Can the Council and the European Council be taken to Court for illegal action on the budget? The question was raised following my last commentary. Billions of public money are involved in a time of austerity and financial crises. The European Council, the Council of Ministers and the Parliament could all be potential offenders and taken to Court. Why? because they are raising taxes and attempting to increase taxes in secret. Further they are considering how to decide on the use of the tax money in secret. They do not only refuse to tell the public what is going on but they physically exclude the public and the press from meetings. This procedure is illegal. Right of entry or observation is involved. Legal action could be taken at this starting point. Politically the exclusion is also neo-Gaullist. It is completely against thedemocratic principles of the supranational Community system where every cent could be accounted for — democratically. A good prima facie case can be made for bringing a case for illegal action. Firstly, to exclude the public and press from the Conciliation Committee is illegal. This clearly falls foul of Article 15.2. All officialinstitutional consideration of even draft legislation MUST MEET IN PUBLIC. The Conciliation Committee agenda describes exactly the offending action: to consider financial draft legislation. Considering draft legislation is its purpose and that exactly falls under article 15.2. The Treaty paragraph says that an institutional consideration of draft legislation by Council or Parliament must be open. It was closed. It is illegal to exclude the press and the public. The press and any member of the public has the perfect right to complain to the Court. The European Council was also considering draft financial legislation. They claim that are not covered by 15.2. That is dubious. They are definitely covered by the article 15 as a whole. The previous line, 15.1 demands they should reform their past habits and adopt an open format. They ‘shall conduct their work as openly as possible.‘ But there is much more to take into account. The Treaty section starts with Title Two called ‘Provisions having general application‘. The first article, Article 7 demands consistency between policies and actions. Thus the institutions should have consistent rules on open sessions and open formats. As to the European Council’s ‘consideration of draft legislation’, there is no doubt. We have also definite proof in the handout signed by the 12 government leaders that the budget increase should be held to 2.9 percent. They had a long discussion, that is, a consideration of draft financial legislation. They got deeply into details. We have the evidence of the financial discussions initiated by the President of the Parliament and the long discussion with him as further proof. He told the press afterwards he had never had such a long and detailed discussion with the European Council before. He told the press some of the details. This meeting should have been completely public as I have argued for many years based on Schuman’s statements and principles. Thus far more than ‘General principles‘ mentioned by Mr Barroso is involved. In this case whatever the ‘general principles’ were, they were the same as a consideration of draft financial legislation. Even if they were only ‘general principles‘ it is even more important that the session be open. What if the ‘general principles’ included how we can bilk money from the public without them knowing about it? What if we later found out that all the discussants were Mafiosi or were subject to inter-State blackmail? Should not the public know what the ‘general principles‘ are and how they are arrived at? General principles mean the initial consideration of draft financial legislation. So the European Council’s case of innocence is well-cooked if not burnt to a frazzle. Outside the raw discussion of euros and cents, the European Council also discussed matters of mega-fraud. This involves the sum of more than 500 billion euros for a rescue operation. It sparked a lot of criticism. Are the government leaders solving the problem or compounding it? Are they partners in crime? Is there a question of collusion in crime? That is not only my question but one lying before the German Constitutional Court. The topic came up because one Member State (at least) fraudulently changed national statistics. Secondly, the State then misspent public money. Thirdly, when the chickens came home to roost, other States helped out that fraudulent State. Why did the other Member States bail out this fraud and possibly those of other Member States who did the same thing. Was it legal? The German Constitutional Court is considering aspects of the matter at the moment. That is the reason why Treaty changes are necessary — because the bailout may well be illegal as it is based on supporting and committing fraud in support of other fraud. Some governments feel that stronger measures against fraud should be written in a Treaty. No one denies Treaty changes were also discussed. As a general principle, should not the public know about this? Why should the fact be secret? The public has another reason for insisting on openness, a procedural one. That is to expose political fraud when governments do the opposite to public referendum results and put in place an unpopular, undemocratic treaty (such as the Lisbon/Constitutional Treaty). Let us confine ourselves to the financial question of next year’s budget. It makes no sense to have lower ‘technical’ financial committees open (even if they were) and the ‘top people’s Council,’ who dictate the ‘general principles’, closed. That is like blaming bureaucrats and not the politicians who demand certain things are done. Or blaming soldiers and not the generals who order them to commit atrocities. The ‘lower’ Conciliation Committee was in fact attended by the Prime Minister of Belgium, the Parliament President, and the Budget Commissioner. Not exactly lower. That meeting of the Conciliation Committee should be open without doubt. And therefore so should the European Council on which the Belgian Prime Minister sits, and the President of Parliament comes to discuss exactly the same matter with the other 26 government leaders. The moral argument is also important. There is case law. The public has a right to know everything about the raising of taxes and the use of its money. Representatives of the public should not close the doors on the public at any whim. This is especially the case when they are dividing up public money and deciding how much they should tax the public. It is not their pocket money. The European Court has upheld the legal necessity of proper consultation before all legislation. Without proper consultation previously legislation was thrown out and voided. One important ruling was in the Isoglucose case in the 1970s. On the basis of this Parliament insisted that direct elections should take place. They were in the Treaties but had been refused for decades. European Parliament’s members were nominations of governments in national parliaments. Nominations were the Gaullist way to keep democracy down. The case was won by Pierre-Henri Teitgen arguing the case in favour of the power of a democratic Parliament and its prerogatives. Pierre-Henri Teitgen was a close friend of Robert Schuman in whose government he was a key minister. He was an eminent lawyer. He was later judge in the European Court of Human Rights, an institution that he was instrumental in creating. The Court said full procedural consultation was necessary before legislation could be declared valid. Consultation with the public in the budget discussions was denied by physically closing doors. An official had a list of those who were allowed to enter. All others were refused. The treaty says it must be OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. This exclusion of the public at 2.30 pm on 27 October 2010 was an illegal act. Any other repetition at a Conciliation Committee is also illegal. Anyone interested in how their taxes are being collected and spent should attend what the Treaty says is a meeting that must be held IN PUBLIC. The public is therefore welcome to come in great numbers to try to attend the next Conciliation Committee meetings. The dates are the 4, 8 and 11 November. For details journalists should contact the Parliament: Sara AHNBORG Ron KORVER The public should contact their MEP for details or the Commission or the Council of Ministers. The public is more than a partner in the legislation. It is the owner of the money and the boss of the people inside and running the institutions, such as European Council, Council of Ministers, Parliament and the Consultative Committees. It is therefore like paid servants plotting how much they will take from the master’s purse and deciding how they will spend it. The closing of the doors is an act equivalent to piracy, taking other people’s money by a plot and physically excluding the master from the plotting meeting discussing the heist. Then they tell the master/employer ‘It’s none of your business! Keep out!’ That is the significance of the explicit articles of the Lisbon Treaty. What is common sense about the public’s money is now written in Treaty law. It is no small matter. Improper raising of taxes is the cause of centuries of parliamentary struggles, wars and regicide. It led eventually to much of modern governmental law and legitimacy. It is fully a question on the correct functioning of a democracy, where all decisions, according to Schuman’s definition, have to serve the people and be agreed by the people. Legally this issue of open public access and shut doors at institutional meetings on the 2011 budget is an open and shut case. The question only remains: Who will take up the case? WHO WILL KNOCK AT THE DOOR AND COMPLAIN TO THE COURT? With breath-taking frankness, European leaders admitted in public that they had no intention to make European ‘democratic’ institutions open and responsive to civil society. They want them to remain closed and in the hands of a small cartel of politicians and their party machines. But this is ILLEGAL. Their admission flies in the face of both the letter and the spirit even of the Lisbon Treaty — which the party machines voted into effect, sometimes without even reading the text. One principle that escaped their notice is that public money requires an open public debate. The treaty insists on open debate, not secret conclaves. The Lisbon Treaty was not ALL dictated by politicians who wanted more power and more money for their careers. Initially it was called the Constitutional Treaty, with which it is largely identical. (It was never a constitution but merely another treaty as Mr Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, its architect, said many times.) The drafting of that goes back about a decade. Among the groups that were asked to participate were a few who represented organised civil society. There were also a few who remembered some of the democratic principles before the politicians got on their hobby-horse of the power-accreting Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice (MAN) process. One of the main principles still remains in the Lisbon Treaty. It is called Transparency. Transparency is fundamental to democracy. The principle of Transparency is written in Article 15 of what is called the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Let me quote: In order to promote good governance and ensure the participation of civil society, the Union institutions, bodies and agencies shall conduct their work as openly as possible. By their own wish and will, the European leaders decided that the European Council should now be classified as a European institution. It should therefore be open, far more than in the past. Before it was not under the Community system. It was an informal organization and not an official institution. It involved dainty dinners, fine wines and private invitations. Held in exotic locations they were formatted to discourage any thought that the public or the press could gatecrash the exclusive party of would-be power-brokers. The succulent cuisine was contrived to please and pamper egos. If there were any fireworks between the guests, they were private. Times have changed. The European Council must now respect the joint rules of democratic discourse. It must be open as much as democratically possible. The Leaders must arrange it that every door is open to ‘promote good governance and ensure the participation of civil society.’ It is not a pious wish but a legal obligation of the Treaty that they signed. It is part of a compact between the 27 leaders and all the people. It does not take a great deal of effort to open a door. To close, bar and lock it takes much more muscle. It also takes an act of will. Why? Because when anyone enters the room, the door must be open. That person then has to will to close it. So any closing of doors has to be explained and agreed by the people in authority — that is the 500 million people who are in charge in a democracy. It is not a matter that is in the hands of the leaders as if they had a privilege to do so. They have no privilege of privacy on public affairs until it is granted by the people. Secondly the people are quite often most concerned with public money and taxes. That is why they elect representatives to manage fairly and justly their money. There can be no legitimate taxation without fair representation. Money is collected by democratic legislation from the public by the people’s representatives, in agreement with the will of the people. Money is spent by democratic legislation in agreement with the will of the people. Do the representatives of the people have a right to close the doors of a debate about people’s money? No. The only possible exceptions relate to questions of national security and aspects where it is in the people’s interests that security should not be compromised. Nonetheless reputable democrats should ensure public and democratic control even on security matters. Public control over public money is why the formulators of this main section on governance principles wrote in the next paragraph (15:2): The European Parliament shall meet in public, as shall the Council when considering and voting on a draft legislative act. As recorded in the first commentary, the following facts are apparent. · Parliament has open sessions on the Budget in plenary and in Committee. · When there is a disagreement between Council and Parliament, a tripartite Conciliation Committee meeting takes place between the Council and Parliament with the assistance of the Commission. · This meeting according to the clear words of the Treaty should be open. Instead the doors were closed on this meeting on the collection and use of public money. At the press conference following the European Council meeting on 26 October 2010, the following question was put to Mr Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council and Mr Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission: [The European Council] has spent a considerable time considering the budget. There was also a Conciliation Committee meeting during the week with Parliament. Under the new Lisbon Treaty it says that Both Commission and European Council representatives replied. Commission President Barroso: Regarding the Parliament it is better to ask the Parliament The European Council is one institution and the Council is another. The European Council does not meet in open format. The Council, yes. Today what we have discussed in European Council is reflected in the conclusions. By the way I think that the European Council has never met in open format. European Council President Herman Van Rompuy:And will not do {so}. It should be recalled that the Founding Fathers such as Robert Schuman wrote that the ‘Councils, Committees and other bodies must be placed under the control of public opinion,‘ Pour l’Europe, p145. That is why some legislative procedures were enunciated with infantile simplicity in the Lisbon Treaty. Things which were considered understood by all or taken for granted had to be spelt out because government leaders took advantage of silence or ambiguity. The section on Transparency in the institutions was added because the government leaders — who called themselves democrats — have since the time of Mr de Gaulle reinforced the secrecy of their deliberations on ‘package deals’. Closed room deals lead to corrupt practice like meat mountains and wine lakes at the citizen’s expense. Thus certain transitory arrangements have become semi-permanent. They stayed because lifting them was also in the hands of ministers. Instead of democratising, they used them as toys for political games of power and influence. Transitory measures like closed councils were necessary at first before the various nations of Europe trusted each other to have meetings in public like grown ups. It is a question of political maturity. Have today’s leaders advanced as they should? Have they returned to neo-gaullism or national selfishness? Does TV time rule or public interest? Equally consistent, they stopped organised civil society from electing its own representatives in its democratic institution. De Gaulle also refused to have parliamentary elections to the European Parliament. Elected parliamentarians would be a distraction from his dominating presence in the media. He did not want to be a democrat like the practically unknown but less authoritarian Swiss president! (The Swiss have a better historic record of resisting autocrats and enemies.) Today government leaders refuse to implement the second part of that oft-repeated sentence in the treaties that the elections should be pan-European and based on a single electoral statute. That legal obligation has been around and ministers have ignored it for nearly sixty years. Transparency remains a prerequisite of democracy. Schuman wrote thatdemocracy will only work if it is based on Christian principles. ‘Democracy will be Christian or it won’t exist. An unchristian democracy is a caricature which sinks into tyranny or anarchy,’ he wrote. One of these principles involves the correct understanding of human nature. Politicians, like all human beings, cannot be trusted not to err. Hence meetings should be open. Soviet atheism with its millions of victims in the gulags had closed meetings. So did many of the former regimes of now democratic Member States in both the East, Centre and West of Europe. Three further meetings of the Conciliation Committee between Parliament, Council and Commission will take place. The next meeting is on Thursday, 4 November. The day after, 5 November, is known in the UK as Fireworks Day. It is the day that the people burn effigies of the traitorous bad guy on a bonfire.http://democracy.blogactiv.eu/
Budget3 Who will take the Council to Court for plotting to pinch the public’s money, violating the Treaty and bringing democratic Europe into disrepute?
Tags: Belgium, Commission, conciliation, consultation, Council, Court, European Council, isoglucose, opinion, Parliament, Schuman, supranatational, tax,Teitgen
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E-mail address : budg-press at europarl.europa.euBudget2 European Council President van Rompuy and Commission President Barroso declare they REFUSE to comply to Lisbon Treaty on public access and PUBLIC money!
Tags: Barroso, budget, Christian, conciliation, Council, de Gaulle, democracy,EcoSoc, European Council, human nature, lobby, neo-gaullism, opinion,representation, Schuman, Swiss, Switzerland, tax, trust, van Rompuy
The European Parliament shall meet in public, as shall the Council when considering and voting on a draft legislative act.
I was wondering why public money should be discussed in secret both in the Conciliation Committee and in the Council. This seems to be in violation to the Treaty. Perhaps you can clarify?
I think we should keep of course the full respect of the Lisbon Treaty in all the co-decision procedures. The European Council is discussing very general principles that are reflected in the conclusions … so it was not appropriate to have this discussion in another format.
Thursday 4 November 2010
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