Commission Debate 15: Cartels, political and commercial: Who stifles the voice of the people and counsels the Council?
Tags: armaments, budget, cabel, cartel, cheat, citizen, coal, Commission, Community,Constitution, corruption, Council, counsel, counterfeit, Court, democracy, Elections,energy, Europe, foreign, France, funds, honest, Ireland, Irish, Justice, legal, Lisbon,minister, moral, Netherlands, oligarchy, opinion, Parliament, Political, President, prime,referendum, religious, Rome, scandle, Schuman, sovereign, steal, steel, tax, treaty,trick, Union, vote
As the only institution allowed to propose European legislation, the European Commission represents the general interest of the whole Community. As an independent, impartial, honest broker, it represents all the people, all the organisations of civil society involved and all the governments forming part of the European Community. That’s what the founding fathers wrote as its function (see article 9 paragraph 5 ofEurope’s founding treaty).
Of course politicians for their own reasons like to confuse matters. They like to use the term European Union. They imply that the EU is the equivalent of the USA. But no one can sign a legal document in the name of the European Union. Only the European Communities have legal personality. There are two of them in existence and one with continued judicial, political, economic, social and moral posterity. That is why the Court is called the Court of Justice of the European Communities. It is not called the EU Court of Justice.
It was the Council that also decided to confuse matters on the Lisbon Treaty. After the Constitutional Treaty was rejected by founder Member States, France and the Netherlands (and would have been by other States given the chance), the Council attempted a scandalous and dishonest trick. They cut up the Treaty into incomprehensible pieces, wrote it out as an incoherent list of amendments, and told the States they had to pass this monstrosity by forcing it through their parliaments using their party machines. The treaty will make major changes to the position of the Commission, rendering it an ideological, biased and politicised body. It will no longer represent all Europeans. It will be factional and combative against parts of society. The Lisbon Treaty is designed to recreate the hypocritical political theatre (that gives politicians publicity) as in the worst of Europe’s parliaments.
Realistic, deep debate, not hollow hystrionics, is part of the supranational democratic system. The founding fathers considered the Commission a key institution in European democracy. They insisted it should be totally independent of all interests groups, whether financial, social, economic,political or otherwise.
Given the centrality of the European Commission in the European democratic system, who should choose the members of the European Commission? The founding treaties are clear. It should be a mixed system with checks and balances. Some members are nominated by the democratic governments (with a means to stop power politics) and others are nominated by an independent system. Why have two systems with safeguards? That is simply to ensure that governments do not abuse their democratic powers and start nominating their buddies, friends and excluding other citizens. That would be political nepotism. Schuman wanted to rule out the domination of the weak by the strong and powerful.
Would democratic governments — composed of party politicians – ever abuse their powers? The answer unfortunately is Yes and how! It would be foolish for democrats – that is those who want honest government – to trust too much in politicians. One has only to look at the present, rancorous Court case in France about dirty tricks involving the President of the French Republic and a former Prime Minister. Some politicians may be honourable. The record of Europe shows we have a major problem. Power tends to corrupt.
We have seen in previous Debate commentaries here that:
·Ministers do not act like democrats: they ‘fix’ the election of the Commission president;
·They have openly abandon original democratic principles without asking the voters;
·They have abandoned the principle of excluding national representatives in Commission;
·They created a counterfeit democracy;
·They have refused for more than half a century to have a single statute or voting system for European Parliament elections;
·They cheat in parliamentary elections;
·They perverted the honourable office of Commissioner that originally excluded job transfer to an even richer paying job: it became a money-making scam;
·They weakened Europe’s anti-cartel system so that it would encourage cartels to finance/ bribe political parties;
·They expose Europe to global dangers in energy security, climate change and global disease pandemics and wars;
·They encourage corruption by restricting the office of Commission President to a political functionary impossible to sack even for the grossest corruption.
So will the Lisbon Treaty improve matters? A self-serving charter largely written by politicians is unlikely to improve the drift to a party oligarchy. That puts all power in the hands of a small political cabel, in other words a political cartel. This sleazy slide to undemocracy dates from de Gaulle’s time. He was very keen on secret deals.
As an illustration to analyse the dangerous situation that Europe has arrived at, look at the situation in Ireland. The political parties are losing public support and donations have fallen by more than 30 per cent over the last year. The Irish Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) revealed the following figures. The political parties received some 140,000 euros in 2007 but only 96,523 euros in 2008. That indicates the declining trust of the public in the political party machines of all colours.
This does not mean that salaries for politicians have declined. On the contrary a new source of money for political parties is flowing from Brussels. It funds all sorts of activities, without ever having been agreed by the citizen taxpayers. Politicians propose and agree extra funding for parties in a closed undemocratic circle typical of a cartel. This funding, milked without consent from the citizen, has become essential for the survival of some political parties.
It is a mistake to identify democracy with party political machines. They arrived comparatively recently in history. Democracy dates from well before any political party existed. Democracy will exist after political parties have disappeared. Loyalty to party has too often become a hollow substitute for moral values. Careerists expect salaries multiple times the average citizen’s and a quick means to become very rich. Democracy relates as Schumansaid to action in the service of the people and acting in agreement with the people. (Pour l’Europe, page 55).
The problem today is that political parties and party machines control most of the levers of power in modern industrialized societies. They do not act with the agreement of the people but against them, for example when referendums say No in France, the Netherlands, Ireland and others are refused because they would also say NO too. Tax and budgets are too often their principal concerns. The parties are however a shell of what they were. And it is not only me who is saying this.
Consider two major multinational firms that are also based in Ireland. Both of them ran hard up against the European Community’s anti-cartel rules. One was refused to complete a merger operation because it would create a monopoly or position of economic dominance in its sector. Another was fined more than a billion euros. Yes one billion euros. 1000,000,000 euros.
Would you expect such firms to be enthusiastic about the Lisbon Treaty? Would they be more enthusiastic than the local corner shop, the one that never got a fine from the European Commission?
Well hardly.
So who is funding the YES vote for the second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty that the Irish people have already rejected? Well, yes. These two multinationals are putting in huge amounts of money. One says it will put in half a million. The other says his firm will contribute ‘a few hundred thousand euros’. Such inprecision makes it sound like small change. This is likely to bring the total of the two firms to around a million. Not bad for multinationals who were told they were bad boys by the European anti-cartel authority. I should add that the billion euro fine is presently under appeal. Is this a relevant part of the calculation?
In the first Irish referendum — which was not good enough for politicians — one businessman put up 200,000 euros for the No camp but as a loan, SIPO said. Even that loan is a couple of times the size of ordinary people’s political contributions. The two firms urging a YES to the Lisbon Treaty are thus creating for the referendum campaign a giant shadow perhaps ten times the size of all Irish political donations.
Does this imply that the multinationals feel that, if the Lisbon Treaty is passed, they will get an easier, less penalty-ridden deal for anti-cartel activities? That is for them to say. It is clear that the Lisbon Treaty will destructively undermine Europe’s anti-cartel powers. They are at the core of how Europe made ‘war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.’ Greed — typified by cartel activity — was identified by Schuman as a principal cause of war. Anti-cartel action has brought Europe unprecedented peace and prosperity. Do we want to destroy it now?
So who is pulling the strings for Europe? According to one of the multinational bosses in the YES lobby, it is not the ‘inept civil service’ . And as for the politicians, who are — in theory — supposed to be democratic representatives of the people, this boss has no confidence in them at all. He says he does ‘not trust incompetent politicians to win the argument alone‘ for the Lisbon Treaty. That is why he is infusing masses of money to get the ‘right‘ answer for his company.
He has raised the stakes. He poured in a lottery fortune by any citizen’s reckoning — except for a multinational’s budget. It is less than a tenth of one per cent of one fine for anti-cartel activities. In such illegalities, the European Commission said one multinational ripped untold billions off citizens and undermined competitor companies’ profits by abusing its dominant position. Cartels, whether industrial or political, steal from honest citizens.
For undemocratic cartels, reinforcing the YES vote has major consequences for their profit line. They establish a dependency culture with the weakened political class that has lost the confidence of the public. The cartel firms can also ask for European funding if they threaten to sack workers or close down plants. Who supplies the cash? The same despised politicians acting through buddies in the Commission and Council. Civil society, that is the tax-payer associations, a vital part fo Schuman’s democratic design in such decisions, have been cut out of vetoing this abusive system of back-handers and growing corruption. De Gaulle said he ‘chloroformed‘ this voice of civil society.
At present there is little or no restraint for any company to spend whatever it wants to influence votes — such as in the Irish referendum. They can create an atmosphere of fear for jobs, homes and security to manipulate the result by emotion, not reason. A referendum is one of the few cases where the public voice is now legally allowed. Companies can outspend any political party. Such companies — whether foreign armaments firms, States with massive sovereign funds, autocratic religious-political entities or energy monopolies — could be ripping off citizens and at the same time encouraging the citizens to vote to stop anti-cartel action or democratic control.
Schuman’s system provided a fully democratic system to counter to any cartels running roughshod over citizens’ rights. The founding treaties need to be activated.
Europe is in serious trouble. It is high time for the citizens to wake up from chloroformed sleep.
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