The EU flag flown at the Olympics would be THEFT!

Should athletes from EU Member States carry the European Union flag? 

Let's be clear. There is no distinct EU flag. It is high time for Europe's leaders to be honest about its emblem, its flag. People rally around a flag where it has real and lasting meaning. 

The flag of twelve-stars on an azure field is the flag of the Council of Europe. It is Europe's senior institution. The EU uses the flag as a subsidiary of the Council of Europe. 

So it makes no sense for EU States to flourish the twelve-star flag, because it is primarily a symbol of the Council of Europe. It includes 47 States, not just the 27 of the EU. 

Besides the EU States, the Flag represents:

Norway, Iceland, Turkey, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Moldova, Albania, Andorra, Switzerland, Ukraine, North Macedonia, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Monaco, Serbia, Montenegro and the United Kingdom.

Should the flag be waived every time one of these States wins at the Olympics? 

The EU seems to be attempting to appropriate total use of the flag. It is an attempted act of pilfering, to use a polite term. It's a theft as much as using the logo of Coca Cola as the emblem of the European Commission. 

Slow motion steal

The Council of Europe owns the flag. It encapsulates honest government and European values. Decades later, it first offered use of the flag with conditions to the European Communities. At first only the European Parliament took up the generous invitation. Other Community institutions then wanted to use it.

The story is a bit like a neighbour borrowing the lawnmower and then after a period of time the neighbour says the lawnmower belongs to me. 

Put it another way. It is like the European Commission installing Coca Cola vending machines throughout the Berlaymont building. Then, when they became so prevalent, saying that the Commission owns the branding of the Coca Cola logo.  

The EU, with its flagrant democratic deficit, seems to think that the 12-star flag is its own. But the question of ownership is even more legally dubious. The flag was offered to the European Communities, not the present EU, which is a different animal. 

The European Council took over control and made the flag part of EU. But ironically, in the referendums on the Constitutional treaty that was rejected by France and the Netherlands, the flag was rejected too. Several other countries were set to reject the treaty but their referendums were withdrawn by the politicians. So the EU constitutionally does not have this flag. The people did not want it to represent the EU.

Then, even more ironically, the Constitutional Treaty was re-assembled from a jigsaw puzzle of articles and amendments and turned into the Lisbon Treaty. Did the Lisbon Treaty have an article defining the European flag and the anthem? 

No. The article which was in the Constitutional Treaty was left out of the Lisbon Treaty! Why? Because the British objected that this made the EU appear to be a federal State, which obviously it wasn't.

There is no article in the Lisbon Treaty that says the Flag of the EU is that which is widely flown outside all EU buildings or inside government offices. The best politicians could come up with was a statement by 17 States, declaration 52, that was added later to the treaty.  

Flag and Song

In 1986 at the invitation of the Council of Europe the European Communities were invited with conditions to use both the flag and the European anthem, Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' as arranged for it by Herbert von Karajan. This invitation was accepted by the European Council, which was not a Community institution. It was not even a body with a legal personality. That's like the neighbour of the neighbour saying the lawnmower is his. That seems like the EU's European Council is violating a fundamental right -- the right to own and retain property.

The Council of Europe was designed to safeguard human rights after the abuses of Nazism and Soviet communism. In short, unjust rule by a self-defined elite or ideology. 

All Member States of the European Communities and the EU have to be members of the Council of Europe. They have to respect its Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The EU is in evident crisis with a democratic deficit, closed-door government, and a crying need to re-establish just and honest principles for the Future of Europe. It needs to review its origins.

On 5 May 1949 Robert Schuman said in a speech at the signature ceremony of the Council of Europe Statute in London that adherence to this legal system defines 'Europe' more than geography. 

The lesson is that the EU must conform to the Human Rights of the Council of Europe. That is why all early treaties were discussed and passed in the Council of Europe. Schuman himself explained the institutions and the democratic mechanism of the European Community before the Assembly of the Council of Europe in August 1950. 

The ultimate European Court is not the Court of the EU in Luxembourg but the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Who flies the flag? The flag belongs by invention, precedent and law to the Council of Europe. 

The use of the European flag by the Brussels institutions is an act of recognition of being part of Europe based on Fundamental Freedoms. 

These freedoms are recognized by States and their governments. They are not created by governments. Freedoms are given by God, not States. Citizens must be aware that Governments are primarily the entities that wish to curtail human freedoms by abuse of laws and regulations. Citizens need protection against the representatives of the citizens who believe they are better than citizens. The Council of Europe is the body that can do that. Certainly not the Lisbon Treaty's EU that was erected against the will of the people. That is an act of antipathy and hostility to elementary human rights.

States that stop fundamental freedoms can be suspended or even expelled from the Council of Europe. That was the case of Greece under the dictatorship of the colonels.

Among the Freedoms are: 

• Freedom  of Speech,
• Freedom of Assembly,
• Freedom of religion,
• Freedom to own and enjoy possessions etc.

Secret Steal

Did the EU politicians secretly steal the design? The evidence is there for all to judge. 

Power can corrupt. Politicians tend to accumulate powers against the people. They reduce or freeze the people's voice. It disturbs them. They might listen and then ignore voices crying out about injustice and requiring honest government.

Following a ruling by the Court of Justice, politicians were forced to hold European elections to the European Parliament in 1979. That was a quarter of a century after politicians had signed treaties that such elections should be held. Today no elections are afforded to the consultative committees. The Council of Ministers still holds sessions behind closed doors instead of open sessions as the treaties require.

Many people objected to the way the politicians had responded to the ruling on European elections. The treaty and the great Charter of the Community said that pan-European elections were necessary. Instead, the politicians followed only the first part of the sentence in the article in the treaties. They decided to hold national elections to the Parliament according to national rules they invented rather than one election with one statute. 

In the 1980s politicians, aware of public disgust at lack of open councils, and proper European elections, decided to launch a public relations operation to try to fool the people. 

At the meeting of the heads of State and Government at Dublin in December 1984, they called for a report on 'People's Europe'. Ironic indeed since they had denied elementary democracy to the people.

The Adonnino Report came up with a number of measures. They were mostly of dubious legality as if the politicians could command various measures without the agreement of the people. Changes in sovereignty and constitutionality require the assent of the people. Instead the key feature was to provide a feeling of branding, and respond to what they considered to be a federal wish-list.

Prominent among these measures was the flag and the anthem. So what was the solution of the Adonnino panel? It made clear that the 12-star flag belonged to the Council of Europe. As a subset of this Human Rights Europe, the European Communities would have to indicate just that. So the committee suggested that a large letter E should be placed in the centre of the flag to show that dependency.

 Brand theft

So how did the EU get the same flag as that of the Council of Europe? 

What is more legitimate in choosing symbols of sovereignty: 

• a referendum of the people or 
• a secret meeting?

Guess which system was used to decide on the flag?

Yes, the flag was decided at a closed door meeting of the Heads of State and Government at Milan in June 1985. It excluded the public and discussed the matter in private. 

What happened? Some like the British were against creating a flag with implications of sovereignty and without formal agreement of the people. 

So a compromise was reached. The meeting decided that that they would create a 'logo' not a flag. 

And quite impudently also decided they would remove the E from the centre. It was then exactly the same as the flag of the Council of Europe! Why?

So what happened to the use of the logo of twelve stars? It did not last long. 

Within a mere few months it changed from a flag with an E, to a logo without an E, to a flag without an E.

On 26 May 1986, the twelve stars were officially raised as a flag outside the HQ building of the European Commission.

This is an audacious act of brand-stealing. If it were a question of a firm taking the design of a can of Heinz beans or producing something called Coca Cola they would be taken to Court.  

It is brand theft. 

The secret meeting of the European politicians feels that it can steal with impunity. 

Origin of the Flag

The European flag was adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 9 December 1955 following a resolution in the Assembly:

Against the blue sky of the Western world, the stars symbolise the peoples of Europe in a form of a circle, a sign of union. Their number is invariably twelve, the figure twelve being the symbol of perfection and entirety.

— Council of Europe. Paris, 7–9 December 1955.

In fact the question of creating a flag had been raised at the start of Europe's great institution that defines Europe as the zone of free speech and human rights. The Council started its work in August 1949 with 12 signatory States: Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK (the ten signatories of the Statute on 5 May 1949) and two States that signed before the first session: Greece and Turkey and then in1950 from opposite end of Europe: Iceland.

French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman signs Statute of Council of Europe at
St James's Palace, London, 5 May 1949.

Proposed designs came from across Europe and far beyond. (One, with a single gold star on a blue background, came from a European named C W Raymon in Japan but this design was already in use.) 

The Council's Director of Information, Paul Levy, a Belgian, was in charge of the project, and liked the basic design. In September 1953, the Assembly proposed 15 stars (then the number of States). French deputy  Robert Bichet was rapporteur. But the Germans in the Council of Ministers refused. Among the 15 was the Saar, a disputed territory.  The Saar objected to being cut out. 

What about thirteen stars? Twelve stars in a circle with a large star in the centre? That was rejected as many did not like thirteen. 

The Secretary General Leon Marchal suggested just 12 stars.  Levy was charged to provide reasons to support it. He replied: 

'Twelve is the sign of perfection and fullness. There were twelve tables of law in Rome; there are twelve apostles; there are twelve sons of Jacob; twelve months of the year; and twelve hours in the day; ... twelve signs of the zodiac represent the entire universe, so why shouldn't twelve stars represent Europe of both sides of the Iron Curtain and both sides of the Pyrenees?'

Leon Marchal drew the case of the twelve stars surrounding the woman of Revelation 12, which biblically represent the twelve tribes of Israel (as distinct to Roman Catholic views). Levy drew up details of the design for public use. Levy must therefore be considered the designer of the flag. 

Was the flag a Marian or Catholic symbol? Not according to Levy who was at the origin of the design. It was Levy who drew that exact specifications of the flag. Levy was a Holocaust survivor. Marchal was also keen to have a politically neutral emblem. A religious symbol would not have passed the Assembly and the Committee of Ministers.

The Assembly's adoption of the flag on 8 December 1955, a 'Marian' date, was a 'political accident.' (Sauver l'Europe, pp163-8, published 1978.) The Marian idea was a later unsubstantiated fiction. The final decision was made on 9 December by the Committee of Ministers. 

Meanwhile, officials at the European Coal and Steel Community had created their own flag. It was a not very aesthetic design. It had six stars in two rows of three but on a field divided horizontally between blue (steel) and black (coal). 

Robert Schuman much preferred the Levy design. Then some decades later, in 1983 the European Parliament decided to take the flag as its emblem. The European Communities as a whole then decided they would also do the same.

For Schuman the synergy that was in the original proposition between the Council of Europe and the Community reinforced the necessity of unity: the Council of Europe was and is the human rights guarantor of the proper working of the Community.

Conclusion: 

The lesson of the European Flag is that all European institutions must come under the judgement of the European Court of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and democratic supervision of the institutions of the Council of Europe.  That includes respect for property rights.

The EU leaders will only properly guide Europe to her destiny when they are honest with themselves. 

RUSSIA: How Spies deceive other Spies and You!

The UK is about to change the main focus of its intelligence surveillance operations.
Russia.

Was Russia involved in the Brexit referendum? Did it influence the Scottish independence referendum?

How can governments know where the main threat is? Intelligence is about deception. The agencies are not only in the business of collecting information on others, foes and friends, but of deceiving enemies.

Sometimes they are so good at deception that they fool themselves. And the Public is at the end of the whole business. It gets deception information from all sides.

So should we be surprised if governments feel the main threat comes from a smaller State while ignoring a powerful foe with a population of 1.3 billion and an economy second only to America’s? And significantly Communist countries set a premium on propaganda to subvert and undermine those they consider their strongest enemies.

So shouldn’t we be a little leery of pat answers based on old prejudices?

Science not Prejudice

Who is in charge of the Intelligence agencies? It is the public in the shape of bureaucrats and politicians. If politicians cannot always be trusted, can the top spies they place in position to run the intelligence services always be trusted? Are they always honest? Politicians come and go. bureaucrats remain. If they are not honest, what can be done?

Thus Democracies often end up being run by deceived politicians trying to control the deceiving machines of the spy community.

Take the case of the recent report on Russia by the UK Parliament Intelligence and Security Committee. This has hit the headlines because Prime Minister Boris Johnson delayed the publication till after the election that brought him a large majority of seats in Parliament (although a minority of popular votes.)

The politicians enquiry was conducted in the years of Prime Minister May and draws on interviews of the time and published material dating even further back.

Much information has come out since then that throws the evidence into a critical light.

The Concluding Decision.

The report has led politicians to the conclusion that the intelligence services underestimated the role of Russia in the two referendums. They say that the services did not take the danger seriously. They did not investigate thoroughly or properly.

So what must be done? In the future Russia must be analysed with more care and more money.

Is this the correct conclusion? Let us turn to the key paragraphs that leads the parliamentary rapporteurs to come to this decision.

The main sources of Russian propaganda are:

• Broadcaster RT and Sputnik,
• Trolls and bots on the internet,
• Hack and Leak of important documents, as exampled in the US elections,
• Real life interference such as giving bank loans to the French National Front party.

If this is the evidence then it is pretty thin except for one point.

• In a footnote the Report admits that only 1300 people on average watch the Russian broadcaster, RT. Hardly enough to swing a referendum of 46 million voters.
• Trolls and bots might increase FaceBook traffic etc but what influence do these have?
• Did the Russians actually turn the US elections to their favour by getting the American public to vote for Donald Trump? His opponent, Hillary Clinton and her husband, seemed to have intimate relations with the Russian government.
• As for one Russian bank making a loan to a French nationalist party, it was refused loans from all Western banks. What was it to do? What loans do other parties get from foreign-owned banks or foreign millionaires such as the oil-States?

One could contrast this with China’s success in its Unrestricted Warfare policy:

• taking over British Steel Ltd (after massive Chinese steel dumping destroyed the viability of EU’s steel sector).
• taking over a major sector of the UK nuclear power industry as constructors.
• implementing of Chinese Huawei connectors into the UK communications networks. This has made the new 5G upgrade seem inevitable. But this could lay the whole network susceptible to infiltration. What better potential for spying?

Thus the Chinese have a grip on UK construction and defence materials, the energy sector and communications. How can a State build battleships and canons if the steel is controlled by foreigners? How can you compete if the lights go out? Who needs spies on the ground when you can tap into their communications?

Russian hack is ‘evidence-free’

This UK conclusion also contrast with a group of US intelligence veterans who say that when certain politicians claim a Russian hack changed the US election results, it is 'evidence-free'.

So what is the key triumph of the Russians that shows their guilt and proves they are the main foe of the West? Surely having swung the US elections in favour Donald Trump. But did they? What is the evidence?

The UK report says:

42. It was only when Russia completed a ‘hack and leak’ operation against the Democratic National Committee in the US – with the stolen emails being made public a month after the EU referendum – that it appears that the Government belatedly realised the level of threat which Russia could pose in this area, given that the risk thresholds in the Kremlin had clearly shifted, describing the US ‘hack and leak’ as a “game changer”, and admitting that “prior to what we saw in the States, [Russian interference] wasn’t generally understood as a big threat to [electoral] processes”.
43. It appears that the Intelligence Community did learn lessons from the US experience, and HMG recognised the Russian threat to the UK’s democratic processes and political discourse.

Let’s examine the ‘Game Changer‘ as it is the main ground for the report’s conclusion. The report admits here that this was an allegation in a far different league than bank loans, trolls or propaganda TV with no audiences.

FBI hierarchy fired under Trump

It was clear from the US election campaign and later events of 2017 involving the US intelligence service that corruption ran deep in the State system. Three and a half years on, we find that almost the entire intelligence superstructure has been fired.

Spying on the President

A notable exception was Admiral Rogers head of the NSA, the National Surveillance Agency. On 17 November 2016, he revealed to President-elect Trump that his staff’s communications were under illegal surveillance by both the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and the FBI (the Federal Bureau of Investigation). This is not only highly illegal but treasonous as it undermined the newly elected president.

So who is in the right, the top FBI agents or the president? The FBI mandate is to investigate US-based criminal personalities. The CIA is the external agency for intelligence. But the CIA works with friendly intelligence agencies such as the British and Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand services in the Five Eyes collaboration. These other agencies can, if the CIA requests it, tap into US citizens in the USA. Hence the CIA has track on whomsoever it wishes.

Corruption and Big Money

Where does the corruption come in? Money and power. The US spends as much on Defence and intelligence as most of the rest of the world combined. A candidate who promises to clean up the Swamp is suspect and to be eliminated.

An early manifestation of the efforts of the intelligence community to oust President Trump was the ‘Dirty Dossier‘. This, according to FBI chief Comey, alleged that Trump had been caught with prostitutes and framed by the Russians when in Moscow.

This utterly untenable tale was soon proved false. Who had fabricated this fraudulent file? Who paid for it and spread it abroad?

It was a former British spy now open for hire as an independent adviser. His name: Christopher Steele. He was found to be paid by the lawyers who worked for the Democrat National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton.

Steele’s rewriting of unsubstantiated material in the dossier were so outrageous that even the supposed subsource of the information is suing him for deformation. Steele’s defence: The material should not have been divulged as it was secret.

What else do we know about Steele? He was known as virulently anti-Trump. And he is one of the contributors to the UK Parliament’s report on Russia! Mr Christopher Steele, director of Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, is listed as one of the five ‘external expert witnesses.’

In the US his Dirty Dossier was mischievously introduced as grounds, countersigned by FBI chiefs, to further surveille president Trump and his colleagues. Hundreds of documents have now been released showing how this fake document was used time after time in the FISA court to sustain a criminal and treasonous activity against the president. (FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that requires a court to agree to any surveillance.)

The intelligence chiefs knew the key dossier was fraudulent!

It was also used to initiate the Mueller enquiry. Over several years of investigation and multiple millions of dollars, it could not find any case for Trump being involved in illegal activity with the Russians. Some 2800 subpoenas were issued by Mueller, 500 witnesses called and 500 search warrants were executed.

The Democrats then turned to an attempted impeachment based on supposed mishandling of anti-corruption matters in Ukraine. That too failed. Why the Ukraine? A cover-up is the most obvious motive as Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden has now been declared to be a criminal suspect in what the Ukrainian president Zelensky declared may involve treason there.

So what about the key factor in the UK parliamentary report that is the real ‘game changer‘ for intelligence work to refocus on Russia? The allegation is that Russian hackers were able to penetrate the computers at the DNC and download files of Democrat leaders. These Russian hackers then allegedly passed them on to WikiLeaks who published them.

WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange denied the information came from a State actor, that is, Russia. He hinted broadly that he received the data from a disillusioned Bernie Sanders supporter and DNC employee. He was later assassinated in unusual circumstances.

UK report’s main evidence

This ‘cyber hacking‘ is the key to how UK may spend its intelligence budget, so what have later investigations shown?

William Binney

One man should know. That is Wlliam Binney the former technical director at the NSA, the top surveillance agency in the world. He broke with NSA as a whistleblower, because it was taking and storing all data of Americans contrary to its statute. This is the spy-on-everyone, Stasi version of intelligence. Besides his career, his integrity cost him dear.

He examined the metadata of the supposed downloaded files. It was not hacked, he concluded. It was downloaded locally. The internet would not support the speed stamps that the data recorded. The files could not have been downloaded and transmitted over the internet, and certainly not across the Atlantic. The speed of the download was so fast it could only have been accomplished by attaching a drive into the DNC computer itself. It was an inside job.

This view was confirmed by a group of former Intelligence community experts who wrote a memo to President Donald Trump, emphasizing that the data was taken locally.

They wrote:

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Was the “Russian Hack” an Inside Job?

Executive Summary

Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer. After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device.

Something smelt foul. The intelligence community in charge refused to make any scientific evidence to back up their political assertions. They said that no evidence had been adduced that Russians were involved. Any attempt to analyse the evidence was resisted!

Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original “Guccifer 2.0” material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any sign that the “hand-picked analysts” from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the “Intelligence Community Assessment” dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention to forensics.

They concluded:

From the information available, we conclude that the same inside-DNC, copy/leak process was used at two different times, by two different entities, for two distinctly different purposes:

-(1) an inside leak to WikiLeaks before Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, that he had DNC documents and planned to publish them (which he did on July 22) – the presumed objective being to expose strong DNC bias toward the Clinton candidacy; and

-(2) a separate leak on July 5, 2016, to pre-emptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish by “showing” it came from a “Russian hack.”

The second leak by ‘Guccifer 2.0’ was alleged to be a Russian or he may have been dressed up to be one using the CIA tool box. CIA Director Brennon was sacked by President Trump and his security clearance removed.

Thus it is highly unlikely that any Russians were involved at all. The FBI management refused to make a direct investigation of the DNC computers. They were never confiscated and examined by forensically. Instead, they contented themselves to have a contracted company, Crowdstrike, who worked for the DNC issue a report that was never finalised.

Secretary of State Pompeo has discussed this conclusion with Binney, as far back as 24 October 2017 when Pompeo was the new CIA Director. Is the UK parliamentary committee on Intelligence not familiar with this? Is the EU?

Given the importance of the issue it is appalling that the key ‘game changer’ issue has not been properly investigated in open Court.

The European Commission seems also to hold to the, as yet uncertain and probably untenable, idea that Russians cyber-hacked the DNC computer across the Atlantic internet. On June 2019 the Security Union Commissioner Julian King still repeated the Russian hack story as if it were a fact.

Are the UK, the EU and millions in the USA and across the world being fooled by what is easily testable Fake News?

Beyond Brexit: UK Constitution upturned; Europe in a Human Rights Revolution

Review of Vernon Bogdanor: Beyond Brexit

Vernon Bogdanor excels in his analysis of the UK Constitution. He draws incisive conclusions about the major changes of the Constitution that have arisen from more than four decades of membership to the European Communities. He traces the change of model from UK’s unwritten constitution where Parliament ruled to the slow but sure movement where European “officials” in the Commission apparently pre-empt all.

As he wrote, and it is more apparent after he wrote, the Referendum, as an instrument of governance, has become the predominant factor in Britain’s Constitution.

The Referendum represents the most important challenge not only to UK because of Brexit, but because, by the disrespect of the referendum by Brussels as the primary instrument of democracy, Europe is entering a prolonged crisis which will overturn decades-long corrupt policy by politicians.

Early constitutions

Historically Britain did have a written constitution briefly under Oliver Cromwell. Before that, before the Anglo-Saxons arrived, and indeed the Romans, ancient Britons were governed by wise principles called the State Triads, the basis for our present Common Law. One of these defines the three governance principles:

• firstly, a referendum of all the people,
• secondly a parliament of 300, and
• thirdly a court where jurors or elders vote under its protection and privileges.

These ‘Laws of Wales’ were confirmed in the Magna Carta 1215.

The Referendum is now coming back to first place. It has changed how Britons think about their Constitution.

European Communities

Bogdanor does not dig so far back into history. But he is clear and detailed on the recent developments. He is right to draw attention to the fact that the original institution was the European Coal and Steel Community 1951 and not the “Common Market” 1957. His analysis of the supremacy of European law and the British lack of understanding of it is well worth a read.

The Continentals, however, have also failed to warn of the drift and resist the negative changes for all European citizens: the Democratic Deficit.

This is not something inherent in the Community system. In fact it was conceived as the most democratic system ever.

The two areas where his analysis is weak are the nature of European Democracy (as originally conceived and why it is ‘chloroformed’ under France’s autocratic president Charles de Gaulle) and the major change in the British constitution now that the Referendum is main instrument that outclasses even parliamentary decision-making. A more subtle and perhaps more important point is how to stop politicians cheating when a referendum is declared. This can be done when referendums do not have an adequate legal framework, for example, where the framework itself violates human rights.

Democracy is based on Human Rights

After the bloodiest of world wars and threatened by Soviet expansionism, the democrats who agreed on the Community idea, obviously wanted a democracy that would help west European democracies help themselves. They wanted to build together a better, freer world. The first step was the creation of a minimum standard for a country to be considered democratic. This was formulated in the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of the guardian organisation, the Council of Europe.

This body and this entrance ticket may be considered the Bill of Rights and its guarantor for the future safety of Europeans and their States.

All subsequent treaties such as the European Communities had to be examined for human rights adherence and agreed by this body. And so they were. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tcJKfuMYCk

Democratic blockage

What happened? Western Europe experienced an economic miracle for three decades that were unprecedented in its previous history. But in the 1980s it ran out of steam. Europe’s democratic engine is based on a ratchet system: it can go forward but not back. But for a while it can be blocked from advancing.

Europe gained its first Single Markets in 1953. De Gaulle stopped the advancement to what had initially been agreed: a transparent, open Council of Ministers and elections to European bodies. After de Gaulle’s departure in 1969 was when the reform to the high standards of Schuman democracy should have been made.

Alas, politicians, Continental and British, Irish and Scandinavian, preferred the neo-Gaullist system. European elections to the Parliament should be based on a single statute and one election, not 28 national elections that are easily manipulated. The closed-door Councils of Ministers remained. Politicians could thus abrogate to themselves excessive powers without public supervision.

The inevitable crisis

Today we are entering Crisisland: Brexit comes after barely surviving Greece’s Grexit and the continuing euro crisis.

Is the original democratic vision broken? Democracy needs the rule of law to sustain it. Law needs democratic glue to make it viable long-term.

Robert Schuman, the French Statesman who originated the Community method, created a new system to provide a partial (step-by-step) democracy in sectors to link and pacify ancient States and peoples, continually at war amongst themselves.

As Bogdanor says in his Gresham Lectures, Schuman initiated a ‘scientific experiment’ in democracy (speech at Strasbourg, May 1949). Schuman also said that democracy cannot be improvised. Progress is not automatic, nor, because of human nature, always in the right direction.

The Cause

This is where Bogdanor could have applied more of his analytical skills. After the war, the Community experiment was based on solid principles of good governance. The first document signed by the founding States in 1951 was buried by Gaullists in French archives. It was not republished again for fifty years. It is what Schuman called the Charter of the Community.

It is simpler than Magna Carta. It has one key right, the right of people to freely choose their destiny. True democracy contrasted with the Soviet system where the people could only vote for the Party and party dictatorship of the proletariat.

Democracy goes hand in hand with the first institution of modern Europe. That was not the EU or the Community but the Council of Europe, formed in Strasbourg in 1949. Its Rules of Membership – the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms – defined European values, Magna Carta rights on a broad European scale.

States and free populations that recognise these values of a free society are those that can call themselves European with freedom of thought, assembly, the press, presumed innocence in Court, and so on.

The Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms now defines Europe more than geography.

Where did Europe and UK go wrong?

All the early treaties, 1951-57, were discussed at length in the Assembly of the Council of Europe to ensure they complied with human rights.

By the time UK joined NONE of the later ones were.

1950 European Coal and Steel Community, ECSC,

1953 European Defence Community, EDC

1953 European Political Community, EPC

1957 European Atomic Energy Community, Euratom,

1957 European Economic Community, EEC: Spaak Report.

The Community was considered a guardian of fundamental rights because it was within the Council of Europe system. For example, Article 3 of the EDC specifies the fundamental rights of the individual and rights of States.

1957-69 De Gaulle seizes power in France, stops elections.

1973 UK joined 3 Communities, ECSC, EEC (Common Market) and Euratom. But no elections to European Parliament and Consultative Committees took place.

1986 Mrs Thatcher agreed to reinforcing the Single Market in the Single European Act (SEA). But the politicians added more institutions. They were unpopular and few citizens agreed to them. This constitution-changing operation was mounted against British, Danish and Greek objections, only one referendum (in Ireland). Only nine of the 12 Member States signed the SEA initially in February 1986.

The politicians, meeting in the still closed-door Council of Ministers, created these new institutions for internal and external affairs and a hierarchical control by a European Council of heads of Government, after the pattern of de Gaulle’s system.

Constitutional change requires affirmation in referendums. In the UK, where some saw to where such constitutional change without popular authorisation could lead, a Referendum Party was formed with the aim of correcting government policy to the innovations without popular legitimacy.

The first cheat was to call the SEA a revision and not a treaty. The second cheat was not to have it analysed for Human Rights abuse by the Council of Europe. By this time the Council of Europe, side-lined by de Gaulle in 1957, was not allowed to interfere in the process or to pronounce on the diminishing human rights of these political operations. 

Human Rights by Force

The Community system had no institution called the European Council of Heads of State and Government. There was good reason. All European politics should be conducted in the Council of Europe and in Community bodies in open session.

The ‘Summit’ was an invention of Charles de Gaulle. He was the only Head of State allowed.

It provides fertile soil for an oligarchic control of European affairs without public supervision. In the Community system it was not even an institution, never mind a body with legal personality.

In the European Council, Heads of government could now meet in secret. Heads of government could decide what to do for their own advantage. They also had national majorities to pass them or force them through their parliaments. Later Treaties (Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice, Constitutional and Lisbon) were forced through parliaments in rapid succession.

Once they leaders were agreed it was easy. All government parties with their parliamentary majorities did not have to take minority or popular voices into account. Some treaties were passed in spite of referendums blackballing them. Human rights? Forget it!

No Human Rights ‘interference’ was allowed from the Council of Europe. A substitute for proper Human Rights was penned, called the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Another fraud as it confused ideology with natural law rights.

It was forced through parliaments, in spite of its having been rejected in several referendums!!

Some Human Rights!

Impact of Human Rights

So what would happen if real Human Rights were restored and enforced in the Strasbourg Court? Sections of the present treaties would be resiled. What is the most significant section today?

The Lisbon Treaty was rejected by three States—France and the Netherlands when it was called the Constitutional treaty, and once by Ireland when it was called the Lisbon treaty.

Given a chance, UK voters would have rejected it with a large majority according to all observers. They were not given a chance. Politicians in UK and several other countries withdrew their already announced referendums.

The Lisbon Treaty does not pass the Council of Europe test. Nor does it pass the referendum test of popular support for a constitutional change.

What would happen if the Lisbon Treaty were no longer valid?

Well, for a start, there would be no Article 50. And no valid referendum of 23 June 2016. The people would have a choice of treaty. It is clear that across Europe, Lisbon treaty was unacceptable because referendums were banned. The only State, Ireland, that voted on it, voted against it. And then, under financial duress, Brussels politicians told the Irish to vote again!

A written Constitution for the UK?

Bogdanor concludes that UK is heading for a written Constitution. Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have such documents. These have been granted by the central Parliament in Westminster after referendums.

UK still has European Human Rights law that overrides even parliamentary Acts. So Westminster needs constitutional certainty.

Not so fast.

Much must be clarified first, primarily the voice of the people. This is the fundament of fundamentals. Neglected too long, the referendum is the most powerful, legitimising constitutional institution (with two others acting as helpers, parliament and the courts). Parliament is no longer seen as the main constitutional body that nothing can bind. The Supreme Court judgement in the Miller prorogation case shows that Government in Parliament is subject to judicial review and its decisions can be reversed and declared null and void.

(T)he Order in Council which, being founded on unlawful advice, was likewise unlawful, null and of no effect and should be quashed. This led to the actual prorogation, which was as if the Commissioners had walked into Parliament with a blank piece of paper. It too was unlawful, null and of no effect. 

Back to Constitutional Basics

Democracies are States or entities of the people ruled by the people for the people. Not closed-door oligarchies.

While no one doubts the legitimacy of the 1975 European Community referendum with its decisive result, the same cannot be said for David Cameron’s 23 June 2016 Article 50 referendum.

Why? The legal framework is missing. The May government said it was basing its exit letter on Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The 1975 vote did not base itself on a treaty but the free vote of the people.

The legality of the Lisbon Treaty is quite dubious. It is a palpable fraud. Both Labour and Conservatives promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. None came.

In reality referendums in France and the Netherlands had already rejected its articles. Later, six States, including the UK, were refused the possibility of a referendum. Why were they refused? Because the politicians knew and said at the time that these populations would reject the treaty!

Instead, in UK the treaty was passed off as agreed — without a referendum. But not only without one. It was passed off in direct opposition to the people. It was rejected in referendums in Ireland and in France and the Netherlands when it was called the Constitutional Treaty.

This sleight of hand must be rectified at first for future generations. A constitutional arrangement based on a fraud will not stand.

The people must agree to the Lisbon Treaty before it can be used. Only then can a problem free Article 50 be used as a basis for a referendum decision in Parliament.

The UK is in the midst of a constitutional revolution, comparable to the union of the United Kingdom. Now it is on the scale of the Continent of Europe (excluding only such States as Iceland, Norway and Switzerland etc who do not wish to join).

The Convention of Human Rights of Strasbourg supplies the baseline. The 1951 Great Charter of the Community defines the right of peoples to choose.

In the 21st Century the people in a referendum must agree every constitutional treaty.

An honest Europe cannot be built when politicians are allowed to fool the people in constitutional arrangements made in secret and without public assent.

David Heilbron Price

Eurdemocracy

25/XII/19