Trump's Steel challenge exposes EU as "bent and crooked"

What is the greatest danger to European democracy today?
We see Italy voting in a potent mix of anti-Brussels parties, hostile to the euro. We see the UK – that calls itself the Mother of Parliaments – wanting to leave the EU. We see central and eastern European countries in revolt at the ill-thought out migration policies. We see Brussels wanting to take action against Poland for not respecting judicial independence and submitting to the EU. In Germany the traditional governmental parties of the CDU/CSU and then Socialists received record low and declining support at the polls in the face of those who want a real alternative.
None of these are the real problem. They are the symptoms of a wider malaise.
Brussels is sick.
Who is able to diagnose it? Dr Schuman. That is, Robert Schuman D Jur, the architect of today’s developing democracy. This year is the 70th anniversary of the proposal of Schuman’s first government in France on 24 July 1948 to create a European Assembly and a Customs Union. It is the anniversary that Brussels is not celebrating. That should tell us something is awry. The sickness is well advanced.
What did Schuman say was the greatest danger for Europe’s democratic institutions? What did he write in his book, Pour l’Europe (For Europe)?
What is the disease?
Ankylosis.

“Administrative ankylosis is the primary danger that threatens our supranational services,” he wrote p146.

Ankylosis: from Greek meaning bent or crooked. Stiffness of the joint due to abnormal adhesion and rigidity of the bones of the joints which may be the result of injury or disease.
Is there a clear example of this dangerous crookedness to democracy in Europe?
Who is the most powerful person in the European Union? Many people would say the president of the European Commission. The Commission alone has the legal authority to make proposals for European laws and regulations. That exclusivity is there for a very good reason. The treaties stipulate that the Commission is the Honest Broker for Europe, a totally impartial adjudicator and a fair, pragmatic judge authorized by the States to solve their disputes, analyze their real peaceful interests and direct their attention to challenges of a common future. The treaties say the position of Commissioner is open to any honest, independent European citizen, not just this new, self-appointed Politburo.
But what if the Commission – the Conscience of Europe and guardian of public interests – is taken over by biased, partisan groups? That is the first step setting Europe on a disastrous path of contention and dissension. That is what we are witnessing now from UK in the West to Greece in the East, from the North to Italy in the South. The Commission has been captured by political party, mainly the European People’s Party (EPP) but working in conjunction with other parties to share the spoil. They cut deals that benefit the new Politburo against many sections of the public, who are then named “nationalists”, “populists,” “racists” or some sort of defamatory label.
First let us deal with what is bent. The fraudulent Spitzenkandidaten system hoisted Jean-Claude Juncker into office, after being unseated as prime minister of Luxembourg. According to the spirit and letter of the Treaties, it was a wrong move.
An active politician as president of the Commission is equivalent to an alcoholic in charge of a Teetotal Society asking members to deposit their drinks with him. He also has to be willingly blind to ignore the oath of office that he swears before the European Court of Justice, an oath more severe in its demands for impartiality and punctilious than the judges themselves. He is supposed to be the just Arbitrator of national interests and also of the interests of entrepreneurs, workers and consumers across Europe.
Today we have the spectacle of how the Commission reacts to the announcement of President Trump that he will restrict imports of steel and aluminium from Europe. What is the reaction of president Juncker?
He had a private meeting with Lakshmi Mittal, the chief of ArcelorMittal, by far the largest steel producer in the world. Where is this enterprise headquartered? Luxembourg , the home of Mr Juncker. Steel affects many sectors. Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström says the coming steel crisis will be a “serious blow for workers”.
Were the representatives of workers present at the meeting? No.
Were the representatives of steel consumers present at the meeting with Juncker and Mittal? No.
This is even more ominous as Mittal’s firm has been convicted multiple times of cartel activity, economic fraud. For two decades it ripped off the consumer in the “Club Zurich” or “Club Europe” together with 16 other steel producers. At least 36 companies were involved in 550 cartel meetings. In 2011 it was fined hundreds of millions of euros by the EU.
At the time the Commission was in shock.

“It is amazing how such a significant number of companies abused nearly the entire European construction market for such a long time and for such a vital product. This was almost as if they were acting in a planned economy, ” said Joaquín Almunia, Commission Vice-President in charge of Competition, adding: “the Commission will have no sympathy for cartelists; recidivists will be fined more and inability-to-pay claims will be accepted only when it is clear the fine would send a company into bankruptcy, which is rare even in the current difficult times”.

So what on earth is the Commission President doing compromising the integrity and reputation of the Commission? How can the Commission bring in proposals to satisfy all European citizens and associations? Such private meetings with convicted cartel fraudsters would not be permitted under the European Coal and Steel Community. (The politicians saw that the Treaty of Paris was not renewed in 2002.)
The treaties provide that all such economic discussions should be in public in a consultative Committee called the Economic and Social Committee, EESC.
Was the EESC called? No. (The EESC has never been properly elected as the Treaties allow in its entire existence.)
It has become impossible for the “political Commission” any longer to have the trust of the people of Europe.
The Commission has no shame at this collusion with cartels. Every week, the Commission publishes a listing of several hundred meetings of Commissioners with lobbyists, national, foreign, industrial, financial, political, and heads of governments.
What goes on in these meetings? No one knows. The doors are shut. No reports are provided, except perhaps stating that the participants are “old friends”.
Do 500 million Europeans trust such “friends”?

Debate21: How Europe's "Top Politicians" are creating a Manifest Crisis of Democracy

Europe today is in a Manifest Crisis of Democracy. That term — Manifest Crisis — relates to an article in the treaty founding Europe’s first supranational Community. Without the will and the consent of the people, nothing lasting can be achieved. Yet the public will is manifesting itself more and more powerfully against the arrogant attitude of the self-appointed ‘Top Politicians’. These Top Pols, a modern Politburo, think they know better than Robert Schuman who patiently and wisely created Europe’s democracy system. Their opinions and too often their corrupt practices ‘top’ the rightful voice of the public.

Do they know how Schuman brought Europe’s first real peace in 2000 years? If so can they bring peace to other regions like the Near East?

Do they have any memory of their history, Europe’s astounding recent history? On 18 April 1951 — 65 years ago — leaders of Western Europe signed the Great Charter of Democracy. This document, that Robert Schuman compared to the Magna Carta of 1215 in Britain, encapsulates the foundational principal of public assent to government, European democracy. Schuman called it the Charter of the Community (Pour l’Europe, p146).

General de Gaulle, who was not known for his humility, took power in France a few years later. He despised the party political system, ‘the regime of parties‘. He was also openly hostile to the Community idea. He sought by all means to destroy it and replace it by his personal autocracy. Pro-European and pro-democratic ministers resigned from his government. The Charter was buried in the archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for six decades. At the request of the Schuman Project the Charter was sought out of its Gaullist burial place. It was again reproduced and published.




In 1951 Western Europe was under threat by the USSR. In occupied Central and Eastern Europe, it had created a Bloc of fraudulent ‘People’s Democracies’ where people regularly voted and even held referendums. But it was just a veneer. The system was controlled by the Communist Party’s Politburo — sometimes using the names of Christian Democrats, Liberals and Socialists as front organizations.

How could the West demonstrate it was committed to real democracy? That is what the Charter defined. It is a principle that will one day or other be tested in the European court of Justice. The West’s fraudulent democrats today had better beware.
The Charter says:

This Europe is open to all European countries that are able to choose freely for themselves. We sincerely hope that other countries will join us in our common endeavour.

The same day the Charter of the Community was proclaimed, the six leaders of France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries also signed into force the Treaty of Paris. It created the democratic principles of the Community. It is defined with FIVE democratic institutions. They cover

• individual democracy and freedom,
• organizational freedom and democracy and
• freedom of the national State and its government within in a supranational Community
• the democratic rule of law and most important of all,
• unfettered Freedom of Conscience.

To indicate how these principles should work experimentally on a restricted scale in one sector, the leaders created a European Coal and Steel Community.

1. The individual was represented democratically in an Assembly, later a Parliament.
2. Freedom of association was represented in the Consultative Committee with its three representative sections, workers, enterprises and consumers.
3. Freedom of States was represented in the Council of Ministers.
4. The Rule of Law was institutionalized in the Court of Justice.
5. The concept and practice of Freedom of Conscience was institutionalized in the High Authority (later the European Commission). Its members were not allowed to represent their national States. They could not adhere to any political party or other interest group. They were experienced in the sectors but they could not have links or interests in the coal and steel industries. Nor could they, after leaving office, assume any position whether paid or not for three years. Their independence and conscience helped define the meaning of supranational in article 9 of the treaty.

The Community had as its declared goals:

• Create a new entity called Europe
• bring lasting peace to Europe after 2000 years of continuous war,
• make war ‘materially impossible‘,
• unify true democracies of the Continent based on supranational principles, leading to World Peace,
• end the East-West division of Europe,
• create a Single Market in the Community,
• create monetary unity based on supranational principles.

The European Coal and Steel Community was highly successful in its democratic goals. Instead of the war that most commentators expected, Europe expanded on an unprecedented wave of prosperity and peace. Additional Communities were created in the fields of a customs union (Common Market) and a nuclear energy and non-proliferation Community (Euratom).

What did the Gaullist and neo-Gaullist politicians do? As soon as possible after the fifty year trial period of the European Coal and Steel Treaty they refused to renew it for a further period. They did not ask the public. They called for no referendum. The Community had protected the coal and steel industries through periods of boom and also crisis. Its budget amounting to a one percent tax on production was carefully monitored both by those who supplied it and those like the workers and consumers who benefited. There was no need for a Court of Auditors. Workers in these industries were guaranteed employment. When inevitably mines were closed as unproductive, the miners were re-trained for new industries. There was no cost to the national budgets.
Coal mines and steel-makers benefited also from a greatly expanded marketplace. Cartels were forbidden and dismantled. The industries were thus able to specialize and innovate. When there is over-supply in the steel industry the Community could declare a ‘Manifest Crisis‘ to deal with its causes on a Europe-wide basis.
After 2002 what happened? Prices of steels rose inexplicably, somewhat like a phantom cartel was acting. There was no longer supranational consumer control on the industries. Then businesses got into trouble. Foreign buyers took over many industries.

Today Europe is in a manifest crisis not only of its steel industries but also its democracy.
Steel is suffering because of Chinese overproduction. Speaking at a Politico event on 18 April, French Minister of the Economy, Emmanuel Macron, said that the USA rapidly imposed 300 percent tariffs to protect its industries while nowadays it takes nine months for the EU to react. The Chinese overproduction is equivalent to two years of steel production in Europe.

It is not only steel that is in surfeit. Politicians have created treaties galore, each abandoning the fundamental principles of targeted supranational communities and public consent of governments, individuals and organized civil society. The arrogant attitude of ‘We know best’ is ever more blatant and manifest.

When Denmark voted against the Maastricht treaty in 1992, the Top Pols, instead of binning the treaty as it broke both supranational principles and democratic assent, tried to ‘fix’ it. Sure, the Danes under pressure voted later in favour, but the other countries had no opportunity to say whether they too agreed with these later amendments. That is not a conscientious democracy. Having got away with this fiddle, the Top Pols tried other ploys. They amended treaties in parliaments. There they could force self-serving measures through using their party parliamentarians as voting fodder. The public was not able to participate or protest.
They then created a European currency based on flawed principles of economics. When the European Court of Justice reprimanded France and Germany for ignoring their own rules, the European Council thumbed their nose at the Court.

In other cases like the Fiscal Pact the Top Pols of the Council decided they would grant themselves complete immunity from legal action in Court. They decided repeatedly to defy the Ombudsman’s request to reveal documents about its mechanisms.

Then of course there was the ridiculous and illegal Constitutional Treaty. The turgid and undemocratic system granting politicians further unfettered powers was roundly rejected both by the French and more emphatically by the Dutch. Other countries such as the United Kingdom who were about to hold a referendum were told they would not be allowed to. (But they passed it by a TopPol ruse!)

So was the treaty as dead as door nail? Not on your life! The lookalike Lisbon Treaty is the same text. It shed only the articles on the twelve-star flag and the European anthem, (Hadn’t you noticed the EU has obeyed and banned the flag?).

Drapeaux européens devant le Berlaymont

To become the Lisbon Treaty the whole of the Constitutional Treaty was written into the existing treaties. How? As a long list of amendments to their articles! What a fraud! Don’t the politicians have any shame?

So what about a people’s referendum on the Lisbon Treaty for the public to confirm they had changed their mind and now agreed to what they previously rejected wholeheartedly? No chance! The book-length list of meaningless amendments was voted by force through national and even the European parliaments. Some parliaments had not even read the amendments. Nowhere was an official text of the whole treaty produced before voting. That would make the fraud totally manifest!

Nothing could be more designed to destroy public confidence and trust. How did the French — those great revolutionary democrats — deal with this tricky fraud? Did their political leaders call for a second referendum? Of course not. They merely changed the Constitution so they would not have to have one! What sauce! It is not surprising that nearly every country now has ever-growing “anti-Europe” skeptic parties.They may soon grab the levers of power in Brussels.

So what does M. Macron think about this deceit? Was it a good idea not to take the first referendum NON into account and then purposefully prevent the French people from having a voice on it again?
“It was a mistake,” he told me.

Europe won’t get much further out of its manifest crisis until a majority of politicians also have the humility to say: “It was a mistake!” and mean it. It would be useful for the European institutions to start remembering to celebrate the anniversaries of the signing of Europe’s founding democratic treaty.

Circus6: OOPS! The EU slept through Einstein's 'Wake Up Call to Europeans'!

All this year EU’s Commission’s headquarters Berlaymont building has been sporting a hypocritical reminder to all Europeans to remember the lessons of World War One. This year commemorates its centenary. The huge banner with WW1 soldiers and the poppies over their graves covers all 13 stories on the side wall of the Berlaymont facing the Robert Schuman Roundabout.
Today’s peace-enhancing Europe rose out of the cauldron of war. Every generation since before Roman times knew war. Then lasting peace came to Europe based on the direct application of Judeo-Christian principles.  Why is it now under attack by jihadis?
With all the millions of euros spent on the WW1 commemorations, why does the European Commission, the 'Guardian of the letter and spirit of the Treaties,' not want to inform citizens about the only proven peace process that ended millennia of perpetual wars?
The Commission ignored their own banner message. They ignored the message of Einstein and others for which the Commission had been given full documentation. They ignored the commemoration that some small political parties in the European Parliament had given recognizing the Einstein-Nicolai Manifesto, a balm in Europe’s troubled and bloody history.
The main characteristics of the European Community were first announced during and even before WW1. A hundred years ago this month, it took courage for Albert Einstein, renowned physicist of Relativity and the Quantum, and his colleagues to publish their historic Manifesto. They then delineated the main features of what became the EU’s founding entity: the European Community, initially only in the coal and steel sector. Coal was then the main energy source as OIL is today.  Steel was vital for the armaments industries.

• a politically new system called a Community
• a system based on democracies and international democratic law
• a totally new concept called supranationalism, different from federalism and confederalism,
• an anti-cartel system that stopped the abuse of global cartels and a European arms race.

In mid-October 1914, Albert Einstein and his colleagues launched a powerful and sustained attack on self-serving global cartels. In his view and that of the co-signatories of the ‘Wake Up Call to Europeans,’ (Aufruf an die Europäer) global cartels were a major factor in the Arms Race before the world war. Patriots, citizens and consumers were exploited by both national and international cartels. Some examples:
* A paper company, Harvey Steel, was formed where Germany's Krupp, France's Schneider, Britain's Armstrong, Vickers and USA's Bethlehem Steel and Carnegie Steel exchanged patents on steel armour and armour-piercing munitions to bolster trade and profits. Exploiting the gullibility of nationalistic politicians, they set one country against another. Krupp called it Schutz- and Trutzwaffen schaukeln, his defensive and offensive seesaw system to fire the Arms Race.
*German industrialists like Krupp supplied arms to Germany’s future enemies, gained a French Legion d’Honneur and during the war exported basic metals to France via neutral countries.
* British firms Vickers, Brown and Armstrong sold arms and mines to the Turks that slaughtered British and Anzac troops at Gallipoli.
* ‘Industrial corporations formed and merged into vast international combines whose prosperity depended on exploiting the nationalist sentiments in different countries.’    The words are those of Henri de la Fontaine (Nobel Peace Prize, 1913). He went on to say: ‘the industries of iron, steel, copper and nickel, coal, petroleum and oils, chemical products (gas, explosives, gunpowder) and other materials as well as the manufacture of arms themselves form vast networks that encompass the entire planet.’ (The Bloody International of Armaments by Otto Lehmann-Russbüldt).
Einstein and the future founder of the European Union, Robert Schuman, were among a small number of activists who not only saw the global dangers but proposed solutions to stop wars. The race was on to create an iron and steel cartel that would dominate the European Continent. Victory of either side was likely to create conditions for another world war. So it was. But not a third.
By mid-October 1914 the German invasion of Belgium had made world war inevitable. What possible effect could Einstein’s voice have denouncing German and international cartels? Even then they manipulated much of the world economy.
A few weeks earlier, 93 eminent university professors launched their ‘Appeal to the Civilized World’ maintaining that Germany was perfectly right in going to war to safeguard its culture. It denied any atrocities occurred in Belgium. Soon 4000 members of the German intelligentsia had signed this Appeal. That represented the quasi-totality of German professors in support for war.
The ‘Wake-up Call to Europeans’ was quite different. The petition conceived by Einstein and Georg-Friedrich Nicolai (né Lewinstein, Berlin professor of physiology who had trained with Pavlov) was only signed by two others: Astronomy professor Wilhelm Foerster who headed Germany’s Standards Bureau, and Otto Buek, a philosopher of science. However the ‘Wake-up Call to Europeans’ was more far-sighted. Its aim was to ensure Europe would preserve its supranational values in a Community after the war. They already saw the main danger:  whoever won, the victor powers might sow the seeds for another world war for coming generations.
Undeterred, the group started a larger organization based on what they called ‘supranational solidarity.’ It was to tackle the great cause of the world war. They called it the Union for New Patriotism (Bund Neues Vaterland, BNV). It drew support from intellectuals around Europe. It did not blame war on the shooting of an Austrian grand-duke in Serbia. Nor was their focus on an ‘accidental’ war brought about by military treaties.
In June 1915 the BNV published a petition and sent it to the Reich Chancellor and all members of the German parliament, the Reichstag. It refuted Germany’s secret War Aims, by then known through the leaked Confidential Memo made by six national economic and industrial cartels. On 9 September 1914 Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg set these aims as:  the permanent dismantlement of fortresses in France and the cession of ‘the Briey basin whose iron ore was necessary for our heavy industry’. Luxembourg and Belgium were to become vassal States.
The cartels also demanded the annexation of ‘the iron ore basin of Briey’ a small French town of 2500 population just across the frontier of German-occupied Lorraine. Why Briey?
The Bund Neues Vaterland ‘opposed most energetically the demands of the petition and asked the Chancellor to take necessary measures against these manoeuvres so as to leave no doubt and to say clearly that the imperial Government does not approve the war aims that they have formulated. The annexation plans are motivated by the need to replenish supplies during a future war. An essential element to guarantee peace in future must be found in the development of international law. ‘
New forms of law, ‘supranational’ law, also preoccupied the son of a French Lorraine soldier who in 1870 defended French Lorraine against ‘Prussians’ at the siege of Thionville. Robert Schuman was a student at Berlin Humboldt University in 1905-6. Half a century later in 1950 Schuman shocked the world when he announced the creation of a new form of grouping of States: the European Community of Coal and Steel. It was based on what he defined as ‘supranational law’. One key characteristic was that it provided the world’s first international system to control cartels.
Schuman was born in Luxembourg where his father, Jean-Pierre, lived in self-imposed exile. He did not want to live under German occupation in Lorraine. Awarded most of the prizes in his final class at Luxembourg high school in 1903, Robert Schuman then made a surprising decision. He had the choice of universities across France, Switzerland and Belgium. Instead he crossed into occupied Loraine. At the Metz High School he crammed for the German university entrance certificate, the Abitur. He had to learn five years of some classes in just eight months. Why? His answer can be found in an later interview on Radio Luxembourg:
‘It is not by chance that the idea of a Community of steel, iron and coal came to a Luxembourg boy whose parents have experienced what it is to have war.’ Thionville was called France’s Steel City. Luxembourg’s economy also depended on its own vibrant steel industry, trading inside the German customs union. The Schuman family house lay on the frontier, midway between Thionville and Luxembourg city, and only a few kilometres from the newly discovered rich, iron ore basin of Briey.
In 1910 Robert Schuman received his doctorate of Law with high honours from German universities. The next year found him as deputy head of the German delegation to a conference in Leuven, Belgium, organized by Nobel Peace Laureate and Prime Minister Auguste Beernaert. Its theme?  International Peace through Law based on Christian principles.
Before WW1, Schuman thus liaised between Francophone groups and German societies who were then less open to the concept of international law.
What of the cartel problem before the outbreak of world war? In 1913 three-quarters of German iron ore came from Lorraine conquered in the 1871 Franco-Prussian war.  This rose to 80 percent during the war. ‘If iron ore production in Lorraine is interrupted,’ the cartels’ Memo warned, ‘the war to all practical purposes would be lost.’ France regained Lorraine after the war. Schuman became French deputy for Thionville. In the Second World War, Lorraine was again absorbed into Germany.
Then Schuman, twice Prime Minister of France, and long-time Foreign Minister was able to bring in a profound political strategy of reconciliation. He created a supranational Community of Coal and Steel among democracies. The ‘Wake-up Call to Europeans’ of a century ago provided a core document for today’s European Union.
Europeans are now living in the longest continual period of peace in more than two thousand years.  With incessant globalization, world population four times that of 1914, increased demand for strategic materials, and overt and covert cartels in strategic sectors including energy, democracies need to be forever vigilant.