Them cracks keep on growing

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Them cracks keep on growing

Deutsche Welle and many others are remarking on how the stresses of the global financial crisis are affecting the unity of the EU.

In particular, it makes some interesting observations on the meeting in Berlin last Sunday, "designed to forge a common EU response to the global financial crisis ahead of a G20 summit". The talks, it says, called by Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, were attended by the leaders of France, Britain, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic, the latter in its capacity as the "rotating EU presidency".

This, of course, was not the EU and the "dwarves" are being left out. Sweden's Carl Bildt is complaining bitterly that "six to eight" EU member states had been left out of the decision-making loop. 

Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb then admitted to being "extremely worried about the EU's institutional chaos," adding gloomily: "Never in the EU's history has there been a period like this with so many cliques." He goes on to say that: "This confusion is not only undermining small EU member states and the (European) commission, but the council (of all 27 EU members) itself." 

This was at the General Affairs Council, where the EU commission took another knock, when the Council refused to endorse its grandiose plans to swipe €5 billion from the EU budget to fund its latest raft of pork-barrel projects.

It is quite strange how little publicity that has got in the British media, but then of course our gilded fourth estate have much more important things to concern themselves about. But this is a major setback Barroso. The Council has not only rejected the cash grab but has also refused to accept any alternative proposals for funding the projects.

It has to be said that if the government in Britain had put up a €5 billion project, on very dubious legal grounds, and had been slapped back with not even a figleaf on which to rely, it would be all over the headlines but, once again, because it is in Brussels – even though it is our government and our money (part of it), no one wants to know.

DW suggests that the "divisions" witnessed in Brussels on Monday highlighted the EU's difficulties in remaining united "as it struggles to deal with its worst economic downturn in decades."

Furthermore, those divisions are very real. As Ambrose "Armageddon" Evans-Pritchard wrote yesterday, the Germans are having to consider financial measures which fly in the face of eurozone rules, which the commission would be hard put to oppose.

Gradually, step-by-step, the power and authority of the commission is draining into the sand.

Ambrose notes that the architects of EMU were well aware that a one-size-fits-all monetary policy for vastly disparate nations would create serious tensions over time. They gambled, he says, that this would work to their advantage. 

The EU would then be forced to create new machinery to safeguard its investment in the euro. It would be a "beneficial crisis", bringing about the great leap forward to full union. We are, predicts Ambrose, about to find out if they were right. 

Not a little while ago we enjoined our readers to remember the words of the 19th Century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche: "What does not kill us makes us stronger." Then, we observed, if by the end of this financial crisis – if it ever ends – the EU is not a smouldering wreck, it will emerge stronger, more powerful and more arrogant than before. 

It is beginning to look like the smart money should be on "smouldering wreck".

COMMENT THREAD

Yesterday's news

The website publicservice.co.uk, which calls itself "the information portal for the public sector", blandly tells us that: "Galileo to be given military purpose." This is one of the outcomes of the debate in the EU parliament on von Vogau'sown initiative report on which we reported earlier. Thus we are told that:

The European Parliament has confirmed that the Galileo satellite system will be made available to the military and security services of EU member states to enhance their communication capabilities.

It also called for member states to adopt standardised communication technologies that can be used for common capabilities for both defence and security purposes. This applied to satellite-based intelligence, surveillance and warning equipment, unmanned air vehicles, helicopters and telecommunication equipment and air and sea transport. The parliament also called for a common technical standard for secure communications.

When you think, going back, how hotly it was denied that Galileo had any military applications. It was a civilian project under civilian control, etc., etc., repeated ad nauseam. And now it just plops out in an obscure journal, natural as you like, as if it was perfectly uncontentious and hardly worth a comment.

However, if we cast our minds back to various statements on this issue, we can recall Adam Ingram who on 19 January 2005 told the House of Commons:

On Galileo, let me just say that it will be a civil system, under civil control. That has been confirmed by successive EU Transport Councils. The UK has emphasised that that should remain the case. In December … the Transport Council stated that any decision to alter the civil status of Galileo would have to be agreed unanimously by member states under pillar 2 of the EU treaty. That is the constitutional structure under which Galileo exists. It is quite clear that what we have laid down with our NATO partners will protect the integrity of that system. The global positioning system, not Galileo, is currently the basis of NATO operations, and will remain so into the future. Galileo will be a civil system. That has been expressed time and again in the Chamber and elsewhere.

Whatever happened to the Transport Council statement that any decision to alter the civil status of Galileo would have to be agreed unanimously by member states under pillar 2 of the EU treaty? I somehow don't remember any official announcement of a change in status based on a decision by member states.

So it is, another EU project based on a lie, reinforced by our own politicians who so glibly repeat the lies. Galileo always did have military applications and it was always the intention that it should be used to strengthen the ESDP. But, when the lie is admitted, nothing is said, nothing is done. We just go on with our lives, and the "project" marches on, built on its foundation of lies that, in the fullness of time, it cannot even be bothered to conceal.

COMMENT THREAD

The shadow of Auschwitz

The BBC is informing us that Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski "has urged EU governments to contribute to a special fund to maintain the Auschwitz death camp memorial site."

The camp, where Nazi Germany murdered more than one million people - most of them Jews - now consists of decaying buildings, mostly in need of repair. Poland wants international support for a €120m foundation to preserve Auschwitz. 

Sikorski is saying that it was "the last moment to act" to save the site. "If the foundation receives €120m it could use six or seven million euros each year for the conservation of the camp." He adds: "This is really the time to ensure that the last death camp still conserved is maintained for future generations." 

With such huge historical overtones and the burden of guilt carried by this symbol of death, it is almost impossible to discuss this rationally. But there has to come a point when questions have to be asked about the historical drag of the Holocaust and how it still dominates modern politics.

The problem is not the retention of Auschwitz as a memorial to the dead. The problem is the European Union which is, in effect, a living memorial to those horrors.

What very few people fully understand is the extent to which the doctrine of "preventing another war in Europe" drives the ideology of the EU. We are all used to the oft repeated mantra that the EU kept the peace in Europe for (insert number of years here) but what does not come over is how deeply and seriously this is meant, and what an enormous influence it has on EU politics.

Anyone who questions this is immediately reminded of the Holocaust, to the extent that the real, if unspoken, symbol of the EU is not the ring of stars but Auschwitz itself. In such terms, to question the EU is to question the Holocaust – so intimately bound up are the two.

It is that understanding – my understanding – of how deep this vein of history goes – that provoked my earlier reference to Arbeit macht frei in relation to the British purchase of Austrian-built trucks. The reference, for all its emotive overtones, is apposite. The award of the contract was not made on operational or commercial grounds but for ideological reasons.

At the heart of this contract was the deal agreed by Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac in St. Malo in 1998, to build a European Army, the then euphemism being the European Rapid Reaction Force. Anyone who thinks this was anything other than a stepping stone toward the final objective is deluding themselves.

The "colleagues", as with Karl von Wogau, have made their ambitions crystal-clear on this. There is no pretence here, no deception, no cloaking of intentions. They want a European Army. It is their Holy Grail, the final step which must be achieved before the grand experiment of European political integration can be called complete.

If there is any deception it is with our own politicians, who continually and wilfully delude themselves that the "colleagues", who are so clear in stating their ambitions, somehow do not mean what they say. Thus, we have an all-pervading self-deception, where the march towards the European Army is dressed up as "co-operation" and the underlying political agenda is airbrushed away as if it did not exist.

Thus, when it came to awarding the British contract to MAN, our politicians may have deluded themselves that this just a fine gesture, to demonstrate British good faith and our willingness to support European "co-operation". But the "colleagues" see it very differently.

The principle of "synchronisation", about which von Wogau is so enthusiastic, runs deep into the heart and soul of the European "project". This is the fundamental principle whereby, if we are all so heavily synchronised - "interdependent" is another word - we will no longer have the wherewithal to go to war with each other. That is the purpose of European integration, the final cover being to achieve a perfect state of "interdependence".

Thus, more than sixty years after the end of the Second World War, the fear of starting another one is still the main driving ideology behind contemporary European politics. The shadow of Auschwitz looms large in the corridors of Brussels. It is still the dominant force, and drives the project forward during every waking moment.

Thus, when Radek Sikorski evoked the symbolism of Auschwitz, he is appealing to the very heart of the European ideology. But, what he does not realise, perhaps, is that the memorial he seeks to preserve is not in Poland but in Brussels. It should belong in Poland.

Thus, Sikorski should get his €120m to maintain the memorial, so that we never forget. But the corresponding deal is that we should dismantle the shrine in Brussels that is the EU, turn away from its sterile, backwards-looking ideology and get on with our lives. We should look to the future instead of being trapped, perpetually in our past.