcing a neo-Gaullist path of foreign policy. It is by decree of the political cartel of the Council. I am sorry to have to tell them that we are dealing with 27 democracies not 27 countries bound in an autocratic Gaullist federation from the Urals to the Atlantic. This is not the time of Charlemagne. It is the new era of supranational democracies.

Secondly, secret foreign policy deals were denounced in recent history as the cause of wars. After World War One, the US President Woodrow Wilson identified as one of the causes of war the lack of open treaties openly agreed. The League of Nations was set up to make sure that treaties and international agreements did not have hidden clauses like the German Rapallo agreement after the war.

Thirdly, foreign policy formulation even by so-called democrats is too often undemocratic. It can be harmful, and even worse. Who knows what the so-called democratic leaders get up to in secret? The Rapallo agreement in 1922 on secret German rearmament was not made by Hitler but by a democratic Weimar government. Germany plotted with the Soviet Union to re-arm against the international community, making it easy for the seizure of power by Hitler.

Should we trust today's so-called democratic leaders? Do they really know what is the common European interest? Are they even working for the long-term benefit of a nation or for the TV news exposure and tomorrow's press headlines?

They wouldn't do anything as sinister as Rapallo, would they? Well, first remember that the German democrats probably thought they were doing good. They acted to support the German armament cartels. Then look at what we have now. The present Middle East policy is typically one of trillion dollar cartels and should be exposed to a full democratic debate.

Those at the European Council were the leaders or their successors who promised that after the French and Dutch public had rejected the Lisbon Treaty there would be a full democratic consultation about the next step. What did they do? They simply brought in the Constitutional Treaty that had been rejected by other means (without further referendums). They merely changed the name to the Lisbon Treaty while the contents stayed practically the same.

The easiest word for this is hypocrisy and there are a lot of harder words I could use. The conclusion is that the so-called democratic leaders simply cannot be trusted to keep their word.

Fourthly, their method proves they are pseudo-democrats, what Schuman called counterfeit democrats. If they had reformed their ways, if they were really democrats, they would have opened the doors of the European Council to the press. They didn't. Why? They did not want the public -- whom they are supposed to represent -- to see their real interests and character. There were rumours and documents in circulation, Mr Barroso confirmed later, that there was sharp exchange of words amounting to a shouting match going on. A very unseemly sight to see on television, enough to frighten the children.

Fifthly, under the Lisbon Treaty there is no democratic or independent parliamentary control worth speaking of. The leaders like to meet in party political conclave before the European Councils, they do not meet with other democratic institutions. They do not meet with the public. Why?

Political parties are the largest lobbyist groups in Europe. They are not very successful in getting public support or even votes at elections. They have little funds, except the money they get from the taxpayers. Yet policy and ideology is pliable enough to accept funding directly or indirectly from the rich and from powerful international corporations, even sovereign funds from abroad. Who is making the policies of the parties? Certainly not the public.

Parliament provides no real forum for debate. It is composed of the same coalition of major parties. It lacks public support. More people refuse to vote than vote for any of its parties. The proportion of people refusing to vote out of disgust or disinterest is increasing at each election.

Why before the European Council do the leaders meet in separate, equally secret groupings as members of political parties, conservative, liberal, socialist, etc? It is to reinforce party political policy, to force it through the European Council. Is this democratic? Consider that 98 percent of the European public are not members of any political party and you will see that this not a representative way to approach a European Council.

It is a political cartel at work. This is the same process used by economic cartels to 'fix' the market and cream off huge illegal profits. Politicians are not going to talk about anything else but pushing through party ideology. That is both unjust and undemocratic. Politics based on ideology is a failed cause. Witness the failed ideologies of the twentieth century. Parties vote in blocks and are now subject to other factors.

Sixthly -- and here we come to another dangerous bit -- secret foreign policy is easily corruptible. The European Commission regularly gives fines of around one billion euros for illegal cartel activities. 'Respectable' US firms and many European ones have had to cough up because they were caught out in illegal activities. If you had a billion euros and wanted to avoid another fine, what would you do? How do lobbyists work? They try to influence Commission officials, maybe MEPs etc.

However the most effective means to influence policy is to influence either the government minister or the political party the minister belongs to. Then the minister becomes, wittingly or unwittingly, an advocate of an industrial group or labour union or consumer group. Thus democratic control is especially needed to determine what happens inside meetings of ministers. A minister can easily convince or delude him- or herself. He may think that what he is advocating is good for an industry and is good for the country. One American politician, an industrialist appointed Secretary of Defence, said that 'For years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa'. That sort of thinking is shortsighted self deception.

Seventhly, how should foreign policy be composed? Foreign policy should be totally inclusive of all sections of society. Is this possible, critics may ask. Certainly, but only under a supranational democracy. All policy issues must pass through five democratic institutions who should be subject to democratic accountability. Each institution should check the others. A real European foreign policy should be organized in the following fashion. The citizens have to permit a European foreign policy first in one sector. That sector has to be designated for its importance. The Commission in full dialogue with all sections of organized civil society identifies what is the specific guideline that should be promoted as policy. It agrees to an overall framework, whether an Energy Community, a coal and steel community, or a transport community. This has to have the full assent of the all the people. (The weakness of the Lisbon/constitutional Treaty system is that it tries to include all sectors and it does not have popular assent, having ignored the referendums.)

Specific parts of the foreign policy are defined by acts of European law that are democratically agreed upon by the five supranational institutions. For example, one strand could be based on a regulation that identifies the reduction of Carbon or energy use in manufacturing, or forbidding the use of a dangerous product. It might ban a chemical product as dangerous or carcinogenic.The foreign policy would be that no such chemicals should be imported into the EU by foreign firms. It could define methods so that Europeans would not be endangered by imports.

The Community approach requires that principles and values are defined in law. Any citizen, organisation or institution has the right to challenge any violation against these European values in any court of the land.

That is a universe away from the neo-Gaullism that the European Council is trying to promote.