'A moment of joy' said Belgian Foreign Minister Vanackere for the European Council of Ministers. 'A day of celebration,' said Icelandic Foreign Minister Össur Skarphéðinsson, With the meeting of the Accession Conference on 27 July 2010, Iceland has now embarked on the route to full membership of the European Union. This followed the decision of heads of government in the European Council on 17 June to open accessions.
High on the list of crucial topics for negotiations are Fish and Finance. For generations Icelanders have had a policy of high inflation, rivalling the South Americans, and then off-loading the problem with devaluations. Then they came up against the euro and a big crunch. It is clear both the Icelanders and other Europeans are being hurt by such irresponsibility. The euro is held together by a Stability and Growth Pact, which in theory at least, outlaws such abuse. The Icelanders were free of this self-imposed constraint. They inflated their financial sector to such an extent the debt of three banks amounted to more than six times the country's GDP.
In 1958 Robert Schuman wrote: 'It is an incontestable truth that a politically free Europe cannot prosper or even survive unless it succeeds in enlarging its base of activities, imposing a discipline that is acceptable to all and having a consciousness of the coherence and interplay of European interests.' (Notre Europe, p118.) Some of those threats may have changed or have disappeared but more and more Europe is faced with even graver global problems today.
Fish is another matter. The EU politicians are keen on fishing with little restraint. The politicians always overrule the scientific reports on the estimated fish stocks. On which side do they overrule the scientists, by being conservative or exploitative? Don't ask. Remember fish do not have votes. The Icelanders do not want the EU to wipe out fish stocks in their waters. Their future depends on it.
What is the answer? Should the EU make the rules, with its present agreements, known significantly by the French word as the Acquis? Or should the Icelanders expand their conservation system to the EU? The Icelanders admit that their system is not perfect but believe it is far superior to vacuuming the oceans of the last fish.
Who should rule? EU or Iceland? The answer as everyone knows in their heart is that the fish should rule. Europeans must be wise guardians of their fish. If we wipe out the fish no one will gain. We will all be left without a source of food. The first rule must be sustainability. What about the EU Acquis?
Why do politicians use a special term like Acquis? Why not translate it? And yes, it does sound like a selfish concept. It should be remembered that the Acquis is a Gaullist principle. It has nothing to do with a Community of democratic nations. The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) was implemented by Gaullists, such as Maurice Couve de Murville, (earlier de Gaulle's foreign minister and prime minister) just before three maritime nations joined: Denmark, United Kingdom and Ireland. Its basic feature was to stitch up the policy before enlargement. Negotiations were then dominated by Couve who tried to squeeze the most concessions out of the three candidates -- or stop them joining at all.
My pocket dictionary says Acquis means attainment. That English word is avoided. Why? The question would come up as to what is to be attained. What did the Gaullists and selfish nationalists want to attain or rather retain? They did not want to attain a higher form of democracy. They wanted to attain their special advantages that de Gaulle had attained by blackmail. Examples of this are many but we could point to the Wine Lakes, the Meat Mountains and the Common Fisheries Policy. For de Gaulle, the Acquis of having other Europeans subsidize his voters through the CAP was a good deal. This Acquis is a childish attitude to a Community policy: 'I want to keep my toys. And I want some of yours too!' It is the opposite of what a real Community is about -- a means to help all members flourish and attain their potential to contribute to the whole.
It was ‘a negotiation like other negotiations’, Couve said. Schuman said the Community should be based on revolutionary principles unlike any of the negotiations in history. He said this at the opening of the first intergovernmental conference.
Should the original Community of the Six, and France especially, have had the final say? Is it a matter of other States, like Denmark, Ireland and Britain, joining a club? That is a misunderstanding -- a deliberate misunderstanding by the Gaullists -- of what a Community is about. The Gaullist CAP is being revised — at last. There is no reason that the same should not be done for the CFP. A Community is not a selfish, inward-looking club but a free asociation trying to achieve the highest moral values of European civilisation. The aim is to serve each other as best they can, and in the world others who are not so privileged.
If Community principles are to be applied the Fisheries Council should be open to the public and the press. How can Europeans have a consciousness of each other's problems if Ministers debate behind closed doors and cut deals. Are they ashamed of what they say in private? The original treaties give the ministers no more privileges for such secrecy than they do to the European Parliament or the other institutions. They hold their debates in public.
The Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions should have their full part in the decisions. They represent organized Civil Society. Legislative consultation is required from those who are consumers of fish, those who work in the fish industry and those who are ecologists and conservationists. In other words those who worry about their children and our common future. Everyone who has an interest needs to have their say in a supranational democracy.
According to Robert Schuman, when a new Member State joined the whole policy should be reconsidered. He used the word 'reconstituted'. Why? Because all the aspects of the common assets and the common problems associated with them have changed. It was up to all the new Member States to create a policy that fitted the new situation. Anything else treats the new Member State as a second class entity. The whole idea of the Community was not to create an exclusive club where others had to beg to join. The idea of the Community was to create the means where all nations could unite under jointly agreed rules that had the highest moral content. That is why the founding principle of the Community Charter is that people and States should be 'free to choose'.
The idea of Gaullists and nationalists was that everybody should agree that Charles de Gaulle or some other nationalist knew best. Wisdom comes from the counsel of many.
Should the Icelanders insist on the real application of the Acquis? Yes. It is about attaining a purer, better form of democracy. They should insist on dropping the present CFP and CAP. The Icelanders with a long democratic tradition should insist on attaining the democracy that the Gaullists and many other nationalists refused to implement. For example, the Icelanders should insist that the elections to the European Parliament are, as the treaties insist, conducted under a single electoral statute and are held at one time across the whole of the Community. Otherwise they will have some Europeans in Iceland who have possibly TWELVE votes to the Icelanders' one.
The oligarchy of the main political party machines has had a crushing effect on European democracy with ever-declining voter support and lack of public trust. There are many other matters of democracy and fairness that the governments and politicians have refused to apply.
Iceland could take the EU further on the road to democracy. Will the EU now be extended geographically further to the West than ever before? The answer is No. I am not talking about the Portuguese Azores where the island of Florus is far to the west of Iceland. The EU already extends much further West.
The legal profile of the EU also extends to French Guyane to the north of Brazil. It lies within the boundaries of the EU because it is an internal Département of France. The EU as a supranational union has global boundaries. It also has a global vocation, worthy of the globalist Vikings
29 July, 2010
13 July, 2010
Avalanche3 Is the assault on the Euro one 'unintended consequence' of the US toxicity bailout?
Over a year ago, a commentary on this page warned about
Since then, some Europe governments and the euro have been under intense pressure. Some speak of the break-up of the euro, though this seems too often to come from over-hopeful speculators. It is rather like a purchaser of apples in the market who asks for a price reduction on the basis that he imagines one apple looks a little over-ripe. One should always distinguish between impartial analysts and greedy speculators whose wish-fulfillment brings massive rewards.
How has the trans-Atlantic mechanism been working? When in the 1970s under President Richard Nixon, the US government unleashed the Federal Reserve printing press, a largely divided, weak Europe got the back-wash. The Community of Six each with their own currency could only complain separately at the dollar inflation. Nixon’s Treasury Secretary John Connally responded famously: ‘It is our currency, but your problem.’ Europe created the Euro to deal with their problem.
The US dollar was long considered the world currency and the USA the world banker. That is why Europeans should keep a close watch on what is happening and how the debt drama will affect them.
Recently the US administrations tried to replace 'toxic' assets of derivatives and sub-prime loans with newly-minted dollars from the Fed. As a consequence, the federal deficit has now risen more quickly than expected, touching 9.9 per cent of GDP already, according to the US Government Accountability Office. That is the largest since 1945. The Public debt-to-GDP ratio could reach and exceed the highest historical levels of 109 per cent by 2020. That is two years earlier than previous GAO estimates.
The federal government is staring at 'an unsustainable growth in debt.' The GAO had already warned in 2007 that this could 'spiral out of control.' Previous projections by the GAO indicated that debt-to-GDP ratio would rise from 60 percent to 'only' 90 percent by 2020. The debt-to-GDP ratios would double by 2040 and double them again by 2060, reaching 600 percent by 2080. This crisis may be underestimated. Without effective remedial action, the USA could reach a debt-to-GDP level of 200 per cent by 2030.
Toxic is merely a polite way of saying that a dishonest or fraudulent practice has been exposed. However, the new flood of dollars to help wash out fraudulent assets in the US economy is already having a major effect abroad. As the commentary here recalled such action has known deleterious effects on the European economy. More than two thirds of US dollars are held outside the US. When the Federal Reserve boosted its money supply it surged onto the external markets. It was looking for solid, non-toxic assets to avoid the same trap again. This wash of dollars has a major tsunami effect on what previously appeared as stable markets.
That's when the PIGs, the suspect Mediterranean economies, came under extra scrutiny. Previously, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain had proudly boasted of their safe monetary credentials as euro-members. Why did they then become less secure? Statistical blemishes had previously been forgiven by some indulgent politicians in other euro-states. Now the search is on for what is real, honest, quality money.
Consider a market trader selling apples. He has 27 apples to sell each week. The customers have 27 dollars with which to buy their fruit. The trader sets up a notice: 'A dollar an apple'. They are available on a first come first served basis.
All of a sudden the buying group now have 80 dollars credit for apples. What happens? The trader immediately sets up several notices 'Top quality apples now only 5 dollars an apple'. Another says: 'Excellent quality apples only 4 dollars an apple'. 'Good quality apples for 3 dollars.' And so on.
The Fed's money surge has an effect of differentiating the quality by expanding the price fork. This price fork accentuation was blunted before the money surge. It also sharpens the analytical skills of the potential purchaser (looking for profits). The surge no longer respects governmental quality labels on the apples but the buyer makes his own judgement. Why shouldn't he? The US administrations, specifically the party machines, were complicit fraudsters. Honest efforts in Congress to correct the looming disaster failed. Political oligarchies who should not be meddling refused to change their crony capitalism. The crisis deepened. Politics are discredited on both sides of the Atlantic. It is equally of no use for the apple trader to say that 'All my apples come from the top quality eurozone. Each is worth ten dollars.' Some of the European governments do run a clean shop. Others supported by party cartels are known to be playing tricks.
The discriminating buyer sees through that con. Why spend extra money on an apparently rotten apple (where politicians have a finger on the scales) just because it has a eurozone label? He will avoid it or expect the seller to change the category and price. Despite the eurozone label, the purchaser can discern perfectly well for himself what is a quality product and what is corrupt practice. Quality is not necessarily synonymous with something that has a government label or has the apparent approval of government. Why? because the label sometimes means that politicians and others are meddling where they should not be present. Nor are statistics necessarily reliable when they have the stamp of an international accountancy firm. Some do not smell too fresh. Reputations have to be earned.
We can compare the concept of quality apples to supranational values. These are the Charter principles on which the European Community was founded. They are based on your neighbour's evaluation of your actions. Honest money is one example.
Governments are not ignorant of honest money and honest accounting. Supranational values indicate that accepting bribes from the rich so they do not pay taxes is bad economics. Forcing the poor to take on the extra burden is also recognized as an abuse according to such supranational values. Accountants should know when the books are in order. They should be firm to resist any bribery or twisting of arms to make them give approval to accounts that are falsified.
In the early post-war period most western European countries had huge debts, high inflation and not too many scruples. They needed to reconstruct and also to outdo their neighbours. They engaged in a game of competitive devaluations and beggar my neighbour policies.
That started to change in 1950 with the creation of the European Community, (9 May 1950) and the European Payments Union, created on 16 September 1950. Robert Schuman, who had been one of the most active Finance Ministers, commended Switzerland for having a solid currency and sound values.
'The participation of a country with a solid currency, like Switzerland, encouraged the expansion of the volumes of trade and commerce by providing sound money in the circuits of multilateral purchases. Everyone gained from this, without risks or sacrifices.' (Pour l'Europe, p130).
For Schuman Switzerland was a model for Europe. It was not only a community of peoples and cantons based on geography but a community based on shared values and traditions. It had the inspiration, self-discipline and leadership (that is many people of good character) who acted in the long-term interest. Such achievements do not come from egotistical autocrats -- something that the Swiss opposed over the centuries. To create a European Community with sound money requires that all governments, people and associations have self-discipline or if not at least have the will to submit themselves freely to community supranational values. Good money is based on mutual trust.
In community economics supranational values also clarify that the concept of 'Beggar my neighbour' is no longer acceptable. We are all each other's neighbour. In a globalised world we are all connected more and more. The unforeseen consequences of bad practice in one country reverberate worldwide.
Successive US governments set themselves on the same toxic road as Enron. This energy firm tried to hide its bad debts in off-shore companies. The US did the same thing when it decreed that the poor should have access to mortgages they could not conceivably repay. The crucial question was where to hide the debts. This was a political decision, not an economic one. The politicians calculated that those who benefited from these crooked property loans would surely vote for them. They could also cream off some of the takings for party funds. Successive US administrations appointed pliable politicians to the bodies to enforce this unrealistic policy in the large mortgage firms.
Politicians had the misconceived idea that that were on a higher plane or smarter than supranational values. Practically the whole American population went along with the scam. Why? Because they all thought they would gain something. The bubble felt fine while it was expanding. The property sector boomed. Businesses also expanded. Yet it defied logic. It was all patently false, starting with the giveaway term 'subprime loans'. Just about everybody was on the take. If the US public gave it some honest reflection to it, they knew that all this was a scam. The honest few said so. The politicians gained most of all. Their party coffers were filled from the 'crony capitalism.'
Those mortgage-policy sellers who visited people and sold them deals knew there was little chance of recuperating the house-loan. It was a fairy tale. The house-buyers if they took any advice realised they really could not pay to the mortgage fairy. Others, whether businesses or individuals, profited indirectly from the property bubble. They had no reason, they said, to object. And above all the executives at the top and the politicians who knew all the figures were well aware that it was fraudulent. Who was kidding whom?
When the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage firms crashed out, as was inevitable, the politicians in Washington provided a means to bail them out. How? Out of public money. Who would pay the final bill if nearly the whole population was stealing from each other? They stole again via the Fed from the innocent, the voteless and speechless, the future generations, some yet unborn. And the foreigner.
This nasty little bit of political corruption is not and cannot remain local. The neighbours across the Atlantic are also affected. Using public money to save political cronies in the USA now affects the whole world, and Europe in particular. This avalanche washed over into Europe.
Europe's problems are correctable. Some Europeans had already learned their lessons: others are still learning. Competitive devaluations by accessing the monetary printing press bring no lasting solution.
Europeans can act wisely. They have the freedom to choose how to correct their problems. So have the Americans.
The secondary effect of the Obama avalanche is to test and prove whether the European governments are up to their job as honest guardians of the public good. Compare this to how some Mediterranean countries who for several decades have lacked the courage to set their house in order and who persistently apply bent practice have been differentiated recently.
Europe is left with a clear choice. The Obama avalanche has contributed to the clarity. Europe can clean up its house or it can continue the old corrupt economics.
This sad tale is not the only or even the main cause of Europe's monetary woes. It is hoped that we will return to this in the future.
'the result of President Barack Hussein Obama’s policy of pouring some 4.5 Trillion dollars into the US system. The aim is to buy out toxic assets created by toxic financiers and decades of toxic government policy.
The problem is that it is likely to have major unintended consequences for Europe. It is not clear whether the US administration has fully considered the non-US consequences … or even cares.
That may sound harsh. But much of the origin of the crisis dates from this persistent Beggar my neighbour attitude. In fact the origin of the euro derives from wishing to avoid being taken for a ride by careless and self-serving US administrations'
Since then, some Europe governments and the euro have been under intense pressure. Some speak of the break-up of the euro, though this seems too often to come from over-hopeful speculators. It is rather like a purchaser of apples in the market who asks for a price reduction on the basis that he imagines one apple looks a little over-ripe. One should always distinguish between impartial analysts and greedy speculators whose wish-fulfillment brings massive rewards.
How has the trans-Atlantic mechanism been working? When in the 1970s under President Richard Nixon, the US government unleashed the Federal Reserve printing press, a largely divided, weak Europe got the back-wash. The Community of Six each with their own currency could only complain separately at the dollar inflation. Nixon’s Treasury Secretary John Connally responded famously: ‘It is our currency, but your problem.’ Europe created the Euro to deal with their problem.
The US dollar was long considered the world currency and the USA the world banker. That is why Europeans should keep a close watch on what is happening and how the debt drama will affect them.
Recently the US administrations tried to replace 'toxic' assets of derivatives and sub-prime loans with newly-minted dollars from the Fed. As a consequence, the federal deficit has now risen more quickly than expected, touching 9.9 per cent of GDP already, according to the US Government Accountability Office. That is the largest since 1945. The Public debt-to-GDP ratio could reach and exceed the highest historical levels of 109 per cent by 2020. That is two years earlier than previous GAO estimates.
The federal government is staring at 'an unsustainable growth in debt.' The GAO had already warned in 2007 that this could 'spiral out of control.' Previous projections by the GAO indicated that debt-to-GDP ratio would rise from 60 percent to 'only' 90 percent by 2020. The debt-to-GDP ratios would double by 2040 and double them again by 2060, reaching 600 percent by 2080. This crisis may be underestimated. Without effective remedial action, the USA could reach a debt-to-GDP level of 200 per cent by 2030.
Toxic is merely a polite way of saying that a dishonest or fraudulent practice has been exposed. However, the new flood of dollars to help wash out fraudulent assets in the US economy is already having a major effect abroad. As the commentary here recalled such action has known deleterious effects on the European economy. More than two thirds of US dollars are held outside the US. When the Federal Reserve boosted its money supply it surged onto the external markets. It was looking for solid, non-toxic assets to avoid the same trap again. This wash of dollars has a major tsunami effect on what previously appeared as stable markets.
That's when the PIGs, the suspect Mediterranean economies, came under extra scrutiny. Previously, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain had proudly boasted of their safe monetary credentials as euro-members. Why did they then become less secure? Statistical blemishes had previously been forgiven by some indulgent politicians in other euro-states. Now the search is on for what is real, honest, quality money.
Consider a market trader selling apples. He has 27 apples to sell each week. The customers have 27 dollars with which to buy their fruit. The trader sets up a notice: 'A dollar an apple'. They are available on a first come first served basis.
All of a sudden the buying group now have 80 dollars credit for apples. What happens? The trader immediately sets up several notices 'Top quality apples now only 5 dollars an apple'. Another says: 'Excellent quality apples only 4 dollars an apple'. 'Good quality apples for 3 dollars.' And so on.
The Fed's money surge has an effect of differentiating the quality by expanding the price fork. This price fork accentuation was blunted before the money surge. It also sharpens the analytical skills of the potential purchaser (looking for profits). The surge no longer respects governmental quality labels on the apples but the buyer makes his own judgement. Why shouldn't he? The US administrations, specifically the party machines, were complicit fraudsters. Honest efforts in Congress to correct the looming disaster failed. Political oligarchies who should not be meddling refused to change their crony capitalism. The crisis deepened. Politics are discredited on both sides of the Atlantic. It is equally of no use for the apple trader to say that 'All my apples come from the top quality eurozone. Each is worth ten dollars.' Some of the European governments do run a clean shop. Others supported by party cartels are known to be playing tricks.
The discriminating buyer sees through that con. Why spend extra money on an apparently rotten apple (where politicians have a finger on the scales) just because it has a eurozone label? He will avoid it or expect the seller to change the category and price. Despite the eurozone label, the purchaser can discern perfectly well for himself what is a quality product and what is corrupt practice. Quality is not necessarily synonymous with something that has a government label or has the apparent approval of government. Why? because the label sometimes means that politicians and others are meddling where they should not be present. Nor are statistics necessarily reliable when they have the stamp of an international accountancy firm. Some do not smell too fresh. Reputations have to be earned.
We can compare the concept of quality apples to supranational values. These are the Charter principles on which the European Community was founded. They are based on your neighbour's evaluation of your actions. Honest money is one example.
Governments are not ignorant of honest money and honest accounting. Supranational values indicate that accepting bribes from the rich so they do not pay taxes is bad economics. Forcing the poor to take on the extra burden is also recognized as an abuse according to such supranational values. Accountants should know when the books are in order. They should be firm to resist any bribery or twisting of arms to make them give approval to accounts that are falsified.
In the early post-war period most western European countries had huge debts, high inflation and not too many scruples. They needed to reconstruct and also to outdo their neighbours. They engaged in a game of competitive devaluations and beggar my neighbour policies.
That started to change in 1950 with the creation of the European Community, (9 May 1950) and the European Payments Union, created on 16 September 1950. Robert Schuman, who had been one of the most active Finance Ministers, commended Switzerland for having a solid currency and sound values.
'The participation of a country with a solid currency, like Switzerland, encouraged the expansion of the volumes of trade and commerce by providing sound money in the circuits of multilateral purchases. Everyone gained from this, without risks or sacrifices.' (Pour l'Europe, p130).
For Schuman Switzerland was a model for Europe. It was not only a community of peoples and cantons based on geography but a community based on shared values and traditions. It had the inspiration, self-discipline and leadership (that is many people of good character) who acted in the long-term interest. Such achievements do not come from egotistical autocrats -- something that the Swiss opposed over the centuries. To create a European Community with sound money requires that all governments, people and associations have self-discipline or if not at least have the will to submit themselves freely to community supranational values. Good money is based on mutual trust.
In community economics supranational values also clarify that the concept of 'Beggar my neighbour' is no longer acceptable. We are all each other's neighbour. In a globalised world we are all connected more and more. The unforeseen consequences of bad practice in one country reverberate worldwide.
Successive US governments set themselves on the same toxic road as Enron. This energy firm tried to hide its bad debts in off-shore companies. The US did the same thing when it decreed that the poor should have access to mortgages they could not conceivably repay. The crucial question was where to hide the debts. This was a political decision, not an economic one. The politicians calculated that those who benefited from these crooked property loans would surely vote for them. They could also cream off some of the takings for party funds. Successive US administrations appointed pliable politicians to the bodies to enforce this unrealistic policy in the large mortgage firms.
Politicians had the misconceived idea that that were on a higher plane or smarter than supranational values. Practically the whole American population went along with the scam. Why? Because they all thought they would gain something. The bubble felt fine while it was expanding. The property sector boomed. Businesses also expanded. Yet it defied logic. It was all patently false, starting with the giveaway term 'subprime loans'. Just about everybody was on the take. If the US public gave it some honest reflection to it, they knew that all this was a scam. The honest few said so. The politicians gained most of all. Their party coffers were filled from the 'crony capitalism.'
Those mortgage-policy sellers who visited people and sold them deals knew there was little chance of recuperating the house-loan. It was a fairy tale. The house-buyers if they took any advice realised they really could not pay to the mortgage fairy. Others, whether businesses or individuals, profited indirectly from the property bubble. They had no reason, they said, to object. And above all the executives at the top and the politicians who knew all the figures were well aware that it was fraudulent. Who was kidding whom?
When the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage firms crashed out, as was inevitable, the politicians in Washington provided a means to bail them out. How? Out of public money. Who would pay the final bill if nearly the whole population was stealing from each other? They stole again via the Fed from the innocent, the voteless and speechless, the future generations, some yet unborn. And the foreigner.
This nasty little bit of political corruption is not and cannot remain local. The neighbours across the Atlantic are also affected. Using public money to save political cronies in the USA now affects the whole world, and Europe in particular. This avalanche washed over into Europe.
Europe's problems are correctable. Some Europeans had already learned their lessons: others are still learning. Competitive devaluations by accessing the monetary printing press bring no lasting solution.
Europeans can act wisely. They have the freedom to choose how to correct their problems. So have the Americans.
The secondary effect of the Obama avalanche is to test and prove whether the European governments are up to their job as honest guardians of the public good. Compare this to how some Mediterranean countries who for several decades have lacked the courage to set their house in order and who persistently apply bent practice have been differentiated recently.
Europe is left with a clear choice. The Obama avalanche has contributed to the clarity. Europe can clean up its house or it can continue the old corrupt economics.
This sad tale is not the only or even the main cause of Europe's monetary woes. It is hoped that we will return to this in the future.
01 July, 2010
Elections5 EU's Treaty Change Blitz is a blitz against open democracy
I must admit I was a bit surprised when I received a press release from the European Parliament last week. It said tersely:
A Brief IGC - you're telling me. A tad secret too. I was well aware that the European Parliament was aiming to add a few party friends at public expense. That was expected. They even had a debate and a motion. Enlarging Parliament was part of the secret deal made as part of the secret negotiations for the Lisbon Treaty. (Secret because the public was not asked about it. It was an agreement between party political leaders who take extra public money without asking the public's permission.)
All such agreements have to be agreed by the representatives of the nations. The public might like to ask: How would governments defend the extra expense at a time when governments of the PIGS are tottering trying to control their overspending and budget abuse.
However, the Blitz Inter-Governmental Conference shot past me. I was glad I wasn't hit by the lightning. I attended the European Council on 17 June. I listened at the press conference. Not a whisper about an IGC. An obscure reference to one of its internal documents and 'necessary procedure' is in the conclusions. For democrats debate is also a 'necessary procedure.' By that I mean a debate between the politicals and the public, simply because a majority of the public has increasingly shown at elections its distrust for the politicals.
(By politicals I mean the politicians, the parties and the political party systems that say they are representatives of the people but act as a cartel against the people for their own career, financial or party advantage.)
So we have a secret, closed door European Council unwilling to have a public debate on vital matters of democracy. What does it do? Add further obscurity and secret meetings to avoid a public debate.
Why? Were the politicians afraid they might get some awkward questions? It might seem a bit inopportune to publicise the increase in MEPs. People might also ask about why MEPs are also asking to spend more on assistants and other matters during a financial crisis. Others might ask why more MEPs when at every election, more and more of the electorate is refusing to vote for any of them?
At the Council building I did not find any communiqué later about this IGC. I asked the Council for the communiqué. I was told there wasn't one. An IGC took place with no one knowing about it. So-called democratic governments did not deem it necessary to tell anyone about the IGC. No press release was published after it took place. At least the EP debated it in public before grabbing more money.
The IGC took place behind closed doors in the COREPER committee. This is a committee of civil servants called permanent representatives. They are not even politicians. They were talking secretly amongst themselves about something else that would affect the European public. Then they changed hats, declared an IGC, and pronounced a Treaty Change 'in the margins' of the meeting, as they say. That is the New Lisbon Democracy? Phew! Closed doors, civil servants making decisions on major issues, no press, no questions.
An Inter-Governmental Conference used to mean something. Now it means a rubber stamp by bureaucrats. Thus the European Council is confirming its disdain for democracy. It is saying its version of democracy or rather its system is what we say it is. No open debates. Another word for that is autocracy.
I have a proposal. Now the Council has developed a lightning technique for European decisions, I would like to know if the national politicians can start to catch up on the backlog of duties. Some urgent Treaty implementations have been on ice for nearly sixty years.; The Six governments signed up to these promises in 1951 and 1957 and other States immediately on accession. These Treaty articles said surprisingly that the European Parliament should be European. That means Europe-wide elections under a single statute for all.
A quick IGC could arrange that pan-European parliamentary statute. In other words the governments would forswear from cheating and having 27 national elections to the European Parliament. Each one is presently arranged according to national rules that curiously favour the main political parties in the State. A touch of honesty would therefore be helpful.
The Treaty of Paris, the founding treaty of the European community and the two treaties of Rome all agree. There should be a single election where electors can vote for any candidate in any country of the Community. Each elector should have one vote not up to twelve as some are now allowed to have.
The people must be 'free to choose' to quote from Europe's founding Charter. Half a century ago, Schuman wrote:
Come on Council of Ministers. We know you can do it! Try getting your democratic priorities right!
And while the Council of Ministers is in the business of Blitz-IGCs, would it not be possible to give adequate notice so people could ask questions. And can the IGCs and the Council be open to the public as the Founding Fathers said they should be?
Thank you, Council.
Communiqué de presse - 24.06.2010.
Eighteen additional MEPs a step closer to starting work
The 18 additional MEPs envisaged by the Lisbon Treaty are a step closer to starting work. The treaty change needed to enable them to do so was approved by Member State representatives at a brief Intergovernmental Conference on 23 June, after a green light from Parliament. The 18 MEPs can start work only after EU Member States have ratified the change (My emphasis)
A Brief IGC - you're telling me. A tad secret too. I was well aware that the European Parliament was aiming to add a few party friends at public expense. That was expected. They even had a debate and a motion. Enlarging Parliament was part of the secret deal made as part of the secret negotiations for the Lisbon Treaty. (Secret because the public was not asked about it. It was an agreement between party political leaders who take extra public money without asking the public's permission.)
All such agreements have to be agreed by the representatives of the nations. The public might like to ask: How would governments defend the extra expense at a time when governments of the PIGS are tottering trying to control their overspending and budget abuse.
However, the Blitz Inter-Governmental Conference shot past me. I was glad I wasn't hit by the lightning. I attended the European Council on 17 June. I listened at the press conference. Not a whisper about an IGC. An obscure reference to one of its internal documents and 'necessary procedure' is in the conclusions. For democrats debate is also a 'necessary procedure.' By that I mean a debate between the politicals and the public, simply because a majority of the public has increasingly shown at elections its distrust for the politicals.
(By politicals I mean the politicians, the parties and the political party systems that say they are representatives of the people but act as a cartel against the people for their own career, financial or party advantage.)
So we have a secret, closed door European Council unwilling to have a public debate on vital matters of democracy. What does it do? Add further obscurity and secret meetings to avoid a public debate.
Why? Were the politicians afraid they might get some awkward questions? It might seem a bit inopportune to publicise the increase in MEPs. People might also ask about why MEPs are also asking to spend more on assistants and other matters during a financial crisis. Others might ask why more MEPs when at every election, more and more of the electorate is refusing to vote for any of them?
At the Council building I did not find any communiqué later about this IGC. I asked the Council for the communiqué. I was told there wasn't one. An IGC took place with no one knowing about it. So-called democratic governments did not deem it necessary to tell anyone about the IGC. No press release was published after it took place. At least the EP debated it in public before grabbing more money.
The IGC took place behind closed doors in the COREPER committee. This is a committee of civil servants called permanent representatives. They are not even politicians. They were talking secretly amongst themselves about something else that would affect the European public. Then they changed hats, declared an IGC, and pronounced a Treaty Change 'in the margins' of the meeting, as they say. That is the New Lisbon Democracy? Phew! Closed doors, civil servants making decisions on major issues, no press, no questions.
An Inter-Governmental Conference used to mean something. Now it means a rubber stamp by bureaucrats. Thus the European Council is confirming its disdain for democracy. It is saying its version of democracy or rather its system is what we say it is. No open debates. Another word for that is autocracy.
I have a proposal. Now the Council has developed a lightning technique for European decisions, I would like to know if the national politicians can start to catch up on the backlog of duties. Some urgent Treaty implementations have been on ice for nearly sixty years.; The Six governments signed up to these promises in 1951 and 1957 and other States immediately on accession. These Treaty articles said surprisingly that the European Parliament should be European. That means Europe-wide elections under a single statute for all.
A quick IGC could arrange that pan-European parliamentary statute. In other words the governments would forswear from cheating and having 27 national elections to the European Parliament. Each one is presently arranged according to national rules that curiously favour the main political parties in the State. A touch of honesty would therefore be helpful.
The Treaty of Paris, the founding treaty of the European community and the two treaties of Rome all agree. There should be a single election where electors can vote for any candidate in any country of the Community. Each elector should have one vote not up to twelve as some are now allowed to have.
The people must be 'free to choose' to quote from Europe's founding Charter. Half a century ago, Schuman wrote:
'In the not too distant future it is necessary to provide for elections with direct universal suffrage of the members of the Assembly which will exercise the powers of control, in conformity with the Charter of the Community. Article 138 (of the Economic Community) moreover gives this Parliament the mandate to draw up such a such a draft electoral project. The statute must be uniform for all Member States. It is certain that people's consciousness of a united Europe would be intensified and be more physically manifested if it could be regularly affirmed by a vote across the entirety of Europe,' (Pour l'Europe pp146-7)
Come on Council of Ministers. We know you can do it! Try getting your democratic priorities right!
And while the Council of Ministers is in the business of Blitz-IGCs, would it not be possible to give adequate notice so people could ask questions. And can the IGCs and the Council be open to the public as the Founding Fathers said they should be?
Thank you, Council.
28 June, 2010
Avalanche2 : Is Mr Soros right that the Euro crisis could bring about the destruction of the EU?
'The euro crisis could lead to the destruction of the European Union,' announced George Soros on 23 June 2010 in Berlin. Is the Hungarian investor/ economist right? He was right in 1992 that the British Pound Sterling was going to have to devalue by dropping out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). He made a fortune out of it -- about 1 billion dollars -- by short-selling Sterling. The UK lost more than three billion pounds. It is reported that the UK spent some 27 billion pounds from reserves in supporting the pound.
Will now the whole European structure -- created sixty years ago as the European Community -- implode? Is system that brought peace after two thousand years of warfare DOOMED?
According to Mr Soros the whole European experiment is under threat of destruction. However, according to Mr Robert Schuman, the originator of the system, it would last for a great deal longer than 50 or 60 years.
In Mr Soros's analysis: 'It can be seen that the euro crisis is intricately interconnected with the situation of the banks.' that provided loans to weak or vulnerable countries inside the EU. He names Greece, Spain and Ireland.
'How did this connection arise?' he asks.
His answer: 'The introduction of the euro brought about a radical narrowing of interest rate differentials. This in turn generated real estate bubbles in countries like Spain, Greece, and Ireland. Instead of the convergence prescribed by the Maastricht Treaty, these countries grew faster and developed trade deficits within the eurozone, while Germany reigned in its labor costs, became more competitive and developed a chronic trade surplus. To make matters worse some of these countries, most notably Greece, ran budget deficits that exceeded the limits set by the Maastricht Treaty. But the discount facility of the ECB allowed them to continue borrowing at practically the same rates as Germany, relieving them of any pressure to correct their excesses.'
I would put it slightly differently. Some governments tried to conceal their vital statistics so they could obtain loans by sleight of hand. Everyone in the country then thought then they could get away with the same deceit. Moral: governments should have the highest standards of probity, not the average manifestation of corruption. Secondly, everyone knows that not all governments have the highest standards. Certainly if banks accept paper promises of governments who are known to be cheating (some exposed for about thirty years), it is bound sooner or later to cause grief.
Take the example of the property boom -- what Mr Soros refers to as real estate. It requires a good dose of self-deception to believe that crumbling bricks and mortar have suddenly and universally become more and more valuable as an asset. Who is fooling whom?
Japan gave the lie to this property bubble deceit a few decades ago. The centre of Tokyo around the imperial palace briefly became worth much more than the entire American economy. The bubble burst. The property emperors had no clothes.
Japan is still paying for this folly. If some European governments have had to make sharp corrections for their folly, it is still rather less than the decades of woes that Japanese are paying.
Two economic laws are apparent. The law of the coming crunch: A proclivity to fiddle the books and spend produces (a) a desire for more money from silly creditors (which initially gives a false sense of security about profits) and (b) bad feeling among the creditors who then wake up will eventually cause many creditors to lose their patience.
The second is the law of the Community correction. The Community is designed as a closed system to expose dishonest dealing by governments or private sector banks -- and correct it. All members have the right to look at what sort of tricks the other members are up to. This is a fundamental feature of Community law. Any individual can under Community law take such a cheat to Court if his or her livelihood is affected by it. Usually it is States who take other States to Court, or the Commission.
Other members will eventually force the cheats to stop. It will all end in tears. However the Community system makes a huge difference. Happily, step by step, cheats are led to repentance. A totally reformed, former cheat welcomed back into the Community can become a solid example of probity for all the others.
The present challenge is small compared with the challenge of starting the Euro, as a common currency, in the first place. Much hard work has yet to be done as the Euro's creation was hardly based on authentic Community altruism -- the essential feature of the supranational principle. There remain several vulnerable spots. The exceptions governments give to the property market by governments is one example.
However, there is no question but that the European Community system will outlast its critics.
Am I being too optimistic? My assessment is not based on wishful thinking but scientific conclusions and hard facts. Which country is the keenest on sound currency principles? A clue: it was the country that had one of the worst currency problems in the past. Not just the Weimar inflation in the 1920s (when people carried their wages in wheelbarrow loads of useless paper currency) but also the experience which distorted the trade patterns for the whole of Europe with Hitler's economics in the 1930s. He had a hollow, complex, barter system creating political dependence and where other currencies were discounted to Hitler's rates.
Germany learned about sound currency in practice when it was given a democratic constitution in 1949. A year later it acknowledged a desire to join the European Community which reinforced sound monetary policy. The need for sound money began the moment that the first single market was opened. When did that happen? The exact date is 10 February 1953.
The European Monetary System was a logical part of the first European Community system that the Six governments and their peoples signed up to. The supranational principle, all the founding fathers said, provides the means for the democratic organisation of Europe, open to all countries 'free to choose'. That is what the Europe Declaration of Inter-Dependence says, the foundational document for the present European Union.
Schuman saw the European Community as a great democratic experiment, where the population would learn wisdom by pragmatic choice Sometimes governments make the wrong decisions, they are subject to apathy to introduce democratic measures -- like the mandatory elections they have never introduced. Sometimes they are corrupt. Some leaders may be autocratic. However, the European Community system is built to provide a positive learning curve for European civilisation, based on two thousand years of living and sometimes squabbling together.
But is this above analysis all the story? Is it even the most important factor in the present crisis? Was the 'euro crisis' fuelled and then ignited by the combustibility of low interest rates? Has something been forgotten? Is this a myopic economist's view that leaves out dire warnings made to European leaders consistently for more than half a century?
I hope to deal with that later.
Will now the whole European structure -- created sixty years ago as the European Community -- implode? Is system that brought peace after two thousand years of warfare DOOMED?
According to Mr Soros the whole European experiment is under threat of destruction. However, according to Mr Robert Schuman, the originator of the system, it would last for a great deal longer than 50 or 60 years.
In Mr Soros's analysis: 'It can be seen that the euro crisis is intricately interconnected with the situation of the banks.' that provided loans to weak or vulnerable countries inside the EU. He names Greece, Spain and Ireland.
'How did this connection arise?' he asks.
His answer: 'The introduction of the euro brought about a radical narrowing of interest rate differentials. This in turn generated real estate bubbles in countries like Spain, Greece, and Ireland. Instead of the convergence prescribed by the Maastricht Treaty, these countries grew faster and developed trade deficits within the eurozone, while Germany reigned in its labor costs, became more competitive and developed a chronic trade surplus. To make matters worse some of these countries, most notably Greece, ran budget deficits that exceeded the limits set by the Maastricht Treaty. But the discount facility of the ECB allowed them to continue borrowing at practically the same rates as Germany, relieving them of any pressure to correct their excesses.'
I would put it slightly differently. Some governments tried to conceal their vital statistics so they could obtain loans by sleight of hand. Everyone in the country then thought then they could get away with the same deceit. Moral: governments should have the highest standards of probity, not the average manifestation of corruption. Secondly, everyone knows that not all governments have the highest standards. Certainly if banks accept paper promises of governments who are known to be cheating (some exposed for about thirty years), it is bound sooner or later to cause grief.
Take the example of the property boom -- what Mr Soros refers to as real estate. It requires a good dose of self-deception to believe that crumbling bricks and mortar have suddenly and universally become more and more valuable as an asset. Who is fooling whom?
Japan gave the lie to this property bubble deceit a few decades ago. The centre of Tokyo around the imperial palace briefly became worth much more than the entire American economy. The bubble burst. The property emperors had no clothes.
Japan is still paying for this folly. If some European governments have had to make sharp corrections for their folly, it is still rather less than the decades of woes that Japanese are paying.
Two economic laws are apparent. The law of the coming crunch: A proclivity to fiddle the books and spend produces (a) a desire for more money from silly creditors (which initially gives a false sense of security about profits) and (b) bad feeling among the creditors who then wake up will eventually cause many creditors to lose their patience.
The second is the law of the Community correction. The Community is designed as a closed system to expose dishonest dealing by governments or private sector banks -- and correct it. All members have the right to look at what sort of tricks the other members are up to. This is a fundamental feature of Community law. Any individual can under Community law take such a cheat to Court if his or her livelihood is affected by it. Usually it is States who take other States to Court, or the Commission.
Other members will eventually force the cheats to stop. It will all end in tears. However the Community system makes a huge difference. Happily, step by step, cheats are led to repentance. A totally reformed, former cheat welcomed back into the Community can become a solid example of probity for all the others.
The present challenge is small compared with the challenge of starting the Euro, as a common currency, in the first place. Much hard work has yet to be done as the Euro's creation was hardly based on authentic Community altruism -- the essential feature of the supranational principle. There remain several vulnerable spots. The exceptions governments give to the property market by governments is one example.
However, there is no question but that the European Community system will outlast its critics.
Am I being too optimistic? My assessment is not based on wishful thinking but scientific conclusions and hard facts. Which country is the keenest on sound currency principles? A clue: it was the country that had one of the worst currency problems in the past. Not just the Weimar inflation in the 1920s (when people carried their wages in wheelbarrow loads of useless paper currency) but also the experience which distorted the trade patterns for the whole of Europe with Hitler's economics in the 1930s. He had a hollow, complex, barter system creating political dependence and where other currencies were discounted to Hitler's rates.
Germany learned about sound currency in practice when it was given a democratic constitution in 1949. A year later it acknowledged a desire to join the European Community which reinforced sound monetary policy. The need for sound money began the moment that the first single market was opened. When did that happen? The exact date is 10 February 1953.
The European Monetary System was a logical part of the first European Community system that the Six governments and their peoples signed up to. The supranational principle, all the founding fathers said, provides the means for the democratic organisation of Europe, open to all countries 'free to choose'. That is what the Europe Declaration of Inter-Dependence says, the foundational document for the present European Union.
Schuman saw the European Community as a great democratic experiment, where the population would learn wisdom by pragmatic choice Sometimes governments make the wrong decisions, they are subject to apathy to introduce democratic measures -- like the mandatory elections they have never introduced. Sometimes they are corrupt. Some leaders may be autocratic. However, the European Community system is built to provide a positive learning curve for European civilisation, based on two thousand years of living and sometimes squabbling together.
But is this above analysis all the story? Is it even the most important factor in the present crisis? Was the 'euro crisis' fuelled and then ignited by the combustibility of low interest rates? Has something been forgotten? Is this a myopic economist's view that leaves out dire warnings made to European leaders consistently for more than half a century?
I hope to deal with that later.
23 June, 2010
Monnet6 The stranger and the 'Monnet Method' What World Leaders should know about peacekeeping
Shouldn't the world and all Europeans be grateful to the man who brought to our attention the essentials for the world to have peace? Shouldn't all European schoolchildren know his name? Some people might say: 'We know it was Jean Monnet who brought Europe a Community and peace. That is why we call it the Monnet Method.'
But what if Monnet himself said that he was not responsible for all this? What should Europeans do if it were found out that Monnet said that the secret of Europe did not come from his own brain but from a stranger who told him the secret? Wouldn't everybody want to know who the stranger was and from where he got the secret? The secret is vitally needed today. War still poses a major danger to the planet.
The truth is Monnet did in fact say that he, Monnet, learned the secret from a stranger. What should we all do about it?
All teachers, all writers of textbooks and history books should take note of this and revise their incorrect versions of history, politics and economics. What is more important: all politicians and all world leaders should immediately note that for several decades they have been deceived and that they had better revise their background papers. They should sharpen up their act before we are too far advanced in the next disasters.
The answer to world peace and European democracy does not lie in the 'Monnet Method'. That is just PR spin. To accept it means that they demonstrate that they are gullible victims of the clever writers of his Mémoires. But a fraud will not bring world peace or democracy. World leaders will have to change their ideas to those more fitting for a globalized world. They need to follow the authentic path and method that brought Europe its peace. That requires an honest search for truth and a dose of humility.
According to his Mémoires, Monnet had been involved in the peace process for Europe that created today's EU, only from April 1950. Returning from the French Alpine resort of Roselend (which he wrongly calls Roseland and says it is in Switzerland!), Monnet says he was looking for a concept to avoid a seemingly inevitable war. He does not say yet that he had created the great Monnet Method to do the job. He was worried. That's all. There are no papers in the Monnet archives that indicate Monnet or any of the Planning Agency staff were working on peacemaking. No paper before April 1950 even mentions the word supranational.
Monnet then makes a real revelation! He learned about supranationality as a concept from someone who he said was a complete stranger. This person just turned up at his office. Believe it or not! Extraordinary. Monnet reveals in the Mémoires that this person was at the heart of the key concepts both in terms of the definitions and the language. And, in fact, much more. Thus Monnet admitted in the Mémoires that he himself was not at the heart of the concept.
He says that this mysterious stranger was at the origin of the key concept of the supranational method -- creating a High Authority, that is a European Commission. The Gaullists hated such words like supranational (Europe's founding principle) and High Authority (de Gaulle wanted to be the High Authority, thus denying the true source of all authority). So weak-minded politicians changed them hoping to appease the Gaullist, nationalist and Communist reaction. As if changing words would make the lust for power evaporate! Some hope! That is not how you deal with self-appointed autocrats, whether so-called representatives of the people / proletariat or other rabble-rousers who were completely unelected and rejected (as de Gaulle then was).
Monnet said this figure who came unannounced to his office was at the heart of the word and also the reality, (à l’origine de la Haute Autorité, du mot comme de la chose. Mémoires, p 352). That is the stranger provided the technical terminology and vocabulary and also oversaw their creation and turning the words and legal expressions into a practical application.
Wouldn't you think that such a brilliant, wonderful person would be acclaimed across the entire 500 million citizens who owe their personal freedoms to the Community method? How many can even identify his name today? Why do so many, apparently intelligent people, praise Jean Monnet for the so-called 'Monnet Method' -- which Monnet says in reality he owes to someone else?
Why isn't it called the Method of the perfect-stranger-who-came-into-Monnet's-office?
Who was this person who for Monnet set down the key part of the Community system? He is a person that the "official history" -- the Monnet method version -- has basically written out of history. His name is not taught in text books. The text books say that Monnet was the originator of "the method". (Unfortunately they can't really define what the method is. How then could it stop two millennia of wars! How will it stop the next, major wars we are faced with?)
Yet Monnet says that Professor Paul Reuter was at the heart of the idea! The name of Paul Reuter should be as well known as Jean Monnet. Who was Professor Paul Reuter? He was none other than a trusted colleague of Schuman! If Monnet mentions, then rapidly passes over, Reuter's name and presence, should we not suspect that Monnet is trying to upstage and overshadow him? The real origin is being purposefully obscured and ignored. This distortion is equivalent to a news agency cropping photographs to leave out the essential fact, perhaps a knife in a would-be assassin's hand. An assailant is made out to be a victim, a pacifist. In this case we are dealing with the opposite. Someone who helped give us the longest period of peace in history. He is taken out of the picture.
Is Monnet's book guilty of ignorance or willful refusal to record the facts? Many other facts are expunged. The extraordinary achievements in constructing a European policy in the immediate postwar years of Robert Schuman as Prime Minister and then as Foreign Minister -- work that was acknowledged widely around the world -- is left out completely. What he had achieved -- such as the Council of Europe -- is denigrated as useless. Thus the Mémoires consistently sidelined the work and action of Robert Schuman.
It is practically impossible to bury the truth forever, so why did the book attempt to do so? Facts, even minor ones, are so inconvenient to fibs.
Monnet wrote: 'An accident brought into my office… a young law professor that I did not know.' The professor came from Lorraine, Schuman’s home region. Schuman was the most prominent personality from Lorraine, the province in the north-east of France. He had been twice Prime Minister. In 1950 he was Foreign Minister, and widely trusted around the world as an honest politician and moreover, a Statesman of great capacity and vision. So we have a story about the beginning of Europe with at least two Lorrainers at the centre of the construction.
For all Lorrainers Schuman was considered the primary legislator in the French Assembly after the First World War. Schuman had brought in the laws to unite the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to metropolitan France but without losing their local traditions, customs and advantages in law. The body of law was called the Lex Schuman.
Schuman continued as a great legal innovator after WW2. He was the major originator of the NATO Treaty, signed in April 1949. It was Schuman's government that suggested and promoted the Council of Europe. The Lorrainer in the Foreign Ministry had a burning desire to solve once and for all the problem of Germany. And now, behold a stranger arrives unannounced from the same formerly German-occupied province.
Would it not be obvious that something significant was afoot? Schuman was known by all by his Lorraine accent. Then another Lorrainer arrives chez Monnet. He talks about how to deal with Germany. Is that a coincidence?
He was, like Schuman, a lawyer, but not yet so eminent. Furthermore he was also an alumnus of the same high school of Metz. In Schuman's time it had been under German occupation; in Reuter's youth it was again part of France. There was also a Reuter in the family tree of Robert Schuman. They may well have been related.
Was this Lorraine university teacher known or unknown to Robert Schuman, then Foreign Minister? Firstly let us say how well-known he was to Schuman before he took this post. When Schuman was made Prime Minister with a mandate to 'Save the Republic', the democratic future of France hung dangerously in the balance. Insurrectional strikes paralyzed the country. Reuter was one of the key men whom Schuman relied on to rescue France from a Communist take-over. France could have gone the way of Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Sofia, Bucharest and the other capitals were Communists seized the Parliament. Then they seized total control of the State. Reuter was then head of staff to Schuman's trusted Minister of Defence, Pierre-Henri Teitgen. Together Teitgen and Reuter managed to free Parliament where the Communists had held the Chamber hostage. Some persuader!
Reuter was thus one of the great (unsung) heroes of French democracy after the war. Non-French people might ask: Why is so little said of this? Maybe the answer is that the Gaullists were also in cahoots with the Communists at the time. For decades later Gaullists had practically a monopoly of the media and the educational system. They rewrote history.
So we now have a Lorraine professor, former staff member of Schuman's close friend, apparently coming 'by accident' to Jean Monnet's office. Isn't the ego-centric plot of the Mémoires now getting a little thin?
But was Reuter sent by Schuman as Foreign Minister? Did the Minister know he was going to Jean Monnet's office? Maybe it was just a professorial visit from someone who was just looking up dusty archives. Was Professor Paul Reuter the prototype 'Jean Monnet professor'? Was he in other words totally unconcerned about the practical implications of a supranational democracy in Europe?? Was he the sort of person who would not criticise the Lisbon Treaty because the EU funded his chair?
Monnet says the opposite. He was the one who motivated and activated Monnet so forcefully that Monnet convinced himself maybe that he was the originator and the inspirer of the 'Monnet Method'!
What was a professor doing in Monnet's office? Here it is easy to be trapped by the Monnet spin. Calling him professor was not just a tiny bit disingenuous. It is a bit like calling Albert Einstein a violin player. Reuter did give a course at a university in the south of France. He also had work in Paris. The work in Paris was far more important than a course at Aix-en-Provence. Is that clear in the Mémoires? Hardly.
Reuter worked in the French Foreign Ministry for the Robert Schuman as one of the two top lawyers. He had to be meticulous. His advice was sought on every international agreement. He scrutinized all Allied treaties and matters with Germany and with the Soviet Union. Germany was Schuman's great concern and focus of attention at this time.
He also helped alert Schuman of the internal political plots against the Minister. There were many. As a trusted friend and lawyer he could warn him in advance of the conspiracies and sabotage (the word is not too strong) led by senior nationalistic officials of the ministry.
Did Monnet mention this? What do you think? It must have been obvious to anyone of intelligence as the main news of the day was about the political battles over Germany. The names of the politicians and the high Foreign Ministry officials were blazoned in the newspapers as attempting to destroy the policy of European reconciliation that Schuman was trying to create. Not many people in France at the time were in favour of reconciliation. But they did not want another war.
So the Monnet Mémoires tell us that the main ideas about the High Authority, the central feature of the new method of supranational democracy came to Monnet via a close friend of Robert Schuman, then Foreign Minister. Is it really a logical deduction to say that Monnet invented the European Community method? Is it honest?
If you have a problem to solve with a neighbour and he sends a lawyer, you should expect he will require answers to all the most pertinent questions. Monnet was not a lawyer, nor was anyone else at the Planning Agency. In itself the arrival of a lawyer should have switched on lights.
If the neighbour is a friend you should expect that he has already thought quite a bit about the problem. If the neighbour is a lawyer, one of the most eminent in France, and he sends a lawyer to get your support for something, then one thing is fairly obvious. The neighbour has already deeply convinced of what he has to do and the lawyer he is sending is to get you to agree to a minor but important detail.
It would be extremely rash of you to assume that if you agreed on that minor detail and collaborated with the lawyer then it was you who invented the whole scheme of your neighbour. Reuter was a great helper in an even greater work of unifying Europe.
As we saw in the last commentary Reuter had a prominent part in the Schuman Plan conference. Europe's first intergovernmental conference forged its supranational democracy. This information came from documents held tightly until recently by the Jean Monnet Foundation. Yet the Mémoires say that Monnet 'hoped Reuter would come to help draft with us the treaty but matters turned out differently. I do not know why.' (p352).
Their own archives tell the Monnet team otherwise. The Schuman archives too. It contains the very full reports of Reuter on the progress of conference for Schuman's eyes. Furthermore Reuter had an official part of the conference, called by the French government, led by the Foreign Ministry, with representatives of other ministries. He was the deputy to the chief Jurisconsult of the Foreign Ministry, André Gros. These were the top lawyers who were authorized to plead on behalf of the French Republic at international courts of justice. The conference was not organised by Jean Monnet as his private enterprise, as the Mémoires would give readers to believe.
Why does Monnet insist on calling this high official at the Foreign Ministry, a close colleague of Schuman, a professor at the university of Aix? He says that without him, 'I (Monnet) would not have managed to put together immediately the form it assumed to make it the authentic document that originated the Community,' (349). Oh really? This is like saying that a violinist helped a schoolboy solve a problem of physics that the violinist had asked him about in the first place. The violinist departs and the boy says I solved it all by myself.
Professor Paul Reuter, a Jurist of the Ministry, was an excellent lawyer who accomplished this task. It would be refreshing today to see the so-called Jean Monnet professors, rolling up their sleeves, rising collectively from their chairs to the task of working for the implementation of supranational democracy in Europe. Paul Reuter would be a good example to follow of discretion, efficacy and humility.
But what if Monnet himself said that he was not responsible for all this? What should Europeans do if it were found out that Monnet said that the secret of Europe did not come from his own brain but from a stranger who told him the secret? Wouldn't everybody want to know who the stranger was and from where he got the secret? The secret is vitally needed today. War still poses a major danger to the planet.
The truth is Monnet did in fact say that he, Monnet, learned the secret from a stranger. What should we all do about it?
All teachers, all writers of textbooks and history books should take note of this and revise their incorrect versions of history, politics and economics. What is more important: all politicians and all world leaders should immediately note that for several decades they have been deceived and that they had better revise their background papers. They should sharpen up their act before we are too far advanced in the next disasters.
The answer to world peace and European democracy does not lie in the 'Monnet Method'. That is just PR spin. To accept it means that they demonstrate that they are gullible victims of the clever writers of his Mémoires. But a fraud will not bring world peace or democracy. World leaders will have to change their ideas to those more fitting for a globalized world. They need to follow the authentic path and method that brought Europe its peace. That requires an honest search for truth and a dose of humility.
According to his Mémoires, Monnet had been involved in the peace process for Europe that created today's EU, only from April 1950. Returning from the French Alpine resort of Roselend (which he wrongly calls Roseland and says it is in Switzerland!), Monnet says he was looking for a concept to avoid a seemingly inevitable war. He does not say yet that he had created the great Monnet Method to do the job. He was worried. That's all. There are no papers in the Monnet archives that indicate Monnet or any of the Planning Agency staff were working on peacemaking. No paper before April 1950 even mentions the word supranational.
Monnet then makes a real revelation! He learned about supranationality as a concept from someone who he said was a complete stranger. This person just turned up at his office. Believe it or not! Extraordinary. Monnet reveals in the Mémoires that this person was at the heart of the key concepts both in terms of the definitions and the language. And, in fact, much more. Thus Monnet admitted in the Mémoires that he himself was not at the heart of the concept.
He says that this mysterious stranger was at the origin of the key concept of the supranational method -- creating a High Authority, that is a European Commission. The Gaullists hated such words like supranational (Europe's founding principle) and High Authority (de Gaulle wanted to be the High Authority, thus denying the true source of all authority). So weak-minded politicians changed them hoping to appease the Gaullist, nationalist and Communist reaction. As if changing words would make the lust for power evaporate! Some hope! That is not how you deal with self-appointed autocrats, whether so-called representatives of the people / proletariat or other rabble-rousers who were completely unelected and rejected (as de Gaulle then was).
Monnet said this figure who came unannounced to his office was at the heart of the word and also the reality, (à l’origine de la Haute Autorité, du mot comme de la chose. Mémoires, p 352). That is the stranger provided the technical terminology and vocabulary and also oversaw their creation and turning the words and legal expressions into a practical application.
Wouldn't you think that such a brilliant, wonderful person would be acclaimed across the entire 500 million citizens who owe their personal freedoms to the Community method? How many can even identify his name today? Why do so many, apparently intelligent people, praise Jean Monnet for the so-called 'Monnet Method' -- which Monnet says in reality he owes to someone else?
Why isn't it called the Method of the perfect-stranger-who-came-into-Monnet's-office?
Who was this person who for Monnet set down the key part of the Community system? He is a person that the "official history" -- the Monnet method version -- has basically written out of history. His name is not taught in text books. The text books say that Monnet was the originator of "the method". (Unfortunately they can't really define what the method is. How then could it stop two millennia of wars! How will it stop the next, major wars we are faced with?)
Yet Monnet says that Professor Paul Reuter was at the heart of the idea! The name of Paul Reuter should be as well known as Jean Monnet. Who was Professor Paul Reuter? He was none other than a trusted colleague of Schuman! If Monnet mentions, then rapidly passes over, Reuter's name and presence, should we not suspect that Monnet is trying to upstage and overshadow him? The real origin is being purposefully obscured and ignored. This distortion is equivalent to a news agency cropping photographs to leave out the essential fact, perhaps a knife in a would-be assassin's hand. An assailant is made out to be a victim, a pacifist. In this case we are dealing with the opposite. Someone who helped give us the longest period of peace in history. He is taken out of the picture.
Is Monnet's book guilty of ignorance or willful refusal to record the facts? Many other facts are expunged. The extraordinary achievements in constructing a European policy in the immediate postwar years of Robert Schuman as Prime Minister and then as Foreign Minister -- work that was acknowledged widely around the world -- is left out completely. What he had achieved -- such as the Council of Europe -- is denigrated as useless. Thus the Mémoires consistently sidelined the work and action of Robert Schuman.
It is practically impossible to bury the truth forever, so why did the book attempt to do so? Facts, even minor ones, are so inconvenient to fibs.
Monnet wrote: 'An accident brought into my office… a young law professor that I did not know.' The professor came from Lorraine, Schuman’s home region. Schuman was the most prominent personality from Lorraine, the province in the north-east of France. He had been twice Prime Minister. In 1950 he was Foreign Minister, and widely trusted around the world as an honest politician and moreover, a Statesman of great capacity and vision. So we have a story about the beginning of Europe with at least two Lorrainers at the centre of the construction.
For all Lorrainers Schuman was considered the primary legislator in the French Assembly after the First World War. Schuman had brought in the laws to unite the lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to metropolitan France but without losing their local traditions, customs and advantages in law. The body of law was called the Lex Schuman.
Schuman continued as a great legal innovator after WW2. He was the major originator of the NATO Treaty, signed in April 1949. It was Schuman's government that suggested and promoted the Council of Europe. The Lorrainer in the Foreign Ministry had a burning desire to solve once and for all the problem of Germany. And now, behold a stranger arrives unannounced from the same formerly German-occupied province.
Would it not be obvious that something significant was afoot? Schuman was known by all by his Lorraine accent. Then another Lorrainer arrives chez Monnet. He talks about how to deal with Germany. Is that a coincidence?
He was, like Schuman, a lawyer, but not yet so eminent. Furthermore he was also an alumnus of the same high school of Metz. In Schuman's time it had been under German occupation; in Reuter's youth it was again part of France. There was also a Reuter in the family tree of Robert Schuman. They may well have been related.
Was this Lorraine university teacher known or unknown to Robert Schuman, then Foreign Minister? Firstly let us say how well-known he was to Schuman before he took this post. When Schuman was made Prime Minister with a mandate to 'Save the Republic', the democratic future of France hung dangerously in the balance. Insurrectional strikes paralyzed the country. Reuter was one of the key men whom Schuman relied on to rescue France from a Communist take-over. France could have gone the way of Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Sofia, Bucharest and the other capitals were Communists seized the Parliament. Then they seized total control of the State. Reuter was then head of staff to Schuman's trusted Minister of Defence, Pierre-Henri Teitgen. Together Teitgen and Reuter managed to free Parliament where the Communists had held the Chamber hostage. Some persuader!
Reuter was thus one of the great (unsung) heroes of French democracy after the war. Non-French people might ask: Why is so little said of this? Maybe the answer is that the Gaullists were also in cahoots with the Communists at the time. For decades later Gaullists had practically a monopoly of the media and the educational system. They rewrote history.
So we now have a Lorraine professor, former staff member of Schuman's close friend, apparently coming 'by accident' to Jean Monnet's office. Isn't the ego-centric plot of the Mémoires now getting a little thin?
But was Reuter sent by Schuman as Foreign Minister? Did the Minister know he was going to Jean Monnet's office? Maybe it was just a professorial visit from someone who was just looking up dusty archives. Was Professor Paul Reuter the prototype 'Jean Monnet professor'? Was he in other words totally unconcerned about the practical implications of a supranational democracy in Europe?? Was he the sort of person who would not criticise the Lisbon Treaty because the EU funded his chair?
Monnet says the opposite. He was the one who motivated and activated Monnet so forcefully that Monnet convinced himself maybe that he was the originator and the inspirer of the 'Monnet Method'!
What was a professor doing in Monnet's office? Here it is easy to be trapped by the Monnet spin. Calling him professor was not just a tiny bit disingenuous. It is a bit like calling Albert Einstein a violin player. Reuter did give a course at a university in the south of France. He also had work in Paris. The work in Paris was far more important than a course at Aix-en-Provence. Is that clear in the Mémoires? Hardly.
Reuter worked in the French Foreign Ministry for the Robert Schuman as one of the two top lawyers. He had to be meticulous. His advice was sought on every international agreement. He scrutinized all Allied treaties and matters with Germany and with the Soviet Union. Germany was Schuman's great concern and focus of attention at this time.
He also helped alert Schuman of the internal political plots against the Minister. There were many. As a trusted friend and lawyer he could warn him in advance of the conspiracies and sabotage (the word is not too strong) led by senior nationalistic officials of the ministry.
Did Monnet mention this? What do you think? It must have been obvious to anyone of intelligence as the main news of the day was about the political battles over Germany. The names of the politicians and the high Foreign Ministry officials were blazoned in the newspapers as attempting to destroy the policy of European reconciliation that Schuman was trying to create. Not many people in France at the time were in favour of reconciliation. But they did not want another war.
So the Monnet Mémoires tell us that the main ideas about the High Authority, the central feature of the new method of supranational democracy came to Monnet via a close friend of Robert Schuman, then Foreign Minister. Is it really a logical deduction to say that Monnet invented the European Community method? Is it honest?
If you have a problem to solve with a neighbour and he sends a lawyer, you should expect he will require answers to all the most pertinent questions. Monnet was not a lawyer, nor was anyone else at the Planning Agency. In itself the arrival of a lawyer should have switched on lights.
If the neighbour is a friend you should expect that he has already thought quite a bit about the problem. If the neighbour is a lawyer, one of the most eminent in France, and he sends a lawyer to get your support for something, then one thing is fairly obvious. The neighbour has already deeply convinced of what he has to do and the lawyer he is sending is to get you to agree to a minor but important detail.
It would be extremely rash of you to assume that if you agreed on that minor detail and collaborated with the lawyer then it was you who invented the whole scheme of your neighbour. Reuter was a great helper in an even greater work of unifying Europe.
As we saw in the last commentary Reuter had a prominent part in the Schuman Plan conference. Europe's first intergovernmental conference forged its supranational democracy. This information came from documents held tightly until recently by the Jean Monnet Foundation. Yet the Mémoires say that Monnet 'hoped Reuter would come to help draft with us the treaty but matters turned out differently. I do not know why.' (p352).
Their own archives tell the Monnet team otherwise. The Schuman archives too. It contains the very full reports of Reuter on the progress of conference for Schuman's eyes. Furthermore Reuter had an official part of the conference, called by the French government, led by the Foreign Ministry, with representatives of other ministries. He was the deputy to the chief Jurisconsult of the Foreign Ministry, André Gros. These were the top lawyers who were authorized to plead on behalf of the French Republic at international courts of justice. The conference was not organised by Jean Monnet as his private enterprise, as the Mémoires would give readers to believe.
Why does Monnet insist on calling this high official at the Foreign Ministry, a close colleague of Schuman, a professor at the university of Aix? He says that without him, 'I (Monnet) would not have managed to put together immediately the form it assumed to make it the authentic document that originated the Community,' (349). Oh really? This is like saying that a violinist helped a schoolboy solve a problem of physics that the violinist had asked him about in the first place. The violinist departs and the boy says I solved it all by myself.
Professor Paul Reuter, a Jurist of the Ministry, was an excellent lawyer who accomplished this task. It would be refreshing today to see the so-called Jean Monnet professors, rolling up their sleeves, rising collectively from their chairs to the task of working for the implementation of supranational democracy in Europe. Paul Reuter would be a good example to follow of discretion, efficacy and humility.
17 June, 2010
Monnet5 Schuman's speech on 20 June 1950 that defined the struggle for Europe's democracy
On 20 June 1950, Robert Schuman, French Foreign Minister, opened the Schuman Plan Conference, that gave birth to modern Europe, based on the European Communities. This supranational Community system made a complete break with history and Europe's record of wars and bloodshed. The Conference defined the five major democratic institutions of Europe:
European Commission (High Authority)
Consultative Committee (body for organised Civil Society, producers, workers and consumers)
European Parliament
Council of Ministers
Court of Justice
The supranational Community system also far surpassed the achievements of inter-governmentalism (still a major aspect of the Lisbon Treaty with its less than democratic accountability).
Schuman led a large delegation of more than a dozen, half of which came from his own staff, (Bernard Clappier, later Governor of the Bank of France), the two legal counsels of the Ministry (Andre Gros and Paul Reuter) one of the directors-general and other officials of the ministry. Other members included officials from other ministries, plus Jean Monnet (later President of the High Authority) and Etienne Hirsch (later Commission President of Euratom) from the Planning Agency.
The speech gives quite a different perspective than that in Monnet's Mémoires.
On orders of President Charles de Gaulle after he seized power in France in 1958, the democratic development of these five institutions was "chloroformed". Governments have still not fulfilled their obligations under the early treaties, such as a Europe-wide election for the Parliament (instead of many national elections under different rules), elections for organised civil society in the Consultative Committees (rather than uncontrollable lobbyists), proper selection for membership of the European Commission based on the criteria for impartiality and openness of the treaties, and open debates in the Council of Ministers (rather than closed door inter-governmentalism). Selection of judges should also be made on more impartial grounds as the original treaties specify.
Schuman did not specify when Europeans would succeed in achieving full democratic status for these institutions but he asserted, on the basis of a long study of democracy, constitutions, political and moral philosophy that the achievement of democracy was inevitable. This prediction must be taken as seriously as the one he made in the Schuman Declaration and in the speech below that the Community system was able to make war between Member States 'not only unthinkable but materially impossible.'
Robert Schuman's speech in the Salon d'Horloge of the French Foreign Ministry, 20 June 1950
Six weeks to the day have barely passed since, in this very room so full of historic memories, the French Government announced its plan. Six weeks, although a brief period when it comes to something so new and so vast such as the pooling of coal and steel production of our six countries, is but a short lapse when you consider the usual delays in international transactions.
Some have criticized France for being in a rush. There was talk of swift and brutal tactics. It is precisely because experience has taught us that the best initiatives are stifled when, even before their birth, they linger too long in the prior consultations.
In a world with so many failures, full of anxiety and helplessness, I believe we had the right, even the duty, to count on the strength of an idea to capitalize on the momentum of hope that it gave rise to and the instinctive encouragement of our peoples.
We are at the start of this work. Gentlemen, it is up to you, to whom our six governments have entrusted the task, to justify this hope. This is to be expressed in clear and flexible texts, in order to prepare specific commitments. They are to embrace the principles that determined the choice of our objectives and which constitute the basis for our deliberations. There is agreement between us to focus our work on the goal we want to achieve. Our governments have agreed to seek together, in a free exchange of views and from different situations, the best way to apply the principles we have assumed, leading to the creation of new institutions, unprecedented in the world today.
Gentlemen, it is an awe-inspiring task that our governments have allocated to us and entrusted us with. We will undertake it with respect, conscious of our responsibility. We feel that we are not allowed to fail this task, to abandon without concluding an agreement. That accord, moreover, as you know, will be subject to the judgement of the governments and the sovereign decision of our parliaments.
None of us should hide the exceptional difficulties of our enterprise.
Certainly, each of us can rely on ample statistics. We will also make use of unbiased studies that have been previously undertaken on a national level, as well as by international bodies. But never before has such a system that we advocate been tried out as a practical experiment. Never before have States delegated a fraction of their sovereignty jointly to an independent, supranational body. They have never even envisaged doing so.
We have to prepare a draft treaty, which define in broad terms the function of this common Authority, its attributions, and appeals against its decisions and how its responsibilities will operate. We have to foresee, however, without inserting it in the Treaty, the technical details that will involve agreements to be concluded later, after the ratification of the Treaty. These agreements must be easy to revise and adapt to the lessons of experience.
The fruit of our discussions will determine our conclusions. Here each of you will contribute your suggestions and your criticisms. What we will share is our determination to succeed, to work constructively on the basis of defined principles. We will be inspired by the bold sense of innovation that is too often absent from our international institutions.
Without losing sight of the specific necessities of our own countries, we must be aware that the national interest today consists precisely in finding beyond our national boundaries the means of achieving a more rational structure for the economy, a more economical and intensive production and a larger and more accessible market. Our negotiations will be better and more than selfish haggling that refuses both risk and trust.
Our initiative has no intention of ignoring or disregarding the attempts that are made elsewhere to clean up the European economy. My colleague, Mr. Stikker has recently made an important and fruitful contribution on a different plane than ours; there are between our two objectives no duplication or contradiction.
What characterizes the French proposal is that beyond its economic developments that at present we may only guess at, it has had and retains a political significance that, before any other consideration, has from the first hour appealed to public opinion in many countries.
We want to replace the former practice of dumping and discrimination with enlightened cooperation. That is essential. What is important, however, and is highlighted as the very purpose of the plan, is our willingness to bring together in a common and permanent work of peace two nations, which over centuries have fought each other in bloody conflict. What is important is thus to eliminate from our European Community this latent cause of the trouble, distrust and anxiety. What is vital is the hope of founding on the basis of this peaceful cooperation a solid European edifice accessible to all nations of good will.
We would very much wish that the United Kingdom were present at our discussions. We cannot conceive Europe without it. We know, and this reassures us in our efforts, that the British Government wants the success of our work. When both sides explained their views frankly and amicably, some differences appeared that have prevented it from participating actively, at this stage at least. We remain hopeful that the remaining doubts and scruples arising from doctrinal reasoning will eventually give way to a demonstration of more pragmatism.
The French Government will act in accordance with the concerns of all participating governments and keep the British government well informed of the development of our discussions. It will provide it with the opportunity, if not to come and join us, a hope we continue to have, at least to send us any positive criticism, while preparing the way for future cooperation.
As for us, we will begin work assigned to us as well. We shall first have to adopt a working method. It will be a team effort, rather than a conference with her meticulous and rigid regulations. We have primarily a concern for efficiency. Brilliant eloquence will not distract us.
An information session will allow us tomorrow to fix our ideas in this regard. They will be clarified in the course of personal contacts that we will have the need to establish and maintain.
The substantive issues will be addressed at the same time; we cannot separate one from the other.
We will share our ideas, we confront them against each other, and we will chose between them. The French Government will make known its own ideas in the next few days. The draft text that it will submit to you will form a basis for work that it hopes will prove useful and fruitful.
For today I confine myself to welcome you on behalf of my Government with the ardent desire that we will not disappoint the expectations of the people who put in you their hope and confidence.
Original French Version is available on www.schuman.info
European Commission (High Authority)
Consultative Committee (body for organised Civil Society, producers, workers and consumers)
European Parliament
Council of Ministers
Court of Justice
The supranational Community system also far surpassed the achievements of inter-governmentalism (still a major aspect of the Lisbon Treaty with its less than democratic accountability).
Schuman led a large delegation of more than a dozen, half of which came from his own staff, (Bernard Clappier, later Governor of the Bank of France), the two legal counsels of the Ministry (Andre Gros and Paul Reuter) one of the directors-general and other officials of the ministry. Other members included officials from other ministries, plus Jean Monnet (later President of the High Authority) and Etienne Hirsch (later Commission President of Euratom) from the Planning Agency.
The speech gives quite a different perspective than that in Monnet's Mémoires.
- Monnet was not in charge of the conference. Schuman makes it clear who was.
- The aim is to create supranational institutions, whereas Monnet says that he did not fancy this expression and never liked it.
- The conference was an intergovernmental conference with a single goal to achieve this supranational Community. It was not as Monnet seemed to think in the Mémoires a step towards a federation like the USA. Schuman later explained how a supranational Community has certain aspects of federal powers but is not in itself a federation.
- Monnet was wrong. Schuman was right: the Community system has not developed into something like the USA. It has followed its own separate path. Schuman said his aim was to avoid creating a Superstate, another Leviathan -- the most obvious example of which would be the federal USA.
- Thus Monnet Mémoires are wrong in saying that the conference was to do anything other than the revolutionary creation of a supranational European Community. It had no mandate to create anything else. A federation is inferior in potential as a democracy to a supranational system when fully developed.
On orders of President Charles de Gaulle after he seized power in France in 1958, the democratic development of these five institutions was "chloroformed". Governments have still not fulfilled their obligations under the early treaties, such as a Europe-wide election for the Parliament (instead of many national elections under different rules), elections for organised civil society in the Consultative Committees (rather than uncontrollable lobbyists), proper selection for membership of the European Commission based on the criteria for impartiality and openness of the treaties, and open debates in the Council of Ministers (rather than closed door inter-governmentalism). Selection of judges should also be made on more impartial grounds as the original treaties specify.
Schuman did not specify when Europeans would succeed in achieving full democratic status for these institutions but he asserted, on the basis of a long study of democracy, constitutions, political and moral philosophy that the achievement of democracy was inevitable. This prediction must be taken as seriously as the one he made in the Schuman Declaration and in the speech below that the Community system was able to make war between Member States 'not only unthinkable but materially impossible.'
Robert Schuman's speech in the Salon d'Horloge of the French Foreign Ministry, 20 June 1950
Six weeks to the day have barely passed since, in this very room so full of historic memories, the French Government announced its plan. Six weeks, although a brief period when it comes to something so new and so vast such as the pooling of coal and steel production of our six countries, is but a short lapse when you consider the usual delays in international transactions.
Some have criticized France for being in a rush. There was talk of swift and brutal tactics. It is precisely because experience has taught us that the best initiatives are stifled when, even before their birth, they linger too long in the prior consultations.
In a world with so many failures, full of anxiety and helplessness, I believe we had the right, even the duty, to count on the strength of an idea to capitalize on the momentum of hope that it gave rise to and the instinctive encouragement of our peoples.
We are at the start of this work. Gentlemen, it is up to you, to whom our six governments have entrusted the task, to justify this hope. This is to be expressed in clear and flexible texts, in order to prepare specific commitments. They are to embrace the principles that determined the choice of our objectives and which constitute the basis for our deliberations. There is agreement between us to focus our work on the goal we want to achieve. Our governments have agreed to seek together, in a free exchange of views and from different situations, the best way to apply the principles we have assumed, leading to the creation of new institutions, unprecedented in the world today.
Gentlemen, it is an awe-inspiring task that our governments have allocated to us and entrusted us with. We will undertake it with respect, conscious of our responsibility. We feel that we are not allowed to fail this task, to abandon without concluding an agreement. That accord, moreover, as you know, will be subject to the judgement of the governments and the sovereign decision of our parliaments.
None of us should hide the exceptional difficulties of our enterprise.
Certainly, each of us can rely on ample statistics. We will also make use of unbiased studies that have been previously undertaken on a national level, as well as by international bodies. But never before has such a system that we advocate been tried out as a practical experiment. Never before have States delegated a fraction of their sovereignty jointly to an independent, supranational body. They have never even envisaged doing so.
We have to prepare a draft treaty, which define in broad terms the function of this common Authority, its attributions, and appeals against its decisions and how its responsibilities will operate. We have to foresee, however, without inserting it in the Treaty, the technical details that will involve agreements to be concluded later, after the ratification of the Treaty. These agreements must be easy to revise and adapt to the lessons of experience.
The fruit of our discussions will determine our conclusions. Here each of you will contribute your suggestions and your criticisms. What we will share is our determination to succeed, to work constructively on the basis of defined principles. We will be inspired by the bold sense of innovation that is too often absent from our international institutions.
Without losing sight of the specific necessities of our own countries, we must be aware that the national interest today consists precisely in finding beyond our national boundaries the means of achieving a more rational structure for the economy, a more economical and intensive production and a larger and more accessible market. Our negotiations will be better and more than selfish haggling that refuses both risk and trust.
Our initiative has no intention of ignoring or disregarding the attempts that are made elsewhere to clean up the European economy. My colleague, Mr. Stikker has recently made an important and fruitful contribution on a different plane than ours; there are between our two objectives no duplication or contradiction.
What characterizes the French proposal is that beyond its economic developments that at present we may only guess at, it has had and retains a political significance that, before any other consideration, has from the first hour appealed to public opinion in many countries.
We want to replace the former practice of dumping and discrimination with enlightened cooperation. That is essential. What is important, however, and is highlighted as the very purpose of the plan, is our willingness to bring together in a common and permanent work of peace two nations, which over centuries have fought each other in bloody conflict. What is important is thus to eliminate from our European Community this latent cause of the trouble, distrust and anxiety. What is vital is the hope of founding on the basis of this peaceful cooperation a solid European edifice accessible to all nations of good will.
We would very much wish that the United Kingdom were present at our discussions. We cannot conceive Europe without it. We know, and this reassures us in our efforts, that the British Government wants the success of our work. When both sides explained their views frankly and amicably, some differences appeared that have prevented it from participating actively, at this stage at least. We remain hopeful that the remaining doubts and scruples arising from doctrinal reasoning will eventually give way to a demonstration of more pragmatism.
The French Government will act in accordance with the concerns of all participating governments and keep the British government well informed of the development of our discussions. It will provide it with the opportunity, if not to come and join us, a hope we continue to have, at least to send us any positive criticism, while preparing the way for future cooperation.
As for us, we will begin work assigned to us as well. We shall first have to adopt a working method. It will be a team effort, rather than a conference with her meticulous and rigid regulations. We have primarily a concern for efficiency. Brilliant eloquence will not distract us.
An information session will allow us tomorrow to fix our ideas in this regard. They will be clarified in the course of personal contacts that we will have the need to establish and maintain.
The substantive issues will be addressed at the same time; we cannot separate one from the other.
We will share our ideas, we confront them against each other, and we will chose between them. The French Government will make known its own ideas in the next few days. The draft text that it will submit to you will form a basis for work that it hopes will prove useful and fruitful.
For today I confine myself to welcome you on behalf of my Government with the ardent desire that we will not disappoint the expectations of the people who put in you their hope and confidence.
Original French Version is available on www.schuman.info
14 June, 2010
Monnet4: The EU should not propagate Monnet's FALSE claims about inventing the European Community.
The 'European Community' was, according to Jean Monnet's Mémoires, a political and economic concept invented by Jean Monnet himself. This is a falsehood. Monnet did not invent it. It was already in existence. In his boast, Monnet is as wrong as if someone today were trying to claim he invented the wheel. It is also theft against the real inventor of the wheel. Can I be clearer? Someone who steals something belonging to someone else is a thief. This is equally true if a person steals the credit or honour of a person as much as stealing a credit card.
Everyone loses from this. Whenever anything goes wrong, or someone else wants the same product (whether a wheel or world peace), he directs himself to the supposed inventor for help. But the fraudster has no real understanding about how European peace was achieved in the first place or how to make peace between other countries in today's world that is increasingly inflamed by war. Europe is heading for multiple trials. The world is again on the brink of major wars. It is high time to tell the truth.
Why did Monnet publish such an outrageous claim that could easily be shown to be false? He is not here to explain. Schuman was long dead and he did not have a family. First, however, it should be admitted that the Mémoires were written by a small group of ghostwriters. But that makes the scandal worse. Surely among the writing team of esteemed political scientists and journalists, there must have been someone who knew the truth. Monnet could have made a mistake or forgotten the facts. But could all of them together? Did none of them object to twisting the facts? Mémoires usually have as a purpose the self-aggrandizement of the author. Did not someone in his team or the publishers warn him he was going a little too far?
Secondly, Monnet put his name to the book. He should have checked the facts himself. He is ultimately responsible for falsifications, fabrications and errors. Monnet however made similar outrageous claims reported in other publications and interviews. So it must be presumed that Monnet promoted the idea. Did he mislead himself in wishful thinking that he was the inventor? Here we are entering into the area of historical psychology and the domain of political fraud which is beyond the space for this commentary. He confessed he had a bad memory. Is this sufficient as an excuse for a matter of world importance?
What are the facts? Monnet describes the exact day when the idea of a European Community supposedly came to him. It was 21 June 1950. At the request of the Robert Schuman, the French Government had agreed that Monnet should be chairman of the first intergovernmental conference in order to establish the Schuman Plan. Schuman had announced the Government's agreement on this Plan on 9 May 1950. The Monnet Mémoires downgrade Schuman's achievements. They cannot even recall correctly when Schuman was Prime Minister (it is not mentioned at all) and describe him as either Minister of Finance or a gullible Foreign Minister desperate for Monnet's help.
This is what Monnet Mémoires say in a section entitled 'Invention': 'I believe recalling that on that day (21 June 1950) I named 'the European Community' as being the objective we would like to attain.' Thus according to this much used text, the identity of the founding entity for Europe, the European Community, was named on 21 June 1950. It became the GOAL of the international effort on the same day. The alleged conceiver of the name and originator of the strategic objective was Jean Monnet. To remove any doubt about this claim the book's index has under European Community: 'term invented by Jean Monnet.'
This claim may seem utterly extraordinary to some people who are not easily duped. It implies that from the time of the Schuman Proposal on 9 May 1950, the Foreign Minister, nor any other body had a name for the new structure to be created. How could the political configuration or the process be discussed without a name? This was not something of no importance: it was an entity that would stop two thousand years of European wars.
That silence, that lack of a name, occurs only in the mind and words of Jean Monnet. He or the co-writers of the Mémoires seem willfully ignorant of the facts. That is, they discarded all facts that disproved their case. That is precisely how nations used to write their histories of Europe, glorifying any victories and ignoring any defeats, while denigrating all who opposed their egotistical views.
The conference to prepare the founding treaty of Europe did not open on 21 June 1950. The book makes clear that Foreign Minister Robert Schuman opened the conference the day before. Were the authors aware of what he said? Clearly. The book quotes part of Schuman's opening speech on 20 June 1950 in the Salon d'Horloge of the French Foreign Ministry. 'We feel that we are not allowed to fail in this task, to give up without reaching a conclusion. Never before, I might underline, have States ever agreed to delegate a part of their sovereignty jointly to a supranational body: never before had they even conceived of doing such a thing.'
Firstly, a biased historian betrays himself by being willingly ignorant of facts and logic. Schuman employed the word, supranational, that Monnet said that he 'didn't fancy and never liked'. Apparently it was too difficult to leave out the word from a nice quotation. According to the Foreign Minister this supranational principle was the key of the whole conference and the whole plan to save Europe. It is difficult to understand how anyone could give leadership to a conference on the revolutionary supranational principle that was 'without precedent in the modern world' (as Schuman said) if, as Monnet, you disliked the word. Monnet seems unperturbed by this illogicality. But if he did not invent the much despised word supranational, why did he lay claim to the words European Community which are intimately connected with it?
Secondly, a biased and untrue autobiographer cuts out what contradicts his self-centered message. If Monnet and his team had published what Schuman said a few sentences further in this speech -- and they must have had Schuman's speech before them -- they would have not made such a flagrantly falsified claim to the history of Europe. Schuman explains quite precisely what the conference is all about.
What exactly? To create a peace-making European Community! This is what Schuman said: '...what is important and is written in bold letters as the purpose of the plan is our willingness to bring together in a joint and permanent work of peace two nations, which over centuries have fought each other in bloody conflict. What is important is thus to eliminate from our European Community a latent cause of the trouble, distrust and anxiety. What is important is the hope of founding on the basis of this peaceful cooperation a solid European edifice accessible to all nations of good will.'
According to Schuman's analysis the European Community already existed. It existed the day before Monnet invented the term! The purpose of the conference was to give the European Community supranational institutions. They had been discussed by many people for two years previously! Apparently Monnet did not know! Schuman described how the intergovernmental conference was to be organised so as to avoid egotistical control or national blockage. Discussions were delegated to working groups with specific European tasks and a supranational European vision of their goal.
Much to Monnet's astonishment, the key institutions appeared in the separate working groups at the conference. Monnet could not say he invented these either! The working groups were attended not by Monnet, but by some of Schuman's colleagues who were familiar with the legal definition of a supranational Community. Schuman talked to each working group from time to time. He said he wanted to check whether they were approaching their tasks from a European point of view and to help resolve any problems. Monnet does not mention this.
Schuman's introductory speech is full of key information about the origin, purpose and future of this European Community. The working groups took it seriously and followed the principles. Monnet does not quote further from this key speech except for the small extract. It would give too much away.
In the two year period before this conference, Schuman had announced that he was setting up an international study programme for analysing the different possibilities of 'federation or confederation' to unite Europe in a democratic framework. Where and when did he announce it? One occasion was at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in Paris in 1948. The next year at the United Nations he described why it was necessary to create other European institutions of a supranational type besides that of the Council of Europe, which was doing the pioneer work for democracy. He explained the need for a European Community based on supranational principles in a major speech at St James's Palace in London in May 1949. He had also given a long historic analysis of the need for a supranational Community in May 1949 at Strasbourg before the Council started its work. This speech was distributed to all parliamentarians of twelve founder States of the Assembly of the Council of Europe. They immediately set about creating study groups to analyse this new concept.
Was Monnet interested in this? Not at all. He wrote that 'I gave little attention to these proposals' or 'pious wishes' at the Council of Europe (p334). Monnet and his writers seem curiously ignorant also of Schuman's long and detailed speech in Brussels in December 1949. This and others explained why and how the supranational experiment would be applied to coal and steel.
In the previous commentaries, the following is clear:
Does the European Commission take historic, political, economic and spiritual information about their origins seriously? Have they debunked falsehoods and fibs? Have they realized they are treading on thin ice when they support extravagant personal claims by Jean Monnet? Judge for yourself. This is what the EU's official online information site www.europa.eu says:
The French economic advisor and politician Jean Monnet dedicated himself to the cause of European integration. He was the inspiration behind the "Schuman Plan", which foresaw the merger of West European heavy industry.
Monnet was from the region of Cognac in France. When he left school at 16 he travelled internationally as a cognac dealer, later also as a banker. During both World Wars he held high positions involved with the coordination of industrial production in France and United Kingdom.
As top advisor of the French government, he was the main inspiration behind the famous "Schuman declaration" of 9 May 1950, which led to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community and, as such, is considered to be the birth of the European Union. Between 1952-55 he was the first president of its executive body.
It would, however, be unjust to limit Monnet's influence to the economic sphere. His famous and much-quoted phrase was "We unite people, not states". Today's EU programmes for cultural and educational exchange follow in this tradition.
And the Commission is still wondering why they lack the trust of the public! As stated above, Jean Monnet was the first President of the Commission (High Authority). This presented unusual possibilities for personal-centred propaganda. That was half a century ago. Why has nothing changed since?
Why has the academic community made so little progress in the essentials of supranational Community-based governance? Why have so many professors pursued research-as-usual, seemingly neglecting the revolutionary supranational principle announced by Schuman?
Is it possibly because governments -- who are mainly interested in intergovernmentalism -- have wangled millions in subsidies from EU funds for such matters? This EU programme for cultural and educational exchange is called the Jean Monnet Programme. Has it created a community of scholars that refuse to criticize the European Community assertions of Jean Monnet? Which EU-funded academic, a 'Jean Monnet Professor', will stand up and say Jean Monnet was guilty of dubious practice and shading the facts about European integration? Such professors are likely to experience sudden lack of support. Their Jean Monnet chairs would be quickly withdrawn from under their professorial posteriors.
Europa.eu tells us the following: The EU Jean Monnet Programme funds academic work presently in 62 countries across the five continents. Between 1990 and 2009, the Action has helped to set up 141 Jean Monnet European Centres of Excellence, 775 Jean Monnet Chairs and 1 137 Jean Monnet Modules and permanent courses. These projects bring together 1 500 professors, and reach 250 000 students every year.
Instead of creating supranational institutions that would enhance supranational values like honesty and critical scientific research, the Commission has managed to apply taxpayers' money to propagate a distorted concept of history, blind Europeans from Europe's energy blackmail, its monetary disasters, and other planetary crises while reinforcing a counterfeit democracy as a substitute for a supranational Community of European democracies.
The problem will not go away. The longer the Commission waits to tackle it, the more outraged will be the public reaction.
Everyone loses from this. Whenever anything goes wrong, or someone else wants the same product (whether a wheel or world peace), he directs himself to the supposed inventor for help. But the fraudster has no real understanding about how European peace was achieved in the first place or how to make peace between other countries in today's world that is increasingly inflamed by war. Europe is heading for multiple trials. The world is again on the brink of major wars. It is high time to tell the truth.
Why did Monnet publish such an outrageous claim that could easily be shown to be false? He is not here to explain. Schuman was long dead and he did not have a family. First, however, it should be admitted that the Mémoires were written by a small group of ghostwriters. But that makes the scandal worse. Surely among the writing team of esteemed political scientists and journalists, there must have been someone who knew the truth. Monnet could have made a mistake or forgotten the facts. But could all of them together? Did none of them object to twisting the facts? Mémoires usually have as a purpose the self-aggrandizement of the author. Did not someone in his team or the publishers warn him he was going a little too far?
Secondly, Monnet put his name to the book. He should have checked the facts himself. He is ultimately responsible for falsifications, fabrications and errors. Monnet however made similar outrageous claims reported in other publications and interviews. So it must be presumed that Monnet promoted the idea. Did he mislead himself in wishful thinking that he was the inventor? Here we are entering into the area of historical psychology and the domain of political fraud which is beyond the space for this commentary. He confessed he had a bad memory. Is this sufficient as an excuse for a matter of world importance?
What are the facts? Monnet describes the exact day when the idea of a European Community supposedly came to him. It was 21 June 1950. At the request of the Robert Schuman, the French Government had agreed that Monnet should be chairman of the first intergovernmental conference in order to establish the Schuman Plan. Schuman had announced the Government's agreement on this Plan on 9 May 1950. The Monnet Mémoires downgrade Schuman's achievements. They cannot even recall correctly when Schuman was Prime Minister (it is not mentioned at all) and describe him as either Minister of Finance or a gullible Foreign Minister desperate for Monnet's help.
This is what Monnet Mémoires say in a section entitled 'Invention': 'I believe recalling that on that day (21 June 1950) I named 'the European Community' as being the objective we would like to attain.' Thus according to this much used text, the identity of the founding entity for Europe, the European Community, was named on 21 June 1950. It became the GOAL of the international effort on the same day. The alleged conceiver of the name and originator of the strategic objective was Jean Monnet. To remove any doubt about this claim the book's index has under European Community: 'term invented by Jean Monnet.'
This claim may seem utterly extraordinary to some people who are not easily duped. It implies that from the time of the Schuman Proposal on 9 May 1950, the Foreign Minister, nor any other body had a name for the new structure to be created. How could the political configuration or the process be discussed without a name? This was not something of no importance: it was an entity that would stop two thousand years of European wars.
That silence, that lack of a name, occurs only in the mind and words of Jean Monnet. He or the co-writers of the Mémoires seem willfully ignorant of the facts. That is, they discarded all facts that disproved their case. That is precisely how nations used to write their histories of Europe, glorifying any victories and ignoring any defeats, while denigrating all who opposed their egotistical views.
The conference to prepare the founding treaty of Europe did not open on 21 June 1950. The book makes clear that Foreign Minister Robert Schuman opened the conference the day before. Were the authors aware of what he said? Clearly. The book quotes part of Schuman's opening speech on 20 June 1950 in the Salon d'Horloge of the French Foreign Ministry. 'We feel that we are not allowed to fail in this task, to give up without reaching a conclusion. Never before, I might underline, have States ever agreed to delegate a part of their sovereignty jointly to a supranational body: never before had they even conceived of doing such a thing.'
Firstly, a biased historian betrays himself by being willingly ignorant of facts and logic. Schuman employed the word, supranational, that Monnet said that he 'didn't fancy and never liked'. Apparently it was too difficult to leave out the word from a nice quotation. According to the Foreign Minister this supranational principle was the key of the whole conference and the whole plan to save Europe. It is difficult to understand how anyone could give leadership to a conference on the revolutionary supranational principle that was 'without precedent in the modern world' (as Schuman said) if, as Monnet, you disliked the word. Monnet seems unperturbed by this illogicality. But if he did not invent the much despised word supranational, why did he lay claim to the words European Community which are intimately connected with it?
Secondly, a biased and untrue autobiographer cuts out what contradicts his self-centered message. If Monnet and his team had published what Schuman said a few sentences further in this speech -- and they must have had Schuman's speech before them -- they would have not made such a flagrantly falsified claim to the history of Europe. Schuman explains quite precisely what the conference is all about.
What exactly? To create a peace-making European Community! This is what Schuman said: '...what is important and is written in bold letters as the purpose of the plan is our willingness to bring together in a joint and permanent work of peace two nations, which over centuries have fought each other in bloody conflict. What is important is thus to eliminate from our European Community a latent cause of the trouble, distrust and anxiety. What is important is the hope of founding on the basis of this peaceful cooperation a solid European edifice accessible to all nations of good will.'
According to Schuman's analysis the European Community already existed. It existed the day before Monnet invented the term! The purpose of the conference was to give the European Community supranational institutions. They had been discussed by many people for two years previously! Apparently Monnet did not know! Schuman described how the intergovernmental conference was to be organised so as to avoid egotistical control or national blockage. Discussions were delegated to working groups with specific European tasks and a supranational European vision of their goal.
Much to Monnet's astonishment, the key institutions appeared in the separate working groups at the conference. Monnet could not say he invented these either! The working groups were attended not by Monnet, but by some of Schuman's colleagues who were familiar with the legal definition of a supranational Community. Schuman talked to each working group from time to time. He said he wanted to check whether they were approaching their tasks from a European point of view and to help resolve any problems. Monnet does not mention this.
Schuman's introductory speech is full of key information about the origin, purpose and future of this European Community. The working groups took it seriously and followed the principles. Monnet does not quote further from this key speech except for the small extract. It would give too much away.
In the two year period before this conference, Schuman had announced that he was setting up an international study programme for analysing the different possibilities of 'federation or confederation' to unite Europe in a democratic framework. Where and when did he announce it? One occasion was at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in Paris in 1948. The next year at the United Nations he described why it was necessary to create other European institutions of a supranational type besides that of the Council of Europe, which was doing the pioneer work for democracy. He explained the need for a European Community based on supranational principles in a major speech at St James's Palace in London in May 1949. He had also given a long historic analysis of the need for a supranational Community in May 1949 at Strasbourg before the Council started its work. This speech was distributed to all parliamentarians of twelve founder States of the Assembly of the Council of Europe. They immediately set about creating study groups to analyse this new concept.
Was Monnet interested in this? Not at all. He wrote that 'I gave little attention to these proposals' or 'pious wishes' at the Council of Europe (p334). Monnet and his writers seem curiously ignorant also of Schuman's long and detailed speech in Brussels in December 1949. This and others explained why and how the supranational experiment would be applied to coal and steel.
In the previous commentaries, the following is clear:
- Monnet did not know how to stop wars in Europe
- Monnet did not know what was involved in applying the supranational principle to economics, politics and industries;
- Monnet did not have a plan for European democracy.
- Monnet also made unjustifiable claims to have invented the European Community concept.
Does the European Commission take historic, political, economic and spiritual information about their origins seriously? Have they debunked falsehoods and fibs? Have they realized they are treading on thin ice when they support extravagant personal claims by Jean Monnet? Judge for yourself. This is what the EU's official online information site www.europa.eu says:
The French economic advisor and politician Jean Monnet dedicated himself to the cause of European integration. He was the inspiration behind the "Schuman Plan", which foresaw the merger of West European heavy industry.
Monnet was from the region of Cognac in France. When he left school at 16 he travelled internationally as a cognac dealer, later also as a banker. During both World Wars he held high positions involved with the coordination of industrial production in France and United Kingdom.
As top advisor of the French government, he was the main inspiration behind the famous "Schuman declaration" of 9 May 1950, which led to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community and, as such, is considered to be the birth of the European Union. Between 1952-55 he was the first president of its executive body.
It would, however, be unjust to limit Monnet's influence to the economic sphere. His famous and much-quoted phrase was "We unite people, not states". Today's EU programmes for cultural and educational exchange follow in this tradition.
And the Commission is still wondering why they lack the trust of the public! As stated above, Jean Monnet was the first President of the Commission (High Authority). This presented unusual possibilities for personal-centred propaganda. That was half a century ago. Why has nothing changed since?
Why has the academic community made so little progress in the essentials of supranational Community-based governance? Why have so many professors pursued research-as-usual, seemingly neglecting the revolutionary supranational principle announced by Schuman?
Is it possibly because governments -- who are mainly interested in intergovernmentalism -- have wangled millions in subsidies from EU funds for such matters? This EU programme for cultural and educational exchange is called the Jean Monnet Programme. Has it created a community of scholars that refuse to criticize the European Community assertions of Jean Monnet? Which EU-funded academic, a 'Jean Monnet Professor', will stand up and say Jean Monnet was guilty of dubious practice and shading the facts about European integration? Such professors are likely to experience sudden lack of support. Their Jean Monnet chairs would be quickly withdrawn from under their professorial posteriors.
Europa.eu tells us the following: The EU Jean Monnet Programme funds academic work presently in 62 countries across the five continents. Between 1990 and 2009, the Action has helped to set up 141 Jean Monnet European Centres of Excellence, 775 Jean Monnet Chairs and 1 137 Jean Monnet Modules and permanent courses. These projects bring together 1 500 professors, and reach 250 000 students every year.
Instead of creating supranational institutions that would enhance supranational values like honesty and critical scientific research, the Commission has managed to apply taxpayers' money to propagate a distorted concept of history, blind Europeans from Europe's energy blackmail, its monetary disasters, and other planetary crises while reinforcing a counterfeit democracy as a substitute for a supranational Community of European democracies.
The problem will not go away. The longer the Commission waits to tackle it, the more outraged will be the public reaction.
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