Euro3: How to pay the huge bill for Euro Frauds and 'political' fixes

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

14 JULY, 2011

Euro3: How to pay the huge bill for Euro Frauds and 'political' fixes

Many of the EU States are now in deep debt and looking for a bail-out. Too often this is due simply to government overspending for ideological or "political" reasons. Too often these debt problems are accompanied by fraudulent national statistics or fiddling the books. Some of the secrets have not yet seen the light of day and public discussion. Yet the European Community system is vibrant and resilient. It can correct abuse.

Europe needs honest government and a solid economy. But it will take time to bring it in. In the meanwhile it will cost hundreds of billions of euros to shore up failing systems. Europe needs a breathing space to overcome this mismanagement and get a democratic and fully open system into place.

The road is clear. Any viable monetary system for Europe needs to have full participation oforganized civil society in the institution designed for it. It needs the trust and confidence of ordinary people. That can only come from their active involvement -- especially when and where the politicians fail.

Non-political civil society has been cut out by 'egotistical and selfish' politicians. Before Europe can get on its monetary feet, politicians will have to learn humility and provide for the election of this major Community institution for organized civil society.

In the meanwhile how can Europe pay the bills? Two basic imperatives are required. One is to stop the secret deals of politicians deciding matters behind closed doors, thus thumbing their noses at civil society. The other imperative is to mobilize civil society to new goals that will make Europe a continent fit, prosperous and comfortable for our children and grandchildren.

Here are some examples. You can make a list of similar ones for yourself.

The European Union budget amounts to some 130 or 140 Billion euros. It is still discussed in secret by a cabal of politicians -- who think they know best about (1) How to raise the money (2) How to spend it.

Are they efficient in their secret deals? A recent report reveals that perhaps an amount equal to between half to three-quarters of this annual amount is lost to the European economy -- by politician-induced FRAUD. According to a recent report by MEP Bart Staes the fraud due to Value Added Tax (VAT) 'carousel fraud' amounts to 80 to 100 Billion euros EACH YEAR. Mr Staes says that the fraud is entirely avoidable. It is merely the lack of political will that has failed to introduce the counter-fraud measures. This is not all. Fiscal fraud altogether may amount to twice the entire EU budget around 250 Billion euros.

Ask yourself: 'If the people were in charge, rather than politicians meeting in a secret Council, would the taxpayer allow fraudsters to get away with stealing what amounts to the most of or even the double the entire EU budget? Would they say "Yes OK, you can take 100 Billion euros from my pocket and give it to fraudsters who are laughing in my face on the beach.'?'

No, they would certainly be active to stop the matter as soon as possible. There is one thing worse than paying tax and that is that someone else is not only refusing to do so but is in effect taking your tax money and living high on the hog at your expense. That is worse than government waste. It is encouraging criminal activity -- except that the people involved in the carousel operations are not yet in gaol. They aren't convicted criminal criminals -- yet.

Politicians too often are not willing to take hard decisions for ideological reasons or for lack of guts. If they made a mistake in the system they should correct it. If they have introduced a system that works only partly then they should repair it. An active Chamber for organized civil society, the Consultative Committees, would make sure this was done rapidly. All members would be tax-payers and represent all Europe's taxpayers.

Carousel VAT works by the same fraud well known to politicians -- spin. This time it is geographical spin. It uses the benefits of the Single Market to extract VAT refunds from governments while the fraudster spins his base of operations from one country to the next. The fraudsters 'sell' easily items like microchips, hi-fi, perfumes, mobile phones and carousel from one State to another while the tax officials run around wildly trying to catch them by their fleeing coat-tails.

Mr Staes says:

'The removal of internal administrative borders and the failure to introduce an effective system of fiscal control within the EU has created massive opportunities for fraud. The absence of any EU-level co-ordination of VAT rates and the deficient systematic co-operation and information exchange are two major issues that have facilitated this fraud. They make it more difficult for authorities to effectively tackle cases.'

Mr Staes says politicians' irresponsibility extends to other aspects of taxation.

'Another major shortcoming is the absurd absence of any formal or official definition of this particular form of fraud within the EU. A clear and uniform European definition of VAT carousels is absolutely necessary and a crucial step towards addressing the problem and allowing for better enforcement. A comparative European {study}, including the authorities of 25 member states, shows that there are almost no coinciding formulations of the coordinated directive on VAT.

Eurofisc - a new initiative, providing for voluntary fiscal co-operation between member states - has so far failed to emerge as a meaningful platform for co-operation. Despite an annual reporting requirement, the deliberations of Eurofisc remain secret. Transparency on Eurofisc is a necessary step to improving its effectiveness.'

A supranational Consultative Committee is a Treaty-based organ. It was designed to be a powerful network of democratic associations with regular statutes recognized at the European level, all paying tax honestly, represented in the chamber for organized civil society. It would make sure such nonsense never happened.

That is why the politicians in the Council arrested its growth and wanted to kill it off or freeze the three Consultative Committees in the treaties. The Council acted illegally ever since the first Consultative Committee in the 1952 Treaty of Paris and was so condemned by Schuman and Paul Reuter. The Council then decided that the members of the European Economic and Social Committee should be not be properly elected. They would chose who would be members of this 'independent' institution. The membership is decided by the political elites in their party cartel, in the secrecy of the Council of Ministers. Civil society needs to have a chamber with democratic legitimacy.

The long reform of the Parliamentary Assembly into the European Parliament -- still far from complete -- shows the path for the Economic and Social Committee. It took nearlythirty years before MEPs were able to be directly elected. All that is lacking is civil courage -- to stand up against what is wrong and what is fraudulent in the political cabal that believes in secret 'economic governance'. Time will tell.

Now reflect on an example of what could be done positively with a revived supranational democratic system comprising the five active institutions in the energy sector. This is far more democratic and powerfully productive than the present political internationalism that passes for governance in the EU.

First consider how much money is lost on foreign energy supply. Last year the rise in gas and oil prices -- not the actual cost but just the rise in price -- cost the EU as much as HALF the EU budget. The total cost amounts to more than twice the cost of the EU budget. The Founding Fathers warned that reliance on external energy sources was bad for Europe. It was bad for the economy and also bad because with Middle East oil in a cartel like OPEC Europe would lose its ability to have an independent foreign policy. They warned Europe to get off oil addiction. De Gaulle and other self-willed politicians did not listen. Europe has already lost trillions of euros.

This warning has proved to be accurate. Oil and gas prices are set to rise and rise. The time to start doing something sensible and intelligent is NOW. Oil is not only vital for the engines of cars and freight vehicles, it is also necessary for building the roads themselves. The price of tarmac is now sky rocketing too.

Why use tarmac or bitumen on the road? Habit, bad habit. Europe and North America have been doing it for more than a century. But in the last four years the price of a ton of bitumen rose from $175 to over $1000. Tarmac (tarring McAdam roads) may have seen a good idea in 1901, but is it a good idea today? Hardly. It was then a means to improve roads for horse drawn carriages to smooth and waterproof them for cars. Until then the speed of travel on roads differed little from the time of the Romans -- or for that matter the ancient Persians. Bitumen was sold off as a waste product from the people who gave you the oil cartel. They also set up an infrastructure of petrol pumps and roads that made it difficult for Europeans, who have little oil, to kick the addiction.

It is time to move on. What is the solution? One innovative scheme getting US funding issolar roadways. The idea is to use a whole range of new industrial developments and intelligent innovations to create solar panels made of reinforced glass. Glass? Well, if glass can withstand bullets and bombs it is no problem to withstand the weight of a large lorry or multi-wheeler truck. Made from sand, glass has been developing technological refinements since 3500 BCE in Babylonia.

Modern glass can also have safety features unheard of and even undreamed of last century. Glass embedded with high tech microchips can not only supply electricity to the electric vehicles as they travel and powerfeed into to nearby homes, it can turn the highways into an intelligent system with warning lights, ice and snow melting system and human safety features. A parking area could power an entire office building.

If the USA had these panels in place today it could generate THREE times its entire electricity supply needs with enough for most of the rest of the world.

Europe needs to mobilize this present generation to create new ideas that will make Europe a place fit for the next generation. A system of solar roadways could pay for itself in 20 years. The pay off would come that much sooner if Europe really set itself the goal of energy independence by 2020 through an Energy Community based on democratic supranational principles.

Let us assume that this is a proven, technically feasible idea that would save the EU trillions of euros, create new industries, provide a European IT nervous system, an intelligent backbone across the Continent and help share intelligent grids systems and cut costs of power, how shold the EU proceed?

Do you think that the politicians would understand the technicalities of changing a centuries old infrastructure into one fit for the future? Would they have the courage to introduce it? Not much hope. Many of the career politicians with backgrounds in politics and the law would be afraid of derisive laughter from the media and maybe from their electors about a fragile glass road.

But if you asked a chamber composed of highly technical associations of industries, workers and consumers they could tell you how to change from a petroleum based economy to one based on creating an intelligent electrical infrastructure. They would all gain, in products, services and work so they would be highly motivated to succeed. They could call on the greatest expertise in computer networks, highways, in glass, electricity, safety, vehicle production and a whole range of other leading edge areas that need to be coordinated to make it a success. Europe's confidence in its future must similarly depend on the solidarity of expert experience and trust of all our citizens.

A Consultative Committee would force competing lobbies to work together. Why? because they would have to vote in a tripartite consultation of industries, consumers and workers, on all the important legal measures. It acts like a comprehensive, continent-wide think tank, a network of expertise. This would ensure that instead of wasting an ever-increasing amount of resources on petroleum, the Energy Community projects would use the money on creating employment and expertise for Europe that it could then help the rest of the world with in the inevitable transition to the sustainable, non-polluting, non-oil economy.

Europe has the brains, the industries the workers. What it lacks is the will to get its supranational act together. Schuman designed it as the most moral solution. A humble Statesman brought in a solution based on humility and pragmatic wisdom. After two thousands years of continuous war, European nations implemented the first stage of a system that made war 'not only unthinkable but materially impossible'.

Today politicians want to forget that lesson. When will they come to their senses? That time might come, unfortunately, when the politicians have been shown the futility of all the other cul-de-sac policies that they are presently trying.

A supranational Europe with a fully functioning system of Consultative Committees would also have a major purifying effect on monetary fraud. Their specialized committees would make sure that the politicians did not get their fingers into the national and European piggy banks. They would be subject to the proper supervision and control.

Thus Europe could enter on the next exciting stage of democratic solidarity that Schumanpredicted.

05 JULY, 2011

Budget9: Is the EU Budget Illegal? You and any tribunal can ask the European Court!

Can a Parliament and any other allegedly 'democratic institution' ban the public and journalists from their meetings? Do they have the legal right? Once they have shut the doors, can they then make a deal to IMPOSE a budget on taxpayers who are not present? Is its secretive procedure LEGAL? If it is not, is the budget illegal, void and invalid?

In October to December 2010, the Council, Parliament and Commission held a series of meetings on the 2011 Budget. The public and journalists were banned from setting foot in any of the meetings. A guard was put on the door. Only people on a special list were allowed to enter. On the agenda was the means to collect and spend around about 130 Billion euros defined in their 2011 budget. At the meetings were the Belgian Prime Minister and others representing the Council. The meetings included the President of the European Parliament and a score of his MEP colleagues and the European Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski, responsible for the Budget.

What did they get up to? We know that the Commissioner accused the politicians of behaving like a 'kindergarten'. It was not an edifying spectacle. Each side claimed the budget was their toy. Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski characterised the whole affair as ‘self-centered and egoistical'.

Whose toys, or rather, whose money were they arguing over? It was the group that was refused entry to all the meetings -- the public. The politicians did not only refuse to include them, they banned them outright. The political 'leaders' did not deign to have any REAL representative of the people from whom these 'democratic' leaders were about to extract their Billions! No member of the press was officially allowed to observe and report the politicians' infantile behaviour. No outsider was invited who would criticize this dangerous clique's discrimination and predatory action against the citizen.

I call these political juveniles 'dangerous' because they follow the pattern of President de Gaulle and others who refused to have open Council meetings that Robert Schuman said was essential. In the secrecy of the Council of Ministers, they created a vast pattern ofcorruption for votes with their Wine Lakes, Meat Mountains, faudulent, regional infrastructure projects that never happened.

The next generation of politicians did not open the doors either. They paid huge amounts of European taxpayers' money to party comrades in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, winking at the money that disappeared into boltholds and their subsequent fraudulent statistics. Those monetary falsehoods are now being exposed as Europe falters on the edge of a euro collapse.

The politicians today are committing similar immoral acts against European citizens in their secret sessions. Their arrogant offences would not pass in most of their home parliaments where a national press has free comment. Don't they think that secret budget discussions in Brussels must be wrong? Or do they just think: 'If we can get away with it here, why not?' They now want economic governance, another term for cartel dictatorship of their parties, by their parties for their party cartel.

Then in June 2011, not content with this trivial amount of hundreds of billions of euros, theEuropean Commission proposed that a TRILLION euros should be levied from the European public, industries and workers. It is to be a combined seven-year plan. The public need not worry their silly, little heads over watching this unsavoury performance every year. It would be done in one quick stroke!

The Commission said it would speak about it to the people's representatives, the European Parliament. And so, the European Parliament quickly closed the doors on the people and the press! What happened behind closed doors? How did the party leaders react to this further money grab from European citizens? Did they rub their hands with delight? Did they yell 'Sock it to the public! We will bleed them dry!' We do not know the facts because the press was thrown out!

Why? Why did these very privileged people -- all of them obviously considered themselves very privileged -- feel it necessary to impose secrecy? Why did they ban the public? Why did they ban the press?

What is common with all these people? What unites those who have the only say-so in the European budget? They are all card-carrying members of political parties. Isn't that normal? NO it is not. They will tell you it is. Don't believe them. The European Community had a much more balanced democractic system where non-political civil socity plays an important part.

These 'closed-door politicians' represent ... what and whom exactly? Those in Nazi Germany were told the true German party members were those who decided matters for them. In fact they were kleptocrats and gangsters, stealing from the people. Those in Communist-controlled East Germany, Czechoslavakia, Poland and Hungary were told: 'The Worker's party is in charge!' Those in Mao's Communist China said the Party must control not only the Budget but every aspect of life.

Some systems banned non-Aryans, others businessmen, or capitalist running dogs from entering their 'parliaments' when deliberating the budget. All these diverse systems had one thing in common. They did not like a free press.

Are Europeans free? Those in control in the EU all have party cards. They are a tiny minority. All party card-holders amount to about one in fifty of the entire population. And the parties are increasingly unpopular. In the European elections more people who can vote refuse to vote for any of them. The majority in the EU is not the parties but an entity called 'None of the above' that should appear on the ballot.

At one stage in history party affiliation had some importance. Now they nearly all act together in a continuous coalition or a cartel of parties. It makes no difference who the electors vote for, they get the same result -- more expenditure and luxurious padding for the parties. When corruption is exposed, confidence in the parties plummets again. Public support has been declining for decades.

Yet this small but powerful cartel plans to extract more and more money from the other 98 percent of the population. They are all generally in favour of having more projects and subsidies which they feel will buy them support. These bribes are just tax money being returned diminished under new conditions set by the political parties. For themselves they want nothing but higher salaries, more assistants, help for friends in the same party wherever they are, expansion of agencies and dubious employment initiatives such as the 'External Action Service', overseas aid which corrupts and anything else that supports the ideologies of the parties.

Now consider if the European leaders were all identified with another small group. What if the Commission, Parliament and Council were composed entirely of Freemasons? What if they were all Catholics or Jews or Shi'ite Muslims or Europeans of Chinese origin? What if they were all paid up members of the FBSS, the Fraudulent Bankers' Speculation Society? What would be the public's reaction if the controlling class in the European institutions all believed in Ju-Ju?

It is obvious that the secret and secretive control of the budget by any one tiny group raises questions of motive and propriety. When they close the doors the public would immediately presume that they are making some underhand contributions of tax money to the furtherance of Ju-Ju. No moral person would allow himself to get into such an dubious situation and be enthusiastic to keep the ban on outsiders and the press. A well run parish or tennis club would ensure their meetings would always be open. Are the EU's leaders moral? They have no qualms about secret sessions on the budget. They insist on them.

The party cartel who seized control of the institutions have included those bodies which the treaties say should not be political. What should the citizen do if the public remain banned from budget meetings because they do not have a Ju-Ju membership card?

Should the citizens ask for a Ju-Ju card? Or would they ask: Is it legal? Is the Budget legal? Is the discrimination against the citizen legal? What can we do about it?

We can go to Court! But how?

The Founding Fathers, you will be happy to know, put adequate safeguards in the Treaties. If any institution feels that another is not acting democratically according to the treaty, there is a recourse. That institution can take the other to the European Court of Justice.

But what if all the main institutions are in cahoots? What if all the leaders of the main institutions are all members of Ju-Ju and they ban anyone who isn't?

Don't despair! The founding Fathers provided a powerful solution. They said that any citizen who feels that he or she is being discriminated against can go to the European Court. And it won't cost a cent more. If the European institutions bring in legislation -- such as the Budget -- and the citizen feels it is unjust or discriminatory, then he can go to any local court or tribunal in the land and have redress.

If it is a matter of paying taxes and the citizen refuses to pay European taxes, then the citizen can explain to the judge that the European tax is unjust because it was decided in secret without democratic control. As part of the case the judge is then allowed and encouraged to ask for an opinion of the European Court of Justice, to see whether it is so and whether it is legal. The citizen should cite article 267 of the Lisbon Treaty which reproduces the article from earlier treaties.

A few hundred million citizens can do this. So can all companies, trade unions and consumer groups of civil society.

Article 267 states:

The Court of Justice of the European Union shall have jurisdiction to give preliminary rulings concerning:

(a) the interpretation of the Treaties;

(b) the validity and interpretation of acts of the institutions, bodies, offices or agencies of the Union;

Where such a question is raised before any court or tribunal of a Member State, that court or tribunal may, if it considers that a decision on the question is necessary to enable it to give judgement, request the Court to give a ruling thereon.

The service of the European Court is open. If not today, then maybe tomorrow an individual or an association will bring a case complaining that raising taxes without the knowledge of citizens and in secret meetings is illegal.

The judges would be sure to check Article 15 of the Lisbon Treaty. It was added by civil society group specifically because of M. de Gaulle's bad habits. It states:

In order to promote good governance and ensure the participation of civil society, the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies shall conduct their work as openly as possible.

The next paragraph is especially relevant:

The European Parliament shall meet in public, as shall the Council when considering and voting on a draft legislative act.

There are few legislative acts as important as the Budget.

If the Court agreed that

• consultation with citizens is pre-requisite for any legislation to pass,
• a minority cannot oppress the majority,
• all legislation must be conducted in the open from the first consideration to the final vote,
• the press must be allowed access to report any political chicanery,

then the law in question could be annulled on any one of these grounds. The whole of the EU budget and all its programmes would be thrown into confusion until it could be sorted out.

That recourse to justice can happen at any time, by any citizen or association. For the cartel it is like a time bomb that will one day explode against them.

It would be far better for the Parliament and the Council to begin to act like democratic institutions TODAY.

30 JUNE, 2011

Budget8: The underhand, one trillion euro budget -- Parliament breaks Lisbon Treaty law again!

The time has come to start re-aligning EU financing with the principles of autonomy, transparency and fairness and equipping the EU to reach its agreed policy objectives.' These are the words of European Commission's 'A Budget for 2020' -- its proposals for a multi-annual financial framework (MFF) 2013-2020.

The proposal was presented by Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso IN SECRET in the European Parliament on 29 June 2011. Again!

So much for TRANSPARENCY. So much for FAIRNESS for citizens. It is a strange idea of transparency for the press and the public to be firmly excluded from hearing exactly what goes on at a meeting of two democratic institutions. It is a bizarre idea of fairness to exclude taxpayers from a room full of people planning to seize their money.

The doors were shut and guarded to stop any ordinary taxpayer from entering the sixth floor chamber of the Paul-Henri Spaak building. In it were assembled, besides Commissioners Barroso and Lewandowski, all the presidents of the political party groups plus legal and other officials. What a sauce! A secret budget meeting would be a major scandal in any national parliament. Here it involves BIG money, European taxpayers' money.

The Commission has proposed that taxes for the EU should rise from around one percent of Gross National Income to 1.11 percent by 2020. Whichever way you slice it that represents a substantial increase in the taxes or levies that European citizens have to pay. The calculation has also shifted from GNP figures to GNI. GNI is the same thing as GNP but with indirect business taxes deducted. A trillion euros is involved in the budget plan under consideration.

I haven't seen the citizens massing on the streets demanding a 11 percent rise in money that should be taken from their pockets! I haven't seen them massing for the projects that the politicians have devised. What is the explanation?

Possibly what the Commission Budget Document meant was not Autonomy, that is free-spending of taxes by the parties machines. That includes setting their own salaries and perks. What they meant was AUTOCRACY of the political class (in the EU and governments) to raise taxes at will.

All the institutions of the Community that were created by the Founding Fathers to express NON-POLITICAL, Organized Civil Society have been suppressed or taken over by the new political class. That is why this autocracy should be referred to as a political CARTEL because it suppresses the free market of ideas and democratic accountability of the parties. It refuses to treat the citizen seriously, making politicians autocrats not servants. Politicians have just two demands of the people: money to run their party machines and acceptance of the policy they hand down to them without proper consultation.

The cartel has distorted the meaning of democratic representation, which involves free-speech and accountability, not party machinery running roughshod over the citizens.

The European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek is reported as saying: 'The Commission's proposal on the long-term budget for the EU is an intelligent starting point for negotiations. The next MFF will be one of the most important in the EU's history. It will set the direction for the Union at an exceptional time when the European project is under pressure from the sovereign debt crisis and from external instability.'

The sovereign debt crisis is largely a problem of the politicians, by the politicians about money for the politicians and party funding, involving soaring national debts and falsified statistics. The countries that kept their budget books straight and where the parties did not accept 'funding' from rich people and associations in return for a tax-free break, are not in a 'sovereign debt crisis'.

At the core of many of these 'sovereign debt' countries is the need for parties to get funds and they are willing to bend the rules to get them for the voters, the public and large corporations. When this dishonesty becomes exposed at the local, regional and national level, Europe seems to them the next level to be exploited. This is an old and growing scam that brought wine lakes, meat mountains in the Gaullist era and useless or non-existent infrastructure in southern Italy thanks to the corrupt regional policy. It was followed bymassive infusions of cash to Greece in the 1980s, agreed by Europe's party politicians, much of which subsequently 'disappeared'

We now have political theatre without legitimacy or substance. The Commission has thrown off any veneer of independence. It is composed exclusively of national politicians. They are apparently in a debate with politicians of the same parties in the Council -- representing national governments. The Parliament is also composed of nationally elected politicians of exactly the same controlling parties. They refuse to hold Europe-wide elections as required by the treaties for sixty years.

This is not democracy because the most important element, individuals in civil society and organised civil society who ultimately have to pay are left out in the cold, because the doors are locked. The press is barred. The debate inside is about a fait accompli.

Mr Buzek continued: 'A system of real own resources would be fairer, more transparent, simpler and equitable. We should also see an end to rebates, exceptions and correction mechanisms that have accumulated within the current system.'

That gives the game away. It is transparent only for the politicians. The citizens -- including the non-political majority of the EU -- have not accepted or even had a say in the Commission/ Council budget and its assumptions. A democratic budget is supposed to relate to citizens' demands and citizens' needs -- expressed in fully functional Community institutions. It should not be fixed according to the whims of the political barons themselves. The present procedure -- which is inherited from the Gaullist autocratic system -- lacks any semblance of real democratic legitimacy. It has more in common to the so-called People's Democracies of the Soviet era.

The chairman of the EP's Budget Committee had something to say about secrecy. Not the Parliament's secret meeting but another institution. He said that 'a debate of such importance should not be held in the secrecy of ministerial meetings behind closed doors. This should become the subject of as wide a possible public debate, including a conference with full involvement of national parliaments. In the coming days we will make an effort toward realising this.'

A closed door Parliament is telling the closed-door Council of Ministers not to be secret! Herumph! The Commission's presentation in secret in the Parliament was illegal under the Lisbon Treaty. This bogus treaty was passed by politicians in spite of citizens voting in referendums that they did not like the system.

Article 15 of the Lisbon Treaty's TFEU deals with institutional consideration of financial legislation. It states: 'The European Parliament shall meet in public, as shall the Council when considering and voting on a draft legislative act.'

It also makes clear who should be in control of the budget: civil society, not the political class. The first paragraph of Article 15 states:

'In order to promote good governance and ensure the participation of civil society, the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies shall conduct their work as openly as possible.'

It is not difficult to open the door to one or two reporters or provide a video feed. Yet this was refused -- ILLEGALLY.

The Lisbon Treaty generation of politicians is now embarking on a vast misadventure of illegitimacy. They suppressed referendum results. They refused to accept those that took place until the voters were forced to vote again under threats. They have embarked on internal policies without the full participation of non-political civil society. They have established massive aid and development programmes based on political ideologies -- without the participation of civil society. And after some sixty years the European Parliament and the Civil Society institutions have still not had the electoral framework for free and open elections.

This dereliction of democracy is compounded by the false road-maps. What the Budget document called 'agreed policy objectives' are anti-democratic policies that the party cartel gave themselves. The participants in both the 2020 and 2030 reports were given strict instructions that they were not to deal with European democracy. The political class are afraid of more referendums. They will inevitably come!

The 'agreed policy' reports said nothing about the 'Arab Spring,' global financial piracy, the Japanese Tsunami, drought and religious strife in Africa and elsewhere and other world-changing events that they would not or could not foresee. When such surprises occur the only solution seems to be to throw money at them. Will that work with a nuclear-armed Iran and Pakistan? In many cases the cartel policy of naivety and their pacifistic answer to blackmail may just make matters worse more rapidly. Who is controlling European money going to the wrong forces in potentially violent societies?

The present policy objective of encouraging jihadi and anti-Semitic actors in the region is pure madness! When did the public agree to creating, intolerant Jew- and Christian-free states, giving control to groups that still proclaim terrorism as part of their 'party policies'??

Why do they omit to say that foreign policy should draw from the positive outcome of Europe's great democratic experiment that Schuman proclaimed in 1949, his declaration of9 May 1950 and founding Fathers' Great Charter of 18 April 1951? Nothing!! It brought peace. The 'agreed policy objectives' applying the parties' wilfully ignorant ideologies WILL NOT!

No public mandate exists from the people for the EU budget. The politicians may want to try to fool themselves by this dishonest, underhand window-dressing. It does not fool the public who know that the system is unfair and not transparent for democracy. A system that refuses to discuss democracy and improve what they call democracy is not only suspect, it is obviously not democratic at all. Schuman said the test of a real democracy was the desire to improve itself.

In referendums several nations voted into oblivion a Constitutional treaty. A democratic Europe requires unanimity among free democratic States otherwise it is imperialism. Supranational democracy has to unite democracies not compel them by force. The people gave no mandate to the Lisbon Treaty. Proper referendums were refused.

The politicians disagreed with the people. The politicians in a totally disreputable move brought this rejected treaty back with a new name, the Reform or Lisbon Treaty. Who is trying to fool whom? Without democratic control the Lisbon Treaty is an uncontrollable money machine for the party politicians. It exploits the people who cannot yet escape from the main parties because they always act in coalition, a cartel. The EU budget provides money for their party cadres that they cannot get by honest means at the national level.

This self-deceit has serious effects on the politicians themselves. The underhandedness makes it seemingly impossible for European leaders to listen institutionally to taxpayers. They believe in their own 'smoke and mirrors' that gives them power to thumb their noses at public opinion and even their own script -- the Lisbon Treaty sham.

Supranational democracy could help resolve the euro crisis and set realistic goals for the budget. The politicians however are locked in a vicious downward spiral of declining public confidence, increasing financial black-holes, knowing full well that more democratic accountability will result in them losing control and maybe their political heads too.

In a supranational Community, greed for public money and power is a recipe for disaster.

27 JUNE, 2011

Euro1 : Why is the European Central Bank President still the politicians' plaything?

Should EU's politicians, in the middle of a great financial crisis, still be trying their old dirty tricks? At the centre of the euro is the European Central Bank. The chief executive, the president or governor, is its guardian. The treaties say that he represents the bank in his or her person. All citizens using the euro have an interest in his integrity, experience and wisdom. This implies that the ECB president must personify the integrity of European money for the European economy and far beyond the eurozone.

How then is the ECB president selected and confirmed in office? Should he be both nominated and chosen by the politicians? Think about the mischief politicians get up to in fiscal fiddles, bribing the electorate for votes and dissembling the statistics. I am not just referring to the Greek and Latin problems of the Mediterranean countries. At the June European Council the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said his country's (previous) government was involved in 'skyrocketing debts' and 'falsified statistics'.

Thus even at the European Council announcement of the ECB presidency, one politician throws the spotlight on the untrustworthy nature of this political class and the disastrous effects they have on sound money policy. Politicians are not the sort of people that can be trusted with the monetary printing press. Non-party guarantees are required for a real democracy. This is why Robert Schuman and the Founding Fathers designated key institutions as being independent and run by independent personalities to ensure democratic freedom of choice.

The main political parties acting as a cartel have tried to take over the democratic supranational Community system by substituting their party members in places designated for non-political organized civil society. Wherever possible in the key institutions they camouflaged their take-over.

A bank should be run honestly based on agreed technical rules, not according to a political ideology or a egotistical whim that 'runs up skyrocketing debts' and 'falsifies the statistics.' The euro was built to stop this. Membership requires discipline -- hands out of the till. There should be a clear demarcation between the European Bank for the euro and politics. We should also emphasize here that all eurozone States must agree by law that the governors of their national central banks must be selected independently. It is not an option. It is treaty law. National Central Bank Governors in the eurozone must be free to act with totalindependence of the politicians, governments and 'any other body'.

In general governments do not wish to be seen placing as head of their national bank a party hack responsive to party orders. They should advertise the vacant post in the press. They have a separate Statutory Board that selects the most experienced and independent banker for the task.

What happens at the European level -- that is the stratum of big, big money? The politicians think that they can totally discard this rule of independence. A candidate is chosen in secret, maybe in the ultra-secret Euro Group meeting. Who are the members of the Euro Group? They are all politicians. The chosen name is then passed on to the Council of Ministers. Who are the members of the Council of Ministers? Yes, they are all politicians! Then the name is confirmed by the European Council. Who are the members of the European Council. Right again, they are all politicians!

The secretive system of a political cartel is the opposite of what citizens expect in a democracy. Secrecy encourages lying and that encourages speculation. It is now well known that several members of the Euro Group built up and hid 'skyrocketing debts' and colluded in 'falsifying statistics'. A more open, supranational system would calm the markets and encourage trust and growth. Who knows more about the dirty little secrets of all the other Member States than the 27 intelligent men and women of the European Council?

According to the Lisbon Treaty, the same legal requirement of absolute independence applies to the President of the European Central Bank, as it does to the national bank governors. It is all specified with clarity in articles 130 and 131.

The politicians try to wrap the election of the ECB president in language to ensure thick opacity and murkiness. The dirty little political trick is called 'pass the parcel'. The wrapping is a distracting colour that turns the public's eye away from its contents. (It is announced amid many much 'hotter' issues at the European Council.) Who defined the contents? No one can be sure. The parcel has been quickly passed from one committee or council to another. When a journalist asks: where did the parcel originally come from? The one who has it last -- the European Council -- points to the person on his left, a Council of Ministers. But everyone is sitting in a circle and the parcel goes round and round until it stops at the heads of government. These top politicians are most probably the real culprits who wrapped up the contents in the first place. They have the motive, the opportunity and the machinery. They will gain from the crime. Politicians want to control the money supply, the statistics and the definitions of the currency.

The 17 May Council of Economic and Financial Ministers had this to say:

"The Council adopted a recommendation on the nomination on Mario Draghi (Italy) as President of the European Central Bank, to succeed Jean-Claude Trichet...'

Who recommended the candidate? Was it the finance ministers? It does not say. Was it someone else? If they are referring to 'a recommendation' of the Euro Group, why don't they say? And whoever it was making the recommendation, what were the criteria for the choice? When were they published? How did they choose this one person from among Europe's 500 million? There must be a lot of bankers with Wall Street or City experience who would like to apply for the job. Why weren't some honest bankers considered? Did the ministers have a list after a public Call for Candidates in the Official Journal? No one saw the advertisement. If the post of ECB president is paid from taxpayers' money and public funds, it should come under the usual rules for selecting and hiring civil servants. Surely the politicians would not want the public and the markets to think they are involved in political patronage and nefarious nepotism?

If the politicians did not act impartially to choose an independent governor, are we to assume the new ECB president is not impartial and has as a covert task the mission to save the politicians' hides? How can anyone know if the politicians are concerned that a governor shows no favouritism to any Member State? In other words: is his nationality irrelevant? The sole criteria for the appointment should be independence, experience and integrity.

The president should have enough strong character and experience to deal with dire situations where politicians gang up against him to try to bastardize the currency. The ECB president should have metal to resist the politicians. He should not be the politicians' plaything. The new candidate has several stripes against him, deserved or not.

It is educational to recall what happened at European Council in 1998 and the first selection of the governor of the Central Bank. The site of the ECB was chosen as Frankfurt. What has that to do with the choice of governor? A lot in Gallic eyes. The French president of the Republic said that as the ECB was in Germany the governor should naturally be French. (Don't you love the way the French use naturellement?)

But hang about! Aren't there a few more States besides France and Germany. Aren't there a few States who have an economy even sounder than France's? Doesn't France get involved in some dubious monetary practice from time to time?

France did not get its way and Wim Duisenberg, who had headed the pre-euro European Monetary Institute, was confirmed as the first governor. He was previously governor of the Dutch central bank and had ample experience. Before Duisenberg, the EMI was headed by Hungarian-born Alexandre Lamfalussy, a respected economist and international banking adviser, from Belgium.

The Germans, the Belgians and Dutch said NON to the French. They told them that they wanted to have a strong euro. They did not want someone who 'bent' the rules and did not defend the ECB's independence. A nasty fisticuffs occurred. In the end the French lost.

The French declared afterwards that a compromise had been reached. In the margin of the European Council they said that all agreed that (1) Mr Duisenberg could stay on -- but only for a bit and he should resign half way through his 8-year term (2) their named French candidate, M. Trichet, should then take over.

To any rational observer this would fail logic and fairness tests. It assumed that (a) Mr Duisenberg would want to resign and in fact he stayed on rather longer than the French wanted, until November 2003; (b) that M. Trichet would also be around, healthy and capable and hadn't in the meantime wandered off to Wall Street to make a private fortune; (c) that the "gentleman's agreement" (that is the outcome of the European CouncIl wrestling match) would bind the still future European Council with slightly different political wrestlers; (d) that no other candidates from the 25 other Member States would be allowed to place their name forward; (e) there would be no public call for candidates in the Official Journal from all the aspiring European bankers. In other words the heads of government were convinced that this illegality could continue for a few more years.

In the end the French managed to hold this conspiracy together. How? Possibly because it was a political cartel agreement -- held together by party political secretariats. M. Trichet was eventually made the ECB governor. Imagine a private Bank with 27 major shareholders where the CEO was fixed in this way. What an uproar would ensue at the shareholders' meeting. What court cases there would be!

The European Council's 'fix' says more about the secret forces holding this particular political dirty deal together and total lack of free choice in the way the head of the ECB is chosen. It says rather less about democracy and the high-minded principles that should be involved and the financial legalities.

I asked earlier: Who knows more about the dirty little secrets of all the other Member States than the 27 intelligent men and women of the European Council? The figures about debts and fraudulent statistics are coming to light. Yet the European Council is perpetuating the same sort of secret system in choosing the ECB president.

It bodes ill for the public because it is a clear indication of the corrupt nature of EU politics -- even when faced with a horrendous crisis of the euro and the financial future of several Member States.

It is not the sort of behaviour that reassures the markets, the speculators and the private bankers. Only a democratic, supranational monetary system can do that. It will take some time to remedy and solid democratic institutions are needed ... or the Court.