YOUR DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE
THE ORIGINAL CONCEPT OF SUPRANATIONAL DEMOCRACY FOR EUROPE BROUGHT LONG-LASTING PEACE TO THE CONTINENT. EU'S FOUNDER ROBERT SCHUMAN DESCRIBED DEMOCRACY AS BEING IN THE SERVICE OF THE PEOPLE AND ACTING IN AGREEMENT WITH THE PEOPLE. WHAT'S GOING ON TODAY? SEE ALSO WWW.SCHUMAN.INFO AND HTTP://DEMOCRACY.BLOGACTIV.EU .
21. Commission's vision for Europe 2020: they forgot Democracy!!
What makes a democracy more efficient than a dictatorship? Why did Franco’s Spain lapse into the economic doldrums? Why were Latin American dictatorships corrupt and lacking in vigour and growth? Why were Latin American currencies being constantly devalued? Why did Zimbabwe finally run out of noughts to add to the trillions on its useless paper currency? Why is violence the only means for dictatorships to survive?
It is because dictatorships cannot deal with the complexity of society. Businesses will not invest and workers will not work in an atmosphere of uncertainty. An autocrat can bring in changes overnight. He or she thinks he is being “smart” but it is in the end counterproductive.
Some dictatorships have remarkable growth — but only for an period. They fiddle the currency exchange rates and make their currency so cheap it causes a boom. Then it bursts. Reality sets in. The problem is far greater because a large population has greater expectation and huge disillusions. That is when civil unrest breaks out. A revolution might occur.
Dictatorships like to keep in cahoots with big business. They like to respond to their needs. They have an awe of business. Naively they think that if they please big business the country will all be rich. They are wrong. You can create a slave economy but you cannot make slaves rich. They will demand equality. Bye, bye dictatorship. Nor can you maintain constant growth and a contented population, if you do not allow citizens to have free expression.
Now let us ask the opposite question: Why are Western countries, in Europe, North America and Australasia, the most educated, richest and most productive societies in the world? Why do their currencies dominate world trade?
Doesn’t democracy have something to do with it? Clearly. And it is because they are able to deal with complex issues. The best democracies develop unprecedented freedoms for their citizens. They can criticize anything. They are not violent. And above all, in the very best of them, the citizens know how to exercise individual, associative and governmental SELF-DISCIPLINE.
Conclusion: the less democracy we have, the less we can expect to have prosperity, stability and freedoms. Given this elementary lesson of history, what should we expect from a Commission paper that calls itself EUROPE 2020 A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth?
I would hope that it would deal with how democratic European citizens could continue the example of our national democracies. Do the Commission SMARTSTERS deal with this core issue? NO
THE WORD “DEMOCRACY” DOES NOT APPEAR IN ALL THE PAPER!
Not very smart! There is one reference to democratic but it is nothing to do with European institutions. Instead they behave just like the disreputable gangs mentioned in the first part of this commentary. They say they will deal with stakeholders. That is another word for lobbyists. So this so-called SMART strategy for sustainable and inclusive growth will end in the dustbin of history in the company of tinpot dictators. The system they describe is an autocracy — that is a system in this case run by a three-party cartel that excludes civil society — surrounded by lobbyists.
Europeans should ask: IS THAT WHAT THEY WANT, EITHER NOW OR IN 2020? It is exactly what the people of the Iberian peninsula, the countries under the Soviet boot in Central and Eastern Europe, and the Greeks under the Colonels wanted to get away from! They thought they were joining a Community of shared valued and enhanced democracy! Instead the Commission paper promises them North Korean style government!
The paper fawningly recommends more powers to the secretive European Council and the Council of Ministers. What sort of INDEPENDENT, smart thinking is that?
“The European Council will have full ownership and be the focal point of the new strategy,” it says. Ownership?!! A European institution that calls itself democratic MUST open its doors so the citizens can see and hear those present and judge the quality of their interventions. The citizens should be able to judge their representatives.
If they can’t, then the the citizens are living in some modification, transmogrification or transformation of a dictatorship or autocratic system. Schuman called such shadow democracies “COUNTERFEIT” democracies. He said that a real democracy must be judged by two criteria. It must SERVE the people, not serve the leaders. And secondly it provide the means to allow the citizens and associations to disagree or to agree with any measure that is taken in its name. They should be able to make their own INDEPENDENT analysis.
Civil society, the key element, has been short-changed and short-circuited out of the paper. Is Parliament supposed to take on this job? That is absurd. It has not even set its own house in order. The Parliament has NEVER had an election according to the legal requirements of the original treaties. That says there should be ONE election for all Europeans not 27 national elections for the European Parliament.
For civil society, there are perfectly suitable institutions like the Economic and Social Committeethat need to be developed democratically. They have never even had an election at all! It is increasingly URGENT that they should fulfill their mandate to hold elections among ALL organised civil society associations who are implicated in European legislation. A move to give the Parliament powers in this area is anti-democratic because it denies the citizen the right to be represented in a non-party political way as the Founding Fathers wisely decided.
The Commission needs to be reformed so that it is really INDEPENDENT. It should have asCommissioners personalities whose independence is beyond doubt. It should not be stuffed with people who represent only 2 percent of the population. That is massive discrimination and a violation of citizens’ human rights.
The Commission needs to get back to the drawing board. It needs to learn a bit about history. It needs to review its own history. And it needs to set a strategy not only to save European Democracy but also to save the planet.
08 MARCH, 2010
20 Power grab against organized civil society in EU's Lisbon Treaty
“Civil Society? — throw it out of the decision-making process!” That is the new law of the Commission in cahoots with the Council. A communication of the Commission to the Council and the Parliament deals with this new power-grab under the Lisbon Treaty. It comes under articles 290 and 291 of Lisbon Treaty’s TFEU. Powers to amend and supplement legislation are being introduced without the democratic control of non-party consultative bodies. When documents like these speak of “efficiency“, the citizen should always ask: What democratic supervision are you trying to short-circuit?
Obviously all this is morally reprehensible. It is totally undemocratic. Why? because it leaves all decisions to be concocted between three complicit institutions. They were ORIGINALLY designed to perform separate functions. None of them is now independent of the others. And they do not represent real citizens. They are all dominated by a cartel of politicos. It is a political cartel without any opposition. They are not responsible to anyone but themselves. So they think.
* The Commission is dominated now by political parties. It is a fief of a cartel. All Commissioners are exclusively members of political parties.
* The Parliament is dominated by two or three main parties. The small parties cannot influence matters much. Debate is stifled.
* The secretive Council of Ministers is dominated not so much by governments but by political parties in government. When did they last act like Statesmen?
The founding fathers thought such a concentration of power in the hands of two or three political parties was dangerous. They were right. There is nothing to stop these delegated powers of articles 290 and 291 being used for overt or covert party political purposes. Behind the arcane working of political machines, some hidden industrial or financial cartel may also be milking the public. (I hope I am not giving the rather suspect members of the political class any criminal ideas!)
And it will be the taxpaying citizen who pays again. The founding fathers said that the PEOPLE should decide matters that concern them. NOT parties. They defined the New Europe as one in which the People were FREE TO CHOOSE. And guess what? The political cartel refuse to publish the founding Europe Declaration of the EU.
That menace against real democracy is why the founding fathers specified two restraints. Firstly, the Commission should be independent of parties and also of national governments. Curiously that specification is still in the super-duper Lisbon Treaty! Article 17 of the Treaty on European Union says ‘Members of the Commission shall be chosen on the ground of their general competence and European commitment from persons whose independence is beyond doubt.‘
Don’t make me laugh! How come ‘independence beyond doubt‘ means that they ALL have to be members of a political party. That means they are dependent on that membership. As for ‘beyond doubt‘, NO MEMBER OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC EVER HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXPRESS A DOUBT!! No non-party citizen was ALLOWED to give an opinion that had the least effect! That is the choice of an autocrat or dictator.
To influence the cartel’s choice, you would first have to buy a party card. Then you need years of patting shoulders and flattering. Next you have to find your way into the SECRET, inner chambers of the party headquarters. In some room or other, some SECRET committee decides which salary-hungry, pensioned off/ failed or opportunistic politician is to be designated THEIR Commissioner. That party committee may even be in a tax-paid government building. It is appropriated for party purposes. Commissioners are the products of pure party nepotism!
The politicians who framed this antidemocratic clause in the Treaty of Lisbon deliberately chose an illegal, cartel approach. Note the vague, passive verb ’shall be chosen’ with no identifiable system defining WHO makes the choice. Nepotism was pre-planned.
Those are tough words. But true. An honest politician would not agree to something that goescontrary to the Law of the Treaties. Tell me if I am wrong! Even this Lisbon Treaty invites dishonesty. Who is going to be the first to say: I resign because the procedure is contrary to law. I have not been properly appointed for this publicly paid-for post. It has not been advertised. There was no Call for Candidates, no Jury at the European level. Not a single independent non-party person was ever considered. Public opinion was gagged. It could not express doubts. My posting is contrary to the Treaty specifications. It was ‘fixed’ in secret. A Court would judge the Commissioners to be illegally ‘fixed’ by a grubby cartel. No government objected to other governments’ candidates. Their silence is eloquent. It is evidence of a cartel. And this post provides a suspiciously big, big salary from the public purse as if I should remember with gratitude who gave me the job. I don’t want to be an object for party nepotism. A big public protest will explode and I don’t want to be seen as another grubby politician.
The three institutions are now being exclusively run by party politicians who refuse the slightest recourse to Public Opinion. What a haughty disdain they have for law — all of them. Who will speak out? Where is the whistle-blower that we have in other cartel cases?
Secondly the founding fathers said that organized Civil Society should have a major role in decision-making. And when I say major I mean a MAJOR, MAJOR role in decision-making. Even though the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of Regions are supposed to deal with geo-economic and social matters that have no specific political content they are largely dominated by party political figures. Even these poor souls, who were nominated and agreed in secret in the Council of Ministers have been cut out of the loop. They are supposed to represent EUROPEAN consumers, manufacturers and workers. Instead they are always national nominees. The treaties say they should organize European elections for organized civil society. They didn’t. They never managed to organize a European election at the EcoSoc in 50 years.
This exposes the further power grab by parties. There is no reason why all categories of Civil Society be restricted to those people holding party cards. It is supposedly a democratic institution, designed to debate technical details of all legislation. They are to expose to European debate all obvious aspects and unforeseen consequences of proposed measures. They are to check that that regulations are not being drafted secretly by lobbyists. A debate on legislative proposals should involve three organized sections of civil society. consumers, producers and workers. Most citizens work, consume and invest. They are the best judge, not parties.
What have the political parties to do with technical matters, like standards in commerce? Are we to have a conservative and left-wing position on what is the length of a meter, the weight of a kilogram, how to measure pollution or even Internet standards? That is highly dangerous. Party politicians can’t be trusted to have standards in book keeping as the present monetary crisis demonstrates. They fiddle the books. By billions.
Now with the delegated powers of articles 290 and 291 this illegal take-over doesn’t matter. The EcoSoc is irrelevant. They are suppressed.
This new anti-democratic “innovation” contrasts starkly with the founding supranational philosophy of Europe.
The big danger with the articles 290 and 291 is that it will provide even more possibilities to fiddle the books. All measures will be initiated and then agreed among party stalwarts, whether of the right, left or center.
I expect the Commission to throw up its hands in feigned protest. Well no, they will say, we are only fulfilling the mandate given us by the Lisbon Treaty. What mandate? The only way the wretched articles got into a European treaty was by agreement with whom? Well the same politicos who will benefit from them. It gives them carte blanche. The party cartel lacks public support and whatever support they now have is declining precipitously with every parliamentary election.
And the most ironic of all this. The Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of Regionsall gave their full support to the Lisbon Treaty. I had to write to the Ombudsman before they even deigned to write a reply to these letters — ONE YEAR LATE!
The members of the Consultative Committees — that treaties give powers sometimes greater than Parliament — voted in effect to cut their own throats when they supported articles 290 and 291. Where was Civil Society when they agreed to this? Where was the Europe-wide debate that the two Consultative Committees were supposed to have organized to analyze, examine and debate European democracy?? They said the Lisbon Treaty was to be applauded because it made Europe more efficient. Yes, by cutting them out of the picture. What a disaster for democracy!
They supported the message of the Council: ‘Democracy and Public opinion go hang!’
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