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Commission Debate 6: Proof that the Commission must be independent and that there never were national Commissioners

Posted by David on 27/04/09 
Tags: Animal, arrogance, big, brother, Commission, Commissioner,Community, debate, democracy, democratic deficit, Elections, EU, Europe,farm, George, High Authority, independent, oligarchy, Orwell, parties, Political,Schuman, surplus 

First step: Read the Treaties!
Here’s what Europe’s founding treaty says: “Members … shall exercise their functions in complete independence, in the general interest of the Community. In the fulfilment of their duties, they shall neither solicit nor accept instructions from any government or from any organization. They shall abstain from all conduct incompatible with the supranational character of their functions.” (Treaty of Paris, article 9).

In the next line the treaty forbids the governments from trying to influence the Members. “Each Member State undertakes to respect this supranational character and not to seek to influence the members … in the execution of their duties.”

The present Nice Treaty says much the same thing … with one exception. Nationalists and Gaullists feared or objected to the word, supranational. Supranational democracy was one thing they did not want. Why? It would quickly show them up as less than democratic at home! They therefore caused this word to be struck out at the first revision of the treaties.

It was a futile gesture. The meaning is the same. Supranational means that the Commission is totally independent of all interests. The main text remains. They cut the word but not the definition and the legal obligation. They could not replace it. No government had the audacity to try to substitute it with a phrase that said: ‘Member States have the right to influence a Commissioner especially if the Commissioner is of the same nationality and it is a Gaullist government or nationalist government of that ilk.’ That would be just like saying we have the right to bribe the referee in a football match.

In theory, in law and by agreement in this compact made between all democratic member states, Commissioners remain free to make proposals subject only to their own judgement (which should be based on wide European experience and impartial information) and their conscience. They have to form judgements based on talking out questions of Europe in detail in conjunction with the other members, exercising the same faculties of honesty, analysis andnon-ideological deductions.

In practice what is happening today? Governments feel free to act in total disregard to their legal obligations. The governments ask Commissioners to resign and become ministers. The governments have no right to do this. Nor have the Commissioners have any right to take up such a ministerial post – according to the law of the treaties. They also signed a pledge at the start of the term saying that they would take no instructions from a government. What can be more serious as an instruction than if someone says to you: Resign! We will give you another job.

The Founding Fathers in order to stop dead such abuse, wrote into the original treaty that no Commissioner was allowed to take a job, remunerated or not, within three years of resigning or leaving office. Do the present Commissioners have no shame?

Who are these Commissioners replaced with? Why another politician of course. Some countries like the UK have the effrontery of replacing a man with a woman. Effrontery? The UK government explains that they are equal opportunity employers! What! Are only politicians equal? This is right out of George Orwell’s Animal Farm! Everyone is equal but politicians are more equal than others! I imagine our governments could open George Orwell’s eyes on a few other ideas. There are some 60 million people in the UK, and I did not see an advertisement asking qualified people to apply for the job. Please drop me a line if anyone saw it!!

Some 500 million people are watching and judging the Commissioners as to whether they are independent. Some pass the test; others fail. It is far too tempting for Commissioners to assume they must become a champion for a particular interest group or political ideology. For those outside such interest groups, they look as trustworthy as a crooked cop.

For national leaders, selecting the Commission presents them with another temptation. What better place to create high-paid jobs for the political boys and girls that they did not want at home, than to send them to Brussels? The voting public on the other hand has now got a real Litmus test to show whether politicians at home are really honest. Do they insist that the Commission should not be a dumping ground for politicians? Check the record of the last decade since new treaties began to be discussed! In recent years hardly one has passed the test. We are in a period not so much of a democratic deficit but a ‘surplus of arrogance’, as one commissioner called it.

And it is the allegedly democratic political parties who are installing this new big brother and big sister oligarchy.

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Commission Debate 5: Rejoice, you Irish! The Cartel is providing political Kommissars for everyone!

Posted by David on 20/04/09 
Tags: cartel, chauvin, Commission, Community, Constitution, democracy,democrats, diplomats, Elections, engineer, flag, Hirsch, History, Irish, June,Justice, Kommissar, Lisbon treaty, Mayer, Monnet, nepotism, politicians,referendum, Reuter, Schuman, scoundrels, supranational, vote 

In what amounts to a political cartel, European leaders have insisted that the Irish people cannot be trusted. This autumn the Irish will have to vote again. They expect the Irish in general and each voter in particular to behave like a schizophrenic. They must grovel and say they were wrong when they voted No to the Lisbon Treaty in June 2008. European leaders expect the average Mr O’Flaherty and his good wife to proudly boast in their local pub that they have seen the light and have now voted Yes when last year they told everyone in the pub they had resolutely voted No.

In all probability, this attempt by the political cartel to override democratic decision-making will fail. I have predicted this already last year.

The political cartel believes it has fixed the vote. I call the leaders a cartel because that is exactly how they are acting. In the economic area when a firm or group of firms does not believe in the free market, it fixes the supply to increase profits. They manipulate other aspects to conspire against the consumer. In the political sphere our leaders apparently do not believe in the free market of ideas. They need extra-legal powers of persuasion to manipulate the free market. The rejected Constitutional Treaty, cut up into amendments so no one would read it and called the Lisbon Treaty is the same disreputable operation. With an oligarchic political power grab so close, some politicians consider anything is worth a try. They throw morality overboard together with the clearly expressed public disapproval of their shenanigans. Hardly worth a peanut. Some have even declared publicly how much they are looking forward to benefiting from the plethora of new jobs that the new treaty will afford to their class. They are quite willing to blacken the name of any poor soul who opposes them. Many politicians are expert in this. A serious debate is a different matter.

Example: What would you tell your grandchildren about when you deceived Europeans by making them submissively accept what French, Dutch, Irish (and many others given the chance) had clearly rejected? How do you claim that Europe is a great democracy, a beacon in the world, that the children should be proud of their history of the fight for justice, when the Lisbon Treaty is the product of such squalid, dishonest, secretive manipulation of cut and paste? How will this debauched episode against European democracy plotted in a secret conclave by so-called democratic leaders in denial of all the promises made at Laeken go down in the history books?

The problem is the Irish. The politicians say that the Irish have to vote again and therefore we must give them some sweeteners or bribes. To read the press, this is a familiar area for many politicians. The only really substantial political bribe is that which will proclaim that all Member States should have their own national Commissioner. Any other verbal declaration will be revealed as useless in the media as none will change a comma in the Lisbon Treaty. With no great evidence, they say the Irish were afraid of ‘losing their national Commissioner.’ That was not necessarily the incumbent Commissioner who had not read the Lisbon Treaty before the last referendum. Hardly anyone could explain how it could work or recall why the original Community worked so well.

It was the French Presidency that came up with this neo-chauvinism at the European Council last year. Shame on the French! The French President looked so pleased with himself, the press might have thought he personally had discovered Charles de Gaulle’s tricolour underpants!

What a stroke of genius! In a democracy every Member State should have its own political Kommissar. Exclusively, a politician of course! No ordinary people are allowed. It seems incredibly neglectful of the Founding Fathers but some Commissioners (even though they were experienced democrats) have not even been politicians! In fact the Founding Fathers insisted that early Commissioners should not be active politicians at all! It just shows how lacking in brains the Founding Fathers were. For nearly 60 years, apparently none of them had thought of such a brilliant idea! And what’s more, some of them were French, like Schuman, Reuter, Monnet, Mayer, Hirsch. They had included former prime ministers, brilliant engineers, subtle communicators, great lawyers and diplomats etc. To believe the French Presidency none of them had the genius to consider having a politician from each State to be their Commissioner!

What a nonsense! What an irresponsible act of the European Institutions, especially the Council of Ministers, not to explain to their people and to the Irish how the Community SHOULD work. Why did the Council not provide an elementary history lesson of European integration? It would make clear why there should never be such thing as a ‘national Commissioner’. And if the Council thought that the Irish voted No for this reason, then they were wrong. They twigged that the Lisbon Treaty is unworkable rubbish made up of conflicting ideas with a long list of conflictual job descriptions for the Cartel’s boys and girls.

Let us start by dispensing with two myths.

Firstly, no treaty in all the history of European integration says that any State should even have a national representative in the Commission. Secondly, seeing that is the case, it follows that no treaty says that a State’s representative should be an ex-politician, disgraced politicians, retired politician, temporarily exported politician or any politician of any size, shape, colour, form, gender or age.

The treaties say the reverse. They say with a unanimous voice that entire Commission should be INDEPENDENT. They say the members of the Commission should take absolutely NO instructions from any government of which they may or may not be a national. Thus any Commissioner of French nationality should not take or solicit instructions from the French government. Can everyone even a politician understand that? Nor should the Commissioners ‘solicit instructions’ from any group, whether political party, commercial group, or any form of association. Is that clear? The members of the Commission should be INDEPENDENT. Each and every Commissioner should act in the general interests of the Community. Any ideological, political, sectoral, regional, commercial or professional or national interest is ruled out. The Commissioner should be be as pure and above suspicion as the cleanest judge in the fairest Court.

The treaties are so clear that it is a wonder that anyone could have the slightest doubt. It should be a source of amazement and wonder to behold the present European Commission. It is stuffed to the gunnels with national politicians!! A lot of them are active politicians! Further there are 27 of them — whose nationalities correspond exactly to the nationalities of the 27 Member States!

Who has the impudence to place national politicians as their members of the Commission? No one but Europe’s ‘democratic’ national leaders, apparently democratically elected, of 27 democratic governments! Many have university degrees in law and politics. These are the people who should be policing the treaties to see the articles are respected! Are any of them honest? It would take only ONE to say: ‘Hey wait a minute fellow prime ministers. What we are doing is WRONG. The treaties say that we should not be doing this! The treaties say — and good, democratic governance demands — that the number of Commissioners should be reduced to the absolute minimum. We only allowed 27 because of the great enlargement and the treaty says we must reduce them. You know all this dishonest flag-waving and political nepotism will brand us all as political scoundrels. We have more Commissioners than the Chinese have ministers!‘

I, and many European citizens, are still waiting for that honest man or woman to open his mouth.

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