The confusing pickle into which the European Union, United Nations and Cyprus have fallen was revealed by the president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Mehmet Ali Talat. While in Brussels, at a meeting of the European Policy Centre, he described the latest round of talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.

No Community solution was possible at present, he said. Why, one could ask. The European Community is the most successful security and peace-enhancing system the world has found so far. It created peace in Western Europe after two thousands years of practically constant warfare every generation. Furthermore Cyprus is technically a Member State of the EU and the European Community system. That applies even though it lies geographically in Asia.

Mr Talat said that even before he was elected president he wanted to create a Community-type solution. However, later, when he tried to raise this option, he couldn’t. Why? He was told by everyone that the negotiations were confined to the concept of a federal, bi-zonal and bi-communal approach under the auspices of the United Nations.

Why should Cypriots be restricted to this UN straitjacket? Because the United Nations resolutions say so.

So whose peace is it anyway? Is the UN going to dictate a so-called solution that experience has proved does not work? It has had its way since 1950s. Isn’t half a century long enough to show its deficiency and failure?

Who put these ridiculous restrictions in place? The member states of the UN, fired by the passions of the moment. One thing is certain is that they are crude political compromises made by people who may be more interested in national opinion outside Cyprus! Each has his own prejudice. And even if they were then filled with the wisdom of all ages in the 1960s – which is demonstrably false – that would not mean that it would be applicable in 2010. Things have cooled off since Greece sent in army officers and Turkey sent troops to the island. Both sides now agree they do not need an army in a unified State.

The UN has created a LCD, a lowest common denominator straitjacket. What the Community gives is a solution bringing the highest possible combination of values and interests together. Sixty years of peace in Western Europe are proof. Half a billion people have experienced peace. True Europeans have changed bloodshed for step-by-step, pragmatic, common solutions.

It seems especially an especially curious prejudice for everyone to take this anti-Community stance for Cyprus. In the 1950s, Europe created a system that made ‘war not only unthinkable but materially impossible’. That was the European Coal and Steel Community based on a supranational Community governance system. Are the principles of supranational Community governance applicable to Cyprus? Of course!

Why wasn’t it applied in the 1950s and 1960s? Well, the world leaders such as France’s Charles de Gaulle did not like the supranational Community—because it restricted his immoral and undemocratic actions.

But that is no reason why present day European leaders are not advocating the Community system for Cyprus, as mentioned here. Why aren’t they? Yes, why? Might the anti-supranational and Gaullist Lisbon Treaty have something to do with it?

However, if the European leaders in Brussels are still being myopic and stubborn, at least the United Nations are beginning to see the light. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, on his visit to Cyprus, implied that peace between Cypriots is the most important issue at hand.

“This process belongs to Cyprus,” said Mr Ban. “Your destiny is in your hands. You have taken responsibility for finding a solution.“

He gave his “personal support to the Cypriot-led and -owned process to reunify the island,” or whatever else the owners of the process might want to do with it.

He is right. A free decision among free people is more likely to be just. It will last longer than a mucky compromise. All the dossiers must have the best, most moral solution possible. Supranational governance aims at solutions based on eternal values.

So Cypriots, why not begin to act like Europeans?

In December — when no one was looking — Member States governments adopted their Rules of Procedure for the new Lisbon Democracy. You missed it? No wonder. This ‘agreement’ was definitely not agreed in public, for the public by the public in a public meeting place in Brussels.

It was all done more or less by post. (Written procedure). It says

Done at Brussels, 1 December 2009.
For the European Council
The President
H. VAN ROMPUY

Done? The public certainly have been. The first of December 2009 is another black day for European democracy.

The newest institution of so-called European democracy confirms that the EUROPEAN COUNCIL  wants to be SECRET. It is a way to get rid of the pesky press. The politicians can control the news-hounds like Pavlov’s dogs with ‘off the record‘ news feeds. That makes managed “democracy” so much easier.

Article 4 inset 3 says Meetings of the European Council shall not be public. (OJ 2.12.2009, L 315/51)

It does not say; Occasionally tired and delicate heads of government, after a long trip to Brussels, need some privacy. Nor does it say: As a democratic institution we will eventually open our doors to the public and the press as the Founding Fathers said all such European institutions should be.

It says that the rules preclude any of the Public EVER getting in.

This is the latest sad retreat from the Community democratic system to irresponsible intergovernmentalism. It is the last fling of effete Gaullism. Politicians like making their deals in the dark, away from public light. The ruling political cartel does not want any one to meddle if such a democratic institution or individual wants to argue with secret intergovernmental deals.

The new Rules say:

Without prejudice to the provisions on public access to documents, the deliberations of the European Council shall be covered by the obligation of professional secrecy, except insofar as the European Council decides otherwise.

And of course they won’t. It will take all 27 to say Yes. They will flip coins to take turns for each one to say No.

Europe’s new democracy — after ten year’s of the public’s resistance — will be like getting sardines, squeezed together in the dark, out of their can. It will require a legal can-opener.
The European Council may authorise the production for use in legal proceedings of a copy of or an extract from European Council documents which have not already been released to the public in accordance with Article 10.

Why should the Council be the only institution that remains an absolute disgrace to what should be the greatest democratic organisation in the world — the grouping of 27 democracies of Europe?

The European Parliament has open debates. It is a model for the world.

Despite some hesitations at the start (that is in the 1950s) the Consultative Committees — the nascent debating chamber for organised civil society — are open to the public.

The Economic and Social Committee is open.

The Committee of Regions is open.

The Commission is one of the most open institutions in the world.

The Court of Justice is open.

…. And the Council of Ministers ??? Hardly.

Now the European Council, too! SECRET!

While the European Council was not a real, legal institution, that is was not really an institution in the treaties, it could get away with the political equivalent of murder. It is still murdering democracy.

We now have the extraordinary sight of the President of the European Parliament attending the European Council — and he is made mute by the Council’s lack of democracy. The President of the European Parliament usually does things openly and before the cameras and a forest of microphones. When he addresses the European Council, no cameras are allowed. Radio journalists and their mikes are chased out. The public is excluded. A text may be produced. But the public and the press have no idea how the ‘lords and masters‘ of the European Council react or respond to the suggestions, criticisms and commentaries about their actions from the representative of Parliament.

In short the new rules have gagged Parliament.

General de Gaulle  — who wanted to destroy European democracy — would be well pleased. His hand has made Parliament behave like a naughty schoolboy going to see the headmaster. De Gaulle thought that having to speak in a democratic debate in public was demeaning and undignified. He did not like giving reasons for his actions. He did not even tell his ministers what French policy was until he announced it.  As for Europe, he preferred the ‘empty chair‘ ; he was not very much in favour of having any minister go there unless it was to collect money for wine lakes and beef mountains. Nor did he like a display of his henchmen arm-twisting and bullying the smaller States of Europe. The blood on the carpet might upset little old ladies. De Gaulle insisted that the Council should firmly shut its doors to the public.

All democratic chambers should be open to the public and the press, unless the public can be convinced there is a valid reason why they should not be. That is a basic principle of democracy. From the time when Celtic tribes assembled to debate matters in public, it has been so for a few thousand years.

And don’t give me that ‘Oh, if the Council is open to the public, they will talk in the corridors.‘ Parliamentarians talk in the corridors. But they have a debate in public.

Why? So that there will be a public record of what they say, how they say it, and why they are moved to say it. Only when the public — let us call them voters or their democratic masters — can have this evidence of their motivation, reasoning and quest for European justice, can they judge them. And fire them, if necessary. Maybe even congratulate them on occasion.

That is democracy. It is quite different from Gaullist autocracy. Had we forgotten? Schuman defined democracy as being ‘At the service of the people and acting in agreement with the people‘. Lincoln said it was ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people.‘ The new Lisbon system is now defined as being SECRETLY for the secretive politicians, by the secretive politicians and for the secretive politicians; people stay OUT, referendums and public opinion are of no consequence to us. Please go away and be ruled in silence.

If you don’t agree with me, please leave a comment telling me where and when the public had a democratic debate and agreed that the Council and now the European Council should be SECRET.

At the moment I feel quite free to speak out so boldly. At the Council offices, no one will be listening or reading this commentary . They’re in the middle of a cat-and-dog fight about who is in charge. Is it the Spanish national presidency or the President of the European Council? Then there is the latest debacle. The US President does not want to attend a Summit with Europe until he knows whose hand to shake first. In the Council the European cartel are still arguing about who is responsible for making Europeans look like a bunch of fools, and not only to the Americans over the EU-US Summit. The undemocratic cartel running Europe has made European government look ridiculous to the wide world.

These so, so, embarrassing matters shall not be open to the public.

1. The lost lorry
How do you solve the following problem? A large lorry from a Member State of the EU arrives by ship at a port in Cyprus with goods for delivery. All the custom documents are in order according to EU legislation. Unfortunately the goods were intended for the Cypriot Greek south of the island and the lorry arrived in a port in the Cypriot Turkish north. The truck with a sealed TIR consignment was driven to the inter-communal border but was refused any passage across it.

This incident provoked a crisis between the Greek-speaking and Turkish-speaking communities. Both communities discussed it at the highest level. It reached a logjam. A simple truck became high politics. So what happened? The truck returned to the port of Famagusta, it was loaded on a ship and was returned to the European Member State from whence it came. Later it was placed on another ship and sailed to a Greek Cypriot port.

Thus the importer was faced with massive extra costs. And who was responsible? We can judge for ourselves. The importer was under the impression that there was a European Single Market. Apparently the importer did not take the two community leaders to the European Court!

West Europeans today might denounce this sort of thing as kindergarten politics, however, before 1951 and the European Community, the same Europeans were skilled practitioners in this type of difficult, uncivilized and uncooperative behaviour.

Be encouraged! The States of the European Community – before it existed – faced far bigger problems. Even among supposedly friendly countries the complexity of the problem was horrific. In the north of Belgium the border between Belgium and the Netherlands is worse than a Swiss cheese. Not only are there exclaves of Belgium inside the Netherlands, there are even enclaves and exclaves inside these holes in the Swiss cheese. This was paradise for smugglers trying to escape controls of one national government against another.

And that was not the worst problem. Neighbouring countries had been at war with each other – and bred long family traditions of hate and distrust – for CENTURIES. Continental Europe had been turned into a slave society by the Master Race with mass murder as State policy of the Nazis, supported and paid for by major, global corporations. There were millions of displaced citizens. Yet within FIVE short years after the end of the most horrendous and hate-filled war in all European history the problem was solved! The Schuman Declaration was made 60 years ago. Have we learned the lesson?

How did the other Europeans solve this problem with the first common market? How did they solve the problem of centuries-long war? On the face of it, the lorry cargo problem is a small, purely technical question with economic implications. But such incidents become highly political. Bad politics lead to distrust and distrust leads to war. That was Europeans’ experience before Europe’s first Community, the European Coal and Steel Community. When in 1953 the first single market was created, it was at first purely in coal, iron and steel products. But it solved a major problem: war, hate and distrust.

Later the Community experiment proved so successful that the single market was created in other goods and services. (Customs Union and Euratom)

A Cyprus Community solution will provide the means to solve all outstanding issues between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.

2. The process
The first lesson: start simply but decisively. This must lay the real basis for a developing Community interest. Thus one particular problem has to be solved at a time. Not all together. Choosing a Community solution will solve all outstanding problems based on the same principles of justice. In 1950 Europeans did not chose a ‘Package deal’ — which will all separately unwrap if not based on true principles — but a single supranational solution that grows organically to make the New Europe.

How would supranational principles avoid a political deadlock in the case of the lorry scandal?

First the small group of people should be created who were trusted by both Turkish and Greek Cypriots. Such persons do not necessarily have to be Cypriots but they must have experience in Cypriot affairs. They must have the confidence of both parties for their impartiality. They should be able to speak with authority.

According to Europe’s first treaty, such a High Authority should be experienced and independent. Yes, that goes against the grain for politicians. But the treaty is insistent. These eminent people who constitute a ‘High Authority’ should ‘exercise their functions in full independence in the general interest of the community’. It says that ‘in accomplishing their duties, they shall neither solicit nor accept any instructions.’ From whom? Not from any government, not from any other body or organisation, political party, nor any individual. ‘They must refrain from any act incompatible with the supranational character of their functions.’

Supranational means that they have full delegated authority from the governments. Governments, political parties or any other interest will not interfere. Furthermore they should not be members of any interested body. They should resign from any body if they are members.

That is pretty clear. The High Authority acts like impartial judges so that it can come up with an impartial decision. (In later treaties the Authority is called the European Commission.) Like any honest brokers, conciliators or judges, their free will and free judgement must not be undermined. When Schuman was Minister of Justice he said that judges were responsible only to their own conscience.

Thus governments and political parties must exercise self-restraint. That may seem hard for parties and governments that wish to see they have a thumb in every issue. But if governments want sincerely to solve the problem, this is the way to go about it.

So we have a High Authority. It will only deal with one sector. Governments will not lose power. It will deal only with one issue agreed by both communities. In the case we are discussing it will deal only with the free movement of goods across the island and the access of all EU companies to both communities and to all Cypriots as purchasers and consumers, buyers and sellers.

3. How can Cypriots be sure the High Authority acts fairly?
This question was solved in the European Community by creating a body engaging organized civil society. It was called the Consultative Committee. It was a sort of parliamentary assembly – but only for associations, not individual electors, political parties or lobbies. It represented the overall interests of three sections of society: the producers, the consumers and the workers in the sectors in the treaty. The Committee is the specialist, technical agency for the Community. So if the system was to be applied to the fruit market, a third of the consultative committee would represent fruit producer associations (farmers) a third would represent fruit purchasers and eaters (who are concerned with quality and price) and a third would be composed of workers (so that if the price fell they would not be working on slave wages or have to submit to dangerous insecticides).

Ideally the Consultative Committee would be composed of a small number of independent Cyprus-wide associations. It could initially for a transition period be composed of existing associations. One of the first duties of the interim Committee would be to lay down impartial criteria for the definition of a Cyprus-wide association (its democratic and open basis in each section).

With such clear definitions in hand, any association could apply for recognition by the entire Cypriot community. Those associations that fulfilled the criteria would then become the electors for the new democratic body. They would be issued with one vote each, and elect a number of associations that corresponded with the predetermined size of the body. They would have to take into account that not all associations could be present in the Committee. Therefore their task would have to choose associations that were the most impartial and representative of the general interest. Those elected would also have to have excellent network contacts with the local and specialist interests. Why? Because if any question came up the Committee would be charged with finding out how all producers, consumers and workers would react to it. For example, it may relate to how costs should be defined both for city dwellers and for those who live in more inaccessible places. Armed with comprehensive data, they could debate the optimum solution, the best common approach to common problems.

The function of the High Authority would be to make decisions, recommendations or laws, relative to the issues it was designed to solve. The Authority would be in permanent dialogue with the Consultative Committee to see what the main issues were, what sort of solution was preferred and how, when and where to tackle it. The Authority could make decisions when there was an immediate problem like the European lorry that could not circulate across the island, or it could make more long-term proposals to create a healthier basis for trade.

To ensure that a good balance was made, and fair and just decisions are always available, three additional bodies are required to maintain the democratic rule of law. They would also provide the five-institution nucleus for a permanent democratic process in any other sector that needed to be added to ensure peace, justice and harmony.

For example, what happens to the interests of the individual in all this? The Community system installed a parliament with some special features, not always performed in our own parliaments. The parliament was to see that the bureaucracy did not get out of hand. It acted as a supervisor of the whole system. That meant it should review the decisions, recommendations and laws that the Authority had implemented. It should clean out the verbiage, make laws understandable and as simple as possible and should see to it that the overall effect was just and fair. A complex law or recommendation might have the right result but it would be far better if the man or woman in the street fully understood it and saw that it was so.

The parliament would have further special powers in that it could dismiss the Authority if it thought that some corruption of mismanagement was going on. It makes an annual review assessing the positive developments.

Would the existing governments be left out? Not at all. The equivalent of the Council of Ministers could be set up so that it could also give its input. In this example it would require the ministers of agriculture or trade to meet.

4. How it would work
In the system as original proposed by Robert Schuman the following would be the working scenario. The High Authority, in permanent dialogue with the Consultative Committee, (representing entrepreneurs, workers and consumers), would be appraised of the most urgent problems and strategic challenges. It would make a proposal for action: either a decision affecting one case, a general recommendation or a law. It would send the draft of this proposal to the Consultative Committee, the Council of Ministers (in this case a meeting of Turkish and Greek community ministers.) It would also go to the assembly of parliamentarians delegated for the purpose. Each of these three bodies, Consultative Committee, Ministers and parliamentarians need to discuss the proposal to see if it is fair for all. They can suggest amendments but they have to agree on them as a body. Each body would give its own Opinion. Thus the Committee would vote on their Opinion, the Ministers would agree what they thought best, and the parliamentarians would vote on what they thought could be improved in the proposal. It is up to the High Authority to accept and reject these opinions for amendments, as it sees best.

But what if the High Authority did something palpably unjust? Let us say, that the lorry owner, who was a foreigner and not a Cypriot, took the brunt as a scapegoat. He was asked to pay a fine because of the trouble he had caused. That is where the fifth body comes in. That is the Court of Justice. It is there as a last resort, because the other institutions should be able to solve all Cypriot problems. And if the special Court in Cyprus did not give him satisfaction, the lorry-owner could take the matter to the European Court. In fact, everyone in Cyprus, whether an individual or an association or a community could take the matter to Court. This right was written into the Treaty of Paris and subsequent treaties. There is no reason why Cypriots should not enjoy the right too.

To solve the problem of the wandering lorry, this five-institution system may seem complex. But it is not for a lost lorry that it would be created. It would be to make Cyprus the jewel of democracy and harmony and a full and active member of the Community system. The institutions would only involve a handful of people to ensure fairness for all.

5. How to start
What problem should Cypriots tackle first? The easiest or the most difficult? The essential feature of Schuman’s strategy was to build TRUST based on universal, that is, supranational values. Robert Schuman, the founder and initiator of the European Community system, called it a process of detoxification. Once he had established the Convention of Human Rights in the Council of Europe, he chose to start with a question of the most vital interest to all Europeans: war and peace. It was the most crucial issue for everything else, not the easiest one.

Furthermore the system works! No democratic system had a harder trial than stopping war that had persisted for centuries in Europe. Robert Schuman warned that the Community method was designed to prevent such a potential suicide and to make ‘war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.’ All the founding fathers who signed the Europe Declaration on 18 April 1951 agreed with him. So did the general public. Europeans are no living in the longest period of peace in more than two thousand years.

A supranational solution will have extremely positive repercussions for the island of Cyprus, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Mediterranean basin, all of Europe and for the entire planet. The challenge is now with the people of Cyprus. The world is waiting.

For centuries Europeans have argued: where are the limits of Europe? Professors and writers have battled on the subject. So have armies. Europe as a political and organisational entity would never exist if citizens had had to wait for experts, academics and politicians to agree.

“The definition of Europe as a geographical entity has long been a topic of academic debate,” Robert Schuman told a meeting of foreign ministers and ambassadors in London’s prestigious St James’s Palace. “But Europe cannot wait for the end of a seemingly interminable discussion. She will define herself by herself by the willingness of her populations.”

Schuman was speaking at the signing of the statutes of the Council of Europe on 5 May 1949. By their votes and those in their parliaments, Europeans began defining Europe. France, under Schuman’s premiership, had been largely responsible for the creation of this, Europe’s first international democratic institution. It allowed European citizens through their elected ministers and their politicians to express European public opinion and democratically define policies of cooperation.

Thus Europe’s ultimate borders are defined in the minds of Europeans as an act of political will about human rights and fundamental freedoms. (See Holocaust2 Human Rights vs Final Solution) Their adherence to these principles in the Human Rights convention is the touchstone of being European. (It is something that has to be earned by real democratic standards. Those values have to be maintained. Some countries sliding into dictatorships or undemocratic practice have been suspended from being European.)

Robert Schuman’s initiative helped break the centuries-long log-jam made by wars, competition and dominating sovereignties. Europe would be defined, he said, through a democratic act of will of its citizens mutually reinforcing humane, moral values for peaceful development.

More than half a century later, some politicians have reopened the ‘interminable’ debate. They insist that states and citizens of the European Union, must conform to their definition of European geography and their concept of history. It is too late to turn back the clock. The Founding Fathers would not agree with the statement of a politician that European “geography sets the frame.”

In May 2004, Cyprus became a full member. In its “geographical frame,” it is not in Europe. It is entirely in Asia. Up to 1878, Cyprus was part of Turkey’s Asian Ottoman empire. Over the thousands of years of its history, Cyprus had been part of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian empires. When it was part of the Egyptian empire, it did not become African. Nor did its geography change later when conquered by Roman plots and arms. Some argue that because its culture is “European,” it is part of Europe. But that would make Australia and the USA equally “European”.

In 1961 Cyprus became “European” when it joined the Council of Europe. Member States agreed with this definition. It was voted in all parliaments of the European Union. Greece and Turkey together became members of the Council years earlier, in 1949.

Europe’s Asian footprint is now irreversible. This is not an accident. ‘Europe’ has long had irreversibly global geography. The official map of the European Union shows that its legal borders already extend to Africa and the Americas too. The French departments of Reunion (Africa) and Guyane (South America) Guadeloupe and Martinique are internal territory of the EU, as are the African islands of Portuguese Madeira and the Spanish Canaries.

It is the act of will or consciousness which Robert Schuman mentioned that decides the “limits of Europe” in today’s fashionable term. Schuman had a broader vision right from the start. ‘Europe’ is a dynamic project, not an empire or state. It was concerned with what he called Europeans’ duty to prevent “global suicide.”

This may sound a vague and imprecise hope to some politicians and academics but in fact it has a solid intellectual basis which is little discussed today. It has real power. It is stronger than armies. The philosophical and scientific concepts he enunciated in the 1940s are the driving force of today’s enlargement process. He predicted it would be so, based on logical deduction. It created “a well spring of unexploited energies to take advantage of,” he told the Council of Europe in 1950. He said that on the occasion he presented to the Consultative Assembly the details of the Schuman Plan, creating the European Community.

Schuman supported the Turkish adhesion to the European values of the Community system. He also made clear that northern, central and eastern European countries, including Russia, must be considered “European” when they embrace European values. These involved supranational rule of law protecting democracy and the human rights and fundamental freedoms.

These involve not only freedom of speech but the freedom to hold a religion. Most importantly for any community based on supranational –that is eternal — values it assures the right to change one’s religion without let or hindrance. The Community is focused on a long-term democratic debate on moral improvement including personal values like truth and honesty and society values for physical, mental and spiritual health.

Schuman, together with the foreign ministers of the other European states, signed this Convention on 4 November 1950. The Council established working relationships with other democracies like Australia and New Zealand. And importantly for the future, it sustained and supported democracies under pressure and aspiring for more freedom like Finland and Israel.

The real difficulties of today’s debate arise only when people misconceive Schuman’s Community system as a club leading to a super-state or federation. These politicians want to be the leader, whether wanted or not. This is a major intellectual block in discussions; people still talk in terms of federations and confederations while Schuman, a lawyer and constitutional expert, announced in the 1940s that he was about to create a third, system, the supranational, totally new in practice and in the history of political constitutions. Schuman’s design was aimed at strengthening the open practice of democracy and the guarantees of the rule of law. He intended the impact of this supranational, democratic revolution to be planetary.

Schuman’s report on the Holocaust may not have been the only one to be brought to the attention of the Allies in August 1942. At least one other independent testimony of the systematic extermination of Jews arrived at that time. Professor Howard M Sachar wrote:

‘The first reliable information of the ‘”Final Solution” evidently reached the West in August 1942, when the American Jewish leader, Stephen Wise, learned of it from Gerhard Reigner, the representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva.’

Schuman’s postwar efforts were centred on creating a system that would act as a conscience for the world, instead of destructive Nazism or selfish nationalism. Conscience provides the means for people to live in harmony together.

Without moral progress, technical progress and industrialization had led to industrialized mass murder. One of the most educated and cultured societies in Europe had descended into unconscionable barbarity. The major corporations employed slave labour and even ran death camps. (The companies paid the SS. The slaves got nothing but brutality and death.) White collared accountants calculated the minimum rations for a slave to work and die of starvation within nine months. A Judeo-Christian society had given itself over to exterminating Jews.

To create a governmental system to act as the conscience of Europe and make positive and irreversible progress in the moral field was an even greater challenge than technical progress.

National governments resisted any agreement that would affect their sovereignty. High officials in the French Foreign Ministry, the guardian of French ‘national interest’ but more accurately often only that of the coal and steel barons and finance, had deliberately sabotaged his efforts at European reconciliation.

If that was true in France, in Germany the coal and steel and other cartels had encouraged the rise of Hitler to defend their interest. Schuman warned that the next time this happened, it would mean world suicide.

The Council of Europe was Schuman’s first step. As Prime Minister and Foreign Minster, he made the establishment of this institution a priority. It was founded as a means to render impossible in the future any slide to godless, unconscionable Hitlerism or dictatorship. It made human rights and fundamental freedoms a litmus test for membership of the new entity called Europe.

Presenting the Human Rights Convention to the Assembly in 1949, Schuman’s colleague, French lawyer, Pierre-Henri Teitgen, said:

‘An honest man does not become a gangster in 24 hours. Infection takes time. In thought and in conscience, he has to let himself be drawn into temptation. He gets used to the fault before he commits it. He descends the stairwell step by step. One day, he finds evil has beaten him and he has lost all scruples. Democracies do not become Nazi countries overnight. Evil progresses in an underhand way, with a minority operating to seize what amounts to the levers of power. One by one, freedoms are suppressed, in one sphere then another. Public opinion is smothered, the worldwide conscience is dulled and the national conscience asphyxiated. And then, when everything fits in place, the Führer is installed and this evolution continues right on to the deadly gas ovens of the crematorium.

‘Intervention is needed before it becomes too late. A conscience must exist somewhere which will sound the alarm to the minds of a nation threatened by this spreading gangrene, to warn them of the peril and to show them that they are committing themselves to a crooked road leading far, sometimes even to Buchenwald or to Dachau. An international jurisdiction within the Council of Europe, a system of surveillance and guarantee, could be this conscience, of which other countries also maybe have special need.’

The innovation of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community or the European Commission of the later two Communities of the Rome Treaties was made to create an impartial and independent voice for European democracies. That is why it must be independent, not tied to any interest, whether national, political, commercial or otherwise.

After Robert Schuman’s warning of the Nazi destruction of the Jews,
Why did those who were warned not act?

August 1942
“The Jews are being systematically destroyed. There are no more Jews in the Ukraine. Men, women and children have been separated and taken. Men and women have been transported to concentration camps. Often they are sent with hardly any water and without food. They are left to die of starvation and cold. They are often made to dig huge trenches and they are then shot in front of them. They are set on fire with petrol, then covered in lime[1] and earth. The Polish Jews are often destroyed by such radical methods. They are transported, separating father, mothers and children. When the German populations are transported, the families are transferred. The same goes also for those from Alsace-Lorraine. But they had to leave without taking practically anything with them, leaving their country, and finding themselves in very difficult conditions.”

These words of Robert Schuman[2] are from a recorded conversation around 14 August 1942.[3] Schuman, later the creator of the European Community, had been the first French deputy arrested by the Nazis in World War II. His horrendous revelations were made as soon as Schuman, after having escaped from Germany, reached the Free French zone.

The words, summarized from a long conversation in note form, were recorded by Dom Basset, the Abbot of St Martin’s at Ligugé, near Poitiers, France. The impact of this and other revelations about the workings of the Nazi State were sufficient to determine his path to join the Resistance. In 1948, Schuman as Prime Minister awarded Dom Basset the Légion d’Honneur for his courageous acts during the war.

Was Schuman’s warning to Basset one of the first averting the Catholic hierarchy of the Jewish extermination? There is every reason to believe that Schuman made this information known to many other people, including ministers in the Vichy government, probably Allied diplomats and to a wide variety of other people in mass meetings attended by thousands of people. This message in August 1942 by Schuman that Nazis and their collaborators were perpetrating a vast, systematic and industrialized destruction of the Jews — the Holocaust — is probably the first warning to Allied governments by a reliable politician of unimpeachable honesty.

Where did Schuman’s information come from?

The source.
On 13 August 1942, after a number of hair-raising incidents, Schuman had crossed the demarcation line separating German-occupied France and that under control of the Pétain government at Vichy. It was a fortunate moment. Some weeks later the whole border area became firmly controlled with a no-man’s land. Schuman crossed the frontier at Montmorillon, 50 km east of Poitiers. No source says that he had received the information from the French Resistance.[4] He had little time to communicate with them. Like the other extraordinary, strategic information that he brought with him, it seems certain that he had gathered this information while a prisoner in Germany. Dom Basset was the first person across the line of demarcation with whom he had enough time and safety to be able to discuss the war at length. A massive manhunt was in progress for him in the Rhineland, Alsace-Lorraine (incorporated into the Reich) and German-occupied France.

The facts that Schuman presented also indicate that the source of the information was German. The Dom Basset notes indicate that Schuman had little news about what was going on in France. There is no indication of transports from France, Belgium, the Netherlands or the Nordic countries. He concentrated on three main areas: the Ukraine, Poland and Alsace-Lorraine –which had been incorporated into Germany — and Germany itself. A major killing programme of Einsatzgruppen was occurring in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as well as Belarus. These states were part of Ostland, ruled by Gauleiter Hinrich Lohse. The German-occupied Ukraine was ruled by Gauleiter Erich Koch, both under Reichminister Alfred Rosenberg.[5]

Official or private?
Was Schuman’s information from private or official sources? The fact that killing in eastern Europe, such as Rumania is not mentioned may be because the Basset notes do not write a list of all countries Schuman mentioned. Alternatively, it may be that Schuman did not know about these areas. Historians have shown that the mass murders in the Ukraine were the most horrific and publicly known. ‘Thousands had a hand in these murders — military personnel, police, native auxiliaries, civilian administrators in the various districts, and representatives of Rosenberg’s Ostministerium. In contrast to the extermination in Poland, ordered by the regiment of the death camps and dedicated to efficient operation, this was a primitive bloodbath — with the widest circle of complicity anywhere in Europe. In 1953, summing up these massacres, Gerald Reitlinger observed that their naked savagery was unsurpassed even in he history of the Final Solution.’[6]

It is likely therefore that Schuman put the picture together from his discussions with native Germans in the Palatinate where, officially, he was under house arrest. When the war broke out Schuman had been brought into the French Government. As a fluent German speaker (with a doctorate in German law and an extensive knowledge of Germany), Schuman had been made Under-Secretary of State in the Reynaud government charged with coordination and refugees. This involved intelligence matters and dealing with anti-Nazi groups. Schuman already had his own vast network of friends and contacts in Germany. He was therefore well-informed about whom to contact. But there is evidence that Schuman got much of his information direct from the highest Nazi officials.

In June 1940, after resigning his government office at the Armistice, he had traveled back to his constituency in German-occupied Lorraine with some returning refugees. The intention was to report back to the French government about conditions there. A further major concern was to burn his correspondence he had had with Germans and with other figures across Europe who might be compromised.

The Germans arrested him in autumn 1940 because of his energetic defence of the local population against the Nazi occupation. This happened at the moment he was about to return to the ‘Free Zone’ of France. Thrown in solitary confinement for seven months, he was rescued (if that is the term) by a sympathetic German lawyer, Heinrich Welsch[7], on the orders of the Gauleiter Josef Bürckel.[8] The latter, who had been the Kommissar of Austria after the Anschluss, was described as a ‘brutal and efficient autocrat’.[9] The Gestapo wanted to interrogate him about his actions against the Nazi regime in Parliament. He had already undergone Gestapo interrogation, perhaps torture.[10]Bürckel took him to the Gau’s headquarters in Neustadt in the Rhineland Palatinate.[11] He hoped to ‘turn’ Schuman with his vast German and French culture and immense following among Lorrainers to support the Nazi regime.

Bürckel tried to find a point of weakness or means of blackmail. He threatened Schuman with the Dachau concentration camp. That meant death. ‘That decision is now mine alone,’ Bürckel threatened. Schuman did not bend. He parried with an argument aimed at Bürckel’s vanity: ‘You can, of course, always send me there, but that is not an argument.’

Bürckel, as one of the leaders closest to Hitler, was no doubt well-informed about the systematic destruction of the Jews. It is likely that Bürckel who was involved in atrocities in the take-over of Austria, boasted to Schuman about the “Final Solution” and the bloody means by which it was being accomplished.

To show his usefulness and provide reasons that Schuman would not be eliminated also, the Gauleiter wanted Schuman to publish an article in German. Any article would have probably sufficed because it would be powerful propaganda that the most eminent Lorrainer known for his honesty had supported the Nazi cause. Honesty was one commodity in extreme short supply under the Nazis. By various stratagems, he eventually won from Bürckel the possibility to inform himself of what was going on in Nazi Germany. By subtle means, this also involved an unofficial enlarging of his confinement area. It allowed him to visit various localities, with the tacit complicity of his guards.

Schuman used his qualities as a sympathetic listener. On this basis Schuman was able to collect a great deal of information from the local population and libraries for a statistical analysis of war losses. He was also secretly in contact with the Lorraine and German resistance. Then he escaped across Germany and occupied France. Later the Germans had put a reward of 100,000 Reichmarks on his head — the same figure as the recently escaped General Giraud.

He told Dom Basset that very often officers and soldiers were anti-Hitler but that they obeyed when Hitler commanded. He described other areas of resistance including religious groups, both Protestant and Catholic. It is therefore a possibility that these were among his sources of information about Reich extermination practices and the results obtained so far.

Schuman obtained information of strategic and military importance. Germany had already lost 1.2 million men with three or four times that number rendered useless by disease or wounds. The immense forces of the Allies together with Russia opposed it. The crimes of Germany could only lead to its downfall.[12] He concluded that it had already lost the war. It was only a question of time.

In 1904, Schuman had been trained in statistics at the University of Munich by one of Germany’s leading state statisticians, Georg von Mayr.[13] He revelled in figures. As a long time member and Secretary of the French parliamentary Commission on Finance, Schuman was able to verify the losses both from the sample of war deaths in his locality and from library data. Germany was also limited by its material resources. Allied victory was a statistical certainty.

Governmental duty
On his arrival in France, Schuman would not stop to rest. ‘Unfortunately it’s impossible,’ he told Robert Rochefort[14] who had welcomed him in ‘Free France’. ‘I have a duty to inform the Government. I have a lot of very important things to tell them, things that they can’t just brush aside. I must meet with the Head of State as soon as possible.’  Allied powers also had embassies at Vichy at this stage of the war.  While in confinement Schuman had brushed up his English by making dictionaries on minute scraps of paper.

In 1940 Schuman had refused to take part in Pétain’s government, even though Pétain had wanted him and had reserved him in his absence the same post. Now Schuman judged it urgent to pass on his strategic information, not only to those susceptible of resistance, like his fellow Alsace-Lorrainers in exile but especially the Vichy government, whether they would receive him or not. Laval, for fear of the Gestapo, refused to meet him, though he waited in an antechamber. After a great deal of patience and guile, Schuman managed to see Marshall Pétain, who was then head of the rump French government of the south, still with a fig leaf of independence. Schuman buttonholed him at a dinner and had several minutes with him. It got nowhere.

For the public, however, Schuman’s huge reputation that he enjoyed before the war was enhanced by news of his dramatic escape. This was especially true for the Alsace-Lorrainers. He addressed about a dozen public meetings, some with upwards of 1500 people attending. No doubt he also spoke of matters he had raised with Dom Basset. Germany was certain to lose the war. Schuman proved the matter statistically based on the losses on the Eastern Front that he had collected. The Allied victory was only a matter of time. We have no direct proof that he mentioned the same things that Dom Basset recorded at the time but there is no reason to doubt it. Did Schuman explain to the public meetings what he had learned about the Nazi extermination of Jews and their culture? Lacking the ephemeral sources, it is difficult for the historian to be certain. He brought a great deal of information about the Nazi enslavement of the German and other peoples, military strategy and the certainty of victory. This became public knowledge.

What would have been the impact of news of Jewish extermination on the audiences of the time? The Pétain government had instigated an anti-Jewish policy among its first decrees.[15]

Schuman spoke largely to immigrant Alsace-Lorraine groups in various towns such as Lyon, where he addressed a crowd in the Jeanne d’Arc hall, La Salette, Bourg-en-Bresse, Châteauroux and Royat. His news ‘grave, full of hope, deep and spiritual’ that included the Nazis’ ultimate defeat had a hugely encouraging effect on morale.[16] He met up with old and trusted friends including parliamentarians. There seems no reason why he should not have divulged to his friends and compatriots what he manifestly told a stranger, Dom Basset. The latter was at the time not firmly in the Resistance. Many figures in the Roman church had quite different opinions. Besides the intricate sociological analysis of the Hitlerite tyranny on the population, the exterminations of Jewish, Russian and other populations would have rated only second in importance to his statistical prediction of the end of the war.

An old friend, the priest, Bernard de Solages, recalled that: ‘To my question if he was optimistic about the end of the war, he replied very affirmatively. He told me that his ‘sojourn’ in Germany had allowed him to enquire with sufficiently close exactitude into the enormous losses that Germany had succumbed to. To these losses, he had fixed numbers. He had no doubt about the outcome. Germany could not sustain its effort. It would have to capitulate.’[17] (emphasis added.)

German occupation
This period of comparative freedom in was cut short when the Germans invaded and completely took over the Vichy territory. Now the SS could make more intensive searches. Schuman chose to stay in France, despite a call from de Gaulle (who had also been an Under-Secretary of State in the Reynaud government) to come to London.

For remaining three years of war, Schuman risked his life to stay in contact with the some of the population and encourage them but moving from hideout to hideout. With other politicians in hiding, he spent a great deal of time formulating and researching plans for post-war European unity. His face was too well known to stay in any area where there was likely to be Alsace-Lorraine refugees. He had made major contributions to the stability of the provinces after World War One.

Schuman’s record after the First World War
As a young Deputy, Schuman had been largely responsible for the mammoth task of reconciling the body of German law in Alsace-Lorraine with the laws of metropolitan France. This codification is still known as the Lex Schuman. The Lex Schuman provided for the retention of advantages legislated under the Bismarckian period that were not incompatible with French metropolitan law. For example, Alsace-Lorrainers benefited from a superior social insurance system.

With the return to France of the ‘lost provinces’, Schuman energetically defended the democratic rights of the population to chose their religion and education. In Alsace and Lorraine, the three main religious divisions of Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish had been able to maintain their own schools. The majority of the population was up in arms at the enforced secularisation proposed by Paris. Schuman defended vigorously their democratic right to continue to follow their conscience. The centralizing policy was in ‘plain contradiction with the programmes on which seven eighths of the representatives of the affected region were elected. To pursue the introduction of such a programme would not only be contrary to democratic principles, but would be to throw into our region a source of grave trouble for which we can take no responsibility.’ To this day Alsace-Lorraine still enjoys extra freedoms and advantages it had gained from his efforts. From years before the First World War, Schuman had devoted himself to create a system of law and governance that would bring peace to Europe. In 1939, even in that winter of the ‘phoney war’, he made it clear to friends, the need for the reconciliation of peoples after they had won the war. As quickly as possible Europeans should get to understand one another with an aim of putting an end once and for all to such fratricidal and destructive wars that had decimated the population of Europe, not only recently but over the last centuries.[18]

Post-war action
He was re-elected to Parliament after the war and saw office as Minister of Finance (1946-7) Prime Minister (1947-8), Foreign Minister (1948-53) and Minister of Justice (1955-6).

As Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Schuman announced the start of a new era following the centuries of war and destruction. Human rights, protected by supranational law was the major instrument, not only in protecting minorities against persecution. It was the definition of the boundaries and borders of the NEW EUROPE. This he announced with the approval of all signatory States at the signing of the Statutes of the Council of Europe at St James’s Palace, London on 5 May 1949.

In a series of speeches, conferences and press statements, he stated that the past bloody centuries of the clash of nationalism and nationalities must cede to that of supranational unions of democracies focused on peace.  Under his leadership, France created a means to prevent such problems re-occurring. The Council of Europe created the framework for the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. This was directly based on the need to stop a slide to Dachau by such State gangsterism.

His policy went beyond a concerted policy of encouraging Franco-German reconciliation after the hate and destruction of war. In 1949, he announced that a new era must be opened to change for ever the deadly harvest of nationalisms and rivalries. This continual slaughter had lasted several centuries. It had brought the planet to the brink of suicide. He now called for a supranational association or an enduring supranational union of democracies that would ‘make war impossible’. The supranational system was a means to encourage the positive aspects of human development, while developing its moral growth. It would lay foundations for spiritual and political growth.[19] It was a great ‘European experiment’ based on the democratic principle ‘Loving your neighbor as yourself’ writ large for states and peoples.[20]

Democracy was defined by its goals and the means it used to attain them. The goals must start with peace and the means, works of peace. As for the definition of democracy itself, Schuman used a scientific touchstone, more precise than US President Abraham Lincoln’s. ‘Democracy,’ he said, ‘was at the service of the people and acting in agreement with it.’ This, he said, was how it should be understood in a Judeo-Christian context, rather than that of the Hellenistic age. Such a crude democracy based only on majority voting would end up in tyranny or anarchy.[21]

The Community model with its five key institutions was little known at the time. A year later on 9 May 1950, Schuman announced the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community. It was based on this new concept that could not be described either as a federation or a confederation. On numerous occasions, he made clear that the European Community could be identified with this, until-then, theoretical supranational structure based on the international rule of law. The European Community was the ‘first example of an independent supranational institution’ in world history. Some of these key speeches have been published in the volume: Schuman or Monnet? The real Architect of Europe.[22]

Now more than half a century afterwards, historians can affirm that the present generation is the only one in Western Europe that has not known internal war for such a long period. Europeans are moving into a new age where no one in their family has lost a loved one in a European war. Without realizing the profound reasons for its existence, states — from the former Soviet zone to the Mediterranean — are now queuing to join. The experience of long-term member states indicates that they have not lost sovereignty by taking joint decisions together. Rather they have strengthened democracy and increased prosperity beyond expectation. (Predictions in 1950 –before the European Community was announced– had considered that Western Europe would remain a powerless zone riven by poverty and internal squabbles.) Today the European Union can embrace about half a billion citizens of cultures as different as Greek and Finnish, Hungarian and Irish. They all seek peace and a stabilized democratic process.

The High Court of History
During a conference visit to Switzerland in December 1952, Schuman stopped at a snow-covered villa above the lake of Zurich. It was for a very special ceremony. In the name of the French government he presented Thomas Mann, the German writer, with the insignia of officer of the Légion d’Honneur. Attached to the correspondence was found his hand-written note: ‘When in 1952 I found out that the French government had not until then given any honorific distinction to Thomas Mann, I was astonished and somewhat shocked. The decree of 16 December 1952 conferring on him the cross of officer of the Légion d’Honneur was one of my last acts as Foreign Minister.’[23] Thomas Mann’s novelist brother Heinrich, also a great proponent of European unity, described his first novel as representing ‘more than himself, a country and a tradition, more than a whole civilization, {it is} the supranational conscience of man.’[24]

Hitler, who both the brothers Mann vigorously opposed, fulminated against the supranational. It was contrary his own egocentric and destructive form of nationalism and to him conscience was a Jewish invention.[25]

For Schuman conscience was the most precious thing for actors in politics and history. A conscience directed by the love of God and the love of one’s neighbor was a guide. It was a belief that Schuman held on to in the darkest days of his captivity. In April 1942 Nazi Germany was at its zenith and at the gates of Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad.

When his friend, Georges Ditsch, a former trainee lawyer at his chambers, met him secretly during his ‘sojourn’ in Germany, he told him: ‘This war, terrible as it is, will finish one fine day and it will finish by the victory of the free world. Might has never been able to triumph over right.’ He then modified a quotation of Schiller: ‘Das Weltgewissen ist ein Weltgericht’ – The conscience of the world is the High Court of the world.[26] ‘There can no longer be a question of perpetuating hate and resentment against the Germans. On the contrary, without forgetting the past, it will be necessary to rally them and do everything possible to integrate them into the free world. As soon as peace has returned it will be necessary to find out with our allies the cause of wars and think out structures which will render such cataclysmic events impossible.

‘The solutions could only be found in the context of a United Europe. Such a thing had already been attempted in the past but by means of brute force. Only a democratic enterprise would be susceptible of gaining the consent of nations.

‘This time,’ he concluded, ‘we will need to start off with a clean slate free of the territorial ambitions which are the source of new conflicts and find a union for everybody through co-operation.’ Schuman had no illusions about Germany’s rôle in European history. His description of two thousand years of German history shocked many Germans. His introduction of the supranational system for Europe was done ‘not out of enthusiasm, nor apprehension of its outcome… It was not an end in itself but a necessity.’ [27]

Schuman’s policy was based on political realism. He had spoken out against Nazi injustice and for that he had been thrown into a freezing cell in solitary confinement. Several times he had barely escaped being sent to Dachau and exterminated. He had been hunted like a criminal across Germany and France for three years with a massive reward on his head. Yet his politics before, during and after the war were not based on hate or revenge. He chose to stay in France when his life was at risk every minute to work for the postwar world.
The success, security and prosperity of the European Community is a practical demonstration of his living principle of politics ‘to love your enemy as yourself.’[28] Thus we help ourselves and glorify our Maker.

Edited version of Study first published in 2004 on the occasion of the European Commission’s Conference on Anti-Semitism (c) Bron

[1] This seems to indicate that the source comes from an eyewitness. Lime was often used to cover the fallen bodies. Lime is a product of chalk and physically similar. It is made by heating chalk, then slaking it by adding water.

[2] Robert Schuman: 1886- 1963. Politician and Statesman. Twice Prime Minister. Minister in a dozen governments. Born in Luxembourg of Lorraine father, Jean Pierre, in self-exile in Luxembourg, and Luxembourgish mother, Eugénie Duren. Lawyer, studied at the universities of Bonn, Munich, Berlin and Strasbourg. Doctorate in civil law. Deputy in French Parliament for Thionville, 1919 to 1959 (except for war). As Prime Minister, initiator of Council of Europe, as Foreign Minister initiator of European Community and co-author of NATO Treaty.

[3] The presumably undated notes of Dom Basset are recorded as July 1942 by Rochefort. This cannot be true as Schuman only escaped in the first week of August. The correct date must be 13 or 14 August. He stayed in Ligugé several days and left by train, arriving in Lyon on 15 August 1942 where he stayed with Monsignor Léon Schmit, his cousin. Léon Schmit was vicar general and professor at Great Seminary of Metz.

[4] Schuman did receive information from the Lorraine Resistance on other matters, including secret internal German reports. It is not clear whether in fact the French Resistance knew about Jewish extermination to this extent. In that case, Schuman was bringing to the Resistance the most vital information of the time.

[5] Marrus, Michael R: The Holocaust in History, p64. New York 1987.

[6] Marrus, p65.

[7] Welsch, Heinrich: 1888- 1976. Lawyer, barrister. In 1955-6 Welsch became Minister President of Saarland.

[8] Bürckel, Josef: 1895-1944. School teacher. 1926 Party Gauleiter of the Rhineland Palatinate. 1934 Reichskommissar for the Return of the Saar. 1938 Governor (Reichstatthalter) of Westmark. In 1939 Hitler gave him responsibilities for bringing Austria into the Hitler Reich. 1940 he became Hitler’s Commissar (Reichskommissar) for Lorraine.
[9] Lejeune, René: Robert Schuman, une âme pour l’Europe, p84. Paris 1986.
[10] September 1940. Schuman, Robert: Pour l’Europe, p92. Paris 1963.
[11] The Gau was a province in the Hitler Reich. Lorraine had been absorbed into the German Reich as German territory as part as Gau Westmark (Western Marches). Some of the population had been expelled, others were subject to German racial law. In 1940 Bürckel assumed the title of Reichskommissar for Lorraine.

[12] Schuman was convinced about moral force in history.

[13] Mayr, Georg von: 1841-1925. Professor of Statistics, Munich. Politician. Author of Statistik und Gesellschaftslehre and other books on statistics. Responsible for statistical survey in both Bavaria and Alsace-Lorraine where he was Under Secretary of State. Member of Commission for Tariff Reform.

[14] Robert Rochefort later became a member of Schuman’s ministerial cabinet. He wrote an outstanding biography of Schuman.
[15] The ‘Statut des Juifs’ published 3 October 1940 excluded Jews from government, and the liberal professions such as medicine and law.
[16] Robert Garric in Rochefort, Robert: Robert Schuman, p125. Paris 1968.

[17] Rochefort, Robert: Robert Schuman, p127.

[18] Conversations with Marcel Bérain in Poitiers where many Alsace-Lorrainers had fled.

[19] Speech at St James’s Palace, London, May 1949 in Schuman or Monnet? p 36.
[20] Schuman or Monnet? p28. Lev: 19:18.

[21] Schuman or Monnet? p27. Schuman: Pour l’Europe, p70.
[22] Bron Communications, ISBN: 09527276 41, February 2004

[23] Rochefort: Robert Schuman, p317.

[24] Chronique de l’Humanité, p985. Paris 1986.
[25] Hermann Rauschning, Hitler m’a dit.

[26] Georges Ditsch interview. Also cited in Lejeune’s Robert Schuman, une âme pour l’Europe, pp89-90 but attributed to Goethe. Friedrich von Schiller wrote: Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht. (World history is the Court of the world.) Resignation, 1784. This was reinterpreted by some German nationalists to mean historical facts on the ground. The victims of such a policy would neither agree to the history (world history not national history) or the egocentric interpretation.
[27] Speech to the Council of Europe, 10 August 1950 in Schuman or Monnet? p94.

[28] Matt. 5:43-48.

Intensive talks on the unity of Cyprus are underway again. At the eastern end of the Mediterranean, the island of Cyprus presents an enigma to other Europeans. Firstly it is a witness against today’s politicians in Brussels and elsewhere. Why could they too not make war ‘not only unthinkable but materially impossible’ — as Robert Schuman said he would do in the Schuman Declaration, sixty years ago? Do politicians know why Europe’s first Community was created?

Secondly, Cyprus is geographically in Asia, so what is it doing in the European Union? Should a part of Asia be a member of Europe? The answer is Yes. We will explain why, later.

Thirdly, Cyprus has been a member since the Great Enlargement of 2004 when it joined with Malta and Central and Eastern European Countries, newly liberated from the Iron Curtain. The latter previously had regimes that were ruled by political parties that lacked public support, and denied the public right of effective expression in politics. The governing elite (who thought they knew better) ignored public opinion, demonstrations, even mass revolts against their “people’s democracies”, as they called them.

Look at the mess the accession negotiators came up with. In theory the whole island of Cyprus is part of the European Union. In practice it is divided. Democracy, not only the Single Market, is broken. The European rule of law is ‘suspended’ in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The Greek Cypriot south lacks the democratic legitimacy and voice to speak for the entire island. The present division of the island is a disagreeable public reminder to these negotiator/ politicians — it indicates that something was gravely amiss in the way they went about enlargement. It shows that they did not understand the basic, democratic principles of the Community process.

The resolution of the decades-long remnants of war, killing and displaced populations is a challenge to European politicians. Behind it is a shocking story of dissembling. If the founding fathers of the first European Community in the 1950s were able to make ‘war not only unthinkable but materially impossible’ between the most belligerent and hate-filled states of Western Europe FIVE years after the horrific World War 2 with millions of dead and millions of displaced people — among people who fought each other for millennia — why cannot today’s European politicians resolve the problems of one island?

The original negotiators did not resolve the problem. Don’t today’s politicians have the means and power to do so — do they remember how the Community model works? Hardly. They abandoned it, or where they could not, they have hidden it!!! They spent millions on a propaganda campaign for the Lisbon Treaty that said that 1957 was the birthday of the European Community! Utter Rubbish!

Unfortunately today’s party politicians are still trying to bury the real history. They have now created a political oligarchy for parties not people — calling it the European Union. It has not destroyed the European Community but it has added a great deal of expensive and undemocratic, political fog and mirrors. They refuse to recognize referendums or even opinion polls showing how much the people disagree with them.

Today Western Europe is living in the longest period of peace that it has ever experienced since before the time of the Caesars. Have today’s politicians lost the plot? Do they lack the will and would prefer to see the problem fester? Are they Machiavellian, ignorant or incompetent?

The politicians’ abandonment of European principles is clear from the EU protocol for Cypriot accession. It shows something is seriously wrong. It does not talk about people being ‘free to choose’ — the essence of democracy — but it talks of places where the Greek Cypriot government ‘does not have effective control’. That type of terminology — control when talking about a democracy — recalls the Iron Curtain not a normal democracy.

This restriction to the citizens includes not only the Turkish Cypriots but the grey area of British Sovereign Bases of Akritiri, Episkopi, Ayios Nikolaos and Dhekelia. The Sovereign Bases fall under different international law. They have a land area about 5/6 the size of Malta. There, the people with Greek social security were considered to be resident of Cyprus.

Given the past dishonest compromises that politicians have made against the clear democratic principles of a supranational Community, is there any hope for Cypriot unity and a healthy eastern border of the EU? Will the island ever become unified and a viable Member State? The prizes for such an improvement are great.

The Europe Declaration, made by the founding fathers on 18 April 1951, the foundational document for the entire EU — which incidentally the European Commission still refuses to publish on its website europa.eu — says that membership of the European Community system is open to all peoples who are ‘free to choose’. If the European Commission won’t even acknowledge and publish the founding democratic principles of Europe’s supranational Community, that gives free reign for politicians to cheat, chisel and make closed-door, undemocratic deals.

The present talks
Having made this membership mess by compromise and not a little bit of political blackmail, European politicians — who should understand what a European Community means — are less than visible in the present intensive series of talks. Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots wrapped up last week the first of two intensive three-day discussions scheduled for this month. The next are set for 25 January.

The President of the Greek Cypriots, Demetris Christofias, a Moscow-trained historian and the Turkish Cypriot President Mehmet Ali Talat, an Ankara-trained electrical engineer, conferred in the neutral zone of Nikosia under United Nations auspices. Observers say that evidence for concrete progress is small. The UN Special Adviser Alexander Downer who is brokering the talks said that the two had ‘a free and very open exchange of views on the issue of governance and power sharing.’

The Australian diplomat would not be drawn on details whether the UN had met its objective of achieving progress. ‘As I said, and I choose my words carefully, these talks are being held very much in a positive spirit and in a very good atmosphere.’

There are ten dossiers on the table. Amongst the thorniest are property and plans for a unitary state based on a mixture of federal and confederal ideas.

The talks are being somewhat hindered, if not hamstrung, by both parties having to look over their shoulders as they confer. The Turkish president is anxious about his re-election chances in April. His popularity is falling due to higher unemployment. A recent poll puts his popularity as half that of his rival for the post, Dr Dervis Eroglu. That gives him little room to make concessions under the eye of an opponent wanting to take a harder line.

The Greek Cypriot President is also under the watchful gaze of the Greek Cypriot National Council – composed of the president and leaders of all political parties represented in the House of Representatives. They too express disapproval of concessions. Further afield the leaders of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Greek Republic of Cyprus take frequent soundings from and trips to Turkey and Greece respectively.

Should Cyprus be a member of the EU? If so why? And can any progress be made about bringing unity to the island? The only concept that has a hope to unite the island are supranational values that transcend political manipulations. That is the founding principle of the Schuman method. If the people were given the right to be able to be ‘free to choose’, what would they say?

These issues will be dealt with here and in the coming eurdemocracy commentaries.

At Copenhagen in December 2009, politicians failed to agree on joint action to save our planet. Politicians have also failed democracy. Has any one noticed? The only living planet in our solar system is in mortal danger — and the melting glaciers, rising tides, desertification, and the annihilation of non-human lifeforms should be ample evidence to most rational beings of our own impending disaster. The only solution is the energetic mobilization to wise action of the world’s so-called rational animals to safeguard our common and unique home. That does not mean world government. In the present deplorable state that would introduce overt or covert dictatorship. But it requires world supranational democracy. It would mean treating the world as a community of human beings with common problems and common interests in survival. It means treating our neighbours as ourselves, not as greedy enemies. Just rules must be agreed by all.

It would deal with the planet just like Europe approached the major threat to its existence — ever more violent war — and eliminate the problem through the Community method. Then as now, many people selfishly do not want to be treated as co-citizens for peace or creatures dependent on each other for survival. The founding fathers did in fact persuade an overwhelming majority of Europeans to ‘make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.‘

Are we up to the challenge today? In 1949 — sixty years ago — Schuman told all the newly arrived members of Europe’s first parliament: You are here to save the world from suicide. Each of them got a copy of his text. All the governments too. He was right then, but we are NOW facing another act of human stupidity leading again, degree by degree, to WORLD SUICIDE.

If all the politicians had agreed to act on this new planetary threat — which they didn’t — then that is not the same as mobilizing the entire population. Why? Because so many politicians have lost the trust of the people. It is the people who have to be convinced the planet is in danger. Why? Simply because it is the people who will have to make the changes in their lives and lifestyles. Every citizen has to show the same solidarity to save the planet. It is no use for one citizen to act responsibly and frugally while his neighbour flies around the world for expensive holidays and consumes like a Roman Caesar. This crisis we are facing is quite different from any other. We are all the enemy and we are all the solution. How are we all to agree to act together responsibly?

The time is gone when politicians could say: Do this, and the people will follow obediently. Citizens are refusing more and more to vote for politicians. Less than half of ‘voters’ even voted. And that figure includes countries where politicians deem that citizens should be fined if they do not vote. (Some politicians arrogantly deny the people’s right to be free to choose.) Still the electors refuse. They say in effect about the ballot slip: None of the above. More people do not want to vote under any circumstances, no matter how URGENT the issues, for the present range of politicians. That is a powerful condemnation of the present politicians and their party machines. Something is seriously wrong and needs URGENT REFORM to save the planet.

Politicians are seen as being ‘on the take‘. The public sees the money — if only in the newspapers. The politicians say they are professionals, whatever that is. But the public says that they are there for their political machines and to get jobs for their political friends. The political machines keep them busy, well-fed and, above all, dependent. For example they expect as a matter of course, not to do their jobs voluntarily, that is as a free public service — like many of the politicians did in the past. No, they expect a salary (plus huge perks) that is perhaps ten times the national average salary. We’re worth it, they say. Even the attendance allowance is often multiple times the voter’s salary.

Not good enough. They failed the test that politics should primarily be about SERVICE. It would be far better for politicians to earn a normal living, to have a profession or to trade. A real job would perhaps set their feet on the ground, bring a dose of reality, and contact with normal human beings. They could be given expenses for trips to Brussels or Strasbourg. Is this likely to happen? No. Why? Because the moral fibre is lacking, even to propose such a measure. That is symptomatic of our moral bankruptcy. If European politicians can’t kick greed and consumerism, we can have no leadership from them for the planet.

And, as if to make our survival more uncertain, the self indulgent, greedy party political image of rich politicians and poor electors has become the model that the developing countries seek — even in the country of Gandhi. The former worker republics of Russia and China — that used to preach world solidarity and considered themselves the saviours of the oppressed — have become the selfish refusniks against action by a global community.

The only way to solve Europe’s problems — and the planet’s — is to ask all the people some simple questions, and get their positive affirmations. This is what is called the Community method. It mobilises all citizens in civil society and allows all citizens to react. That Community method has been abandoned first by people like de Gaulle in the 1960s and the rejection is now written up in the Lisbon Treaty.  For example: how about asking the people whether they want carbon trading or not? When did anyone ask them? Taxation without representation but also without a discussion and acquiescence will end in tears and a crisis for parliamentary systems.

We are entering multiple global crises, not only climate change and energy but threats of global lawlessness, ideology and financial corruption. At this crucial time, Western Europe and USA have grown fat, ignorant and self-indulgent. They are in no way prepared for the intellectual analysis and spiritual testing that is required for such challenges. Multiple enemies, some of our own making, are at the gate. Do we have the tools and weapons to deal with them?

Take the example of our concept of democracy. Or rather, let us go back to US President Abraham Lincoln’s famous definition, spoken out on the ruined battlefield of the American civil war. Democracy, he said, was government of the people, by the people for the people.

With the Lisbon Treaty — brought in IN SPITE of the people and against their expressed will — we now have a party oligarchy. It is rule by a party cartel of two or three main party machines. The party politicians in fact agreed to the Lisbon Treaty, NOT THE PEOPLE. It is government by the party, for the party and of the party.

The democratic bodies that the Founding Fathers like Robert Schuman declared to be non-political and free and independent of party interests and governments — are all under the thumb of political parties. The Commission is now a forbidden zone to anyone without a party card. No elections were taken for membership of the Commission. No advertising was made to ask the public if they knew of any one who was qualified as experienced and impartial. No one from the non-political public proposed a member of the Commission. No member of the public had the opportunity to object to the politicians that the political machines put forward. The Council of Ministers that decided on these politicians was secret. No camera was allowed in, no journalist. Not even a member of the public, designated as an observer.

This is in direct violation of the founding principles of the Europe Declaration of 18 April 1951 that European citizens themselves, not the parties, should be ‘FREE TO CHOOSE.’

In the beginning nearly all its members of the Commission were free from party political membership. Some resigned party membership because they wished to be seen to be impartial. Why? because all the members of the Commission must be INDEPENDENT. They also represented by this impartiality normal, free citizens. The only one of the FIVE institutions of Supranational Democracy that has remained free from being an exclusive party political zone is the Court of Justice. For how long?

The European Commission has published a Press Memo called: Explaining the Treaty of Lisbon. Read it carefully as if you were enjoying a cup of tea — but treat it as if someone might have put lumps of poison in it. Remember these are the people who for several decades hid and denied the existence of the Europe Declaration. They still do. In this first Declaration about Europe’s democracy, the founding fathers said the NEW Europe would be defined by countries where the people were ‘free to choose‘ To hide such an important Declaration is a deliberate immoral act. Even more immoral is an act to deny any public consent while governments overturn a democracy.

When it comes to constitutional matters, any moral flaw is tested to destruction by citizens or leaders wanting or tending to corrupt it. Public revulsion will either eliminate the poison, or corruption will destroy a weak, morally-flawed constitutional arrangement. That final destructive stage amounts to a revolution or turning over of a corrupt and corrupting system. A constitutional system based squarely on moral principles will survive any test of fire. It will be rebuilt if necessary.

The European Community system is a treaty-based initiation of supranational democracy. It is still not working properly because governments have agreed to its five institutions but not to democratize them as required. Supranational democracy is the purest form of democracy so far initiated in practice. It is highly successful — it brought Europe peace — but it was immediately tried by fire. It has survived the attacks of nationalists such as de Gaulle. It is now being tried in a new fire: party political oligarchy.

‘Democracy as defined by Robert Schuman involves being at the SERVICE of the people through actions AGREED by the people. It provides a democratic voice for nations, associations of individuals and for individual citizens. The rule of law is open to all. It has the means to provide the best practical solution to small and to global problems based on in-depth REASONED DEMOCRACY. That means the reasoned assent of different interests must coincide. Since its inception, supranational democracy has been supported by many who understood it. This is clear from the Europe Declaration that governments have suppressed. (Only Luxembourg to my knowledge has published it!) It was opposed by many who called themselves democrats (often combative politicians in conflictual parliaments).

Secretive Intergovernmentalism has been added by treaties like those of Amsterdam, Maastricht and Nice. The Lisbon Treaty tries to change what remains of supranational democracy by eliminating the voice of non-party civil society.

With the Lisbon Treaty we are entering a new period of trial and testing for the survival of real supranational democracy. The coming trial by fire will either burn its institutions or the undemocratic seizure of power by an oligarchy of political party machines will auto-immolate themselves to cinders.

The conflict that will take place is clear from this Memo. But be careful! It is in Orwellian PR speak.
Example. The Memo asks, ‘Why does Europe need the Lisbon Treaty?’ It answers ‘To realize its full potential, the European Union needs to modernize and reform.’

That sounds reasonable. Who can be against modernization or reform? By modern most people would mean just and fair and correcting past wrongs and injustice. The truth is a bit different. The Treaty does not help Europeans have more democratic and responsible government. This is therefore a fib. What would be real modernization would be for governments to respect and observe the treaties they signed up to. That includes their specific obligations. They haven’t even dealt with their bad school report.

It would therefore be modern for the Commission to become clearly more independent of all interest groups including political parties. Who wants it to be biased, prejudiced and partial? Instead, the reform has made it totally dependent on a party political oligarchy. Don’t ask for an application form for Commissioner! The institution is under the control of two or three political parties. Who controls the parties? Under the the Treaty politicians have decided to exclude 98 per cent of the citizens from becoming a Commissioner. Normal non-political citizens have been kicked out off the Commission. It is probably the GREATEST ACT OF DISCRIMINATION EVER LEGISLATED IN MODERN TIMES. Is that modernization? Politicians seized exclusive control to secure their own interests. That is a corrupt act.

Though admittedly not impossible, it is difficult for politicians to be independent. Why? because the political parties are partisan. They are also a clan, an interest group. They are lobbyists. They are the biggest and most powerful lobby groups in the whole of Europe. Politicians have years of training and experience to fight for partial causes. That is the opposite of being trained to be impartial. Yet this dubious category “politician” is the only one the Treaty deems capable to be candidates. And they are chosen in secret. Hm, something smells fishy. Let’s look further.

Modernization for the European Parliament would mean to have ONE proper, fair European election. It is NOT modern to have 27 separate national elections where the government parties in each Member State fix the rules to maximize their party votes.

The founding Treaties of Paris and Rome said there should be one single election under common rules for all. Governments agreed to this. They did not implement it. It has still not been implemented since then — nearly SIXTY year of undemocratic ABUSE!

First the governments led by Charles de Gaulle refused to have any elections at all. Other governments spinelessly acquiesced — until 1979. That immoral act sowed the seed and harvested the bitter consequences. Five governments opposed de Gaulle and said they were more democratic. But they kinda liked the corrupt idea that they could choose who the people’s representatives would be. They would definitely not be any one who went against party political machines.

The British Foreign Minister, Ernest Bevin strongly supported this abuse. Worse he may have started the anti-democratic trend in Europe. He refused Schuman’s proposals for direct elections, sixty years ago. This was to the Council of Europe Consultative Assembly in 1948-9. French parliamentarians, wartime resistance leaders, (may they be long remembered), riposted with vigour: ‘Where can we go if we see old England abandoning democracy?‘

It is exactly that British attitude of party political paternalism that has now been proclaimed as the central doctrine of the Lisbon Treaty. Party machines now believe they have a divine right to rule everything in Europe. They are wrong. Non-political civil society has rights too. People are losing confidence in politicians.

Faced with elections in 1979, the governments continued to fiddle the outcome. They do this by having national rules for so-called European elections. Some voters are getting the equivalent of ten or twelve votes compared with other Europeans.

Let’s move closer to the origin of this poisonous mess. What real modernization would mean would be that the Council of Ministers would open its heavy doors to the public and the press — like the Parliament and other normal democratic institutions do. This is what Schuman said should happen. And he said all committees should be open to the public and democratic decisions.

Rather than modernization we have a great leap backwards into the dark ages. We have a secretive, unresponsive, political cartel and political nepotism. That is a seizure of power, without democratic consent. The people were not ‘free to choose‘.  When they said NO — three times at least — they were ignored.

The Press Memo also asserts falsely that there will be ‘increased democratic accountability.’ How can there be accountability when the treaty renders it impossible to sack the Commission? See Debate commentary 2 and also my letters to the Commission, Parliament and Council on this. And the politicians have created a system were they can vote themselves whatever extra money they want. It is up to their conscience, without checks and balances. They can create extra jobs for their chums. No one in the Commission, Parliament or the Council will stop them. They all benefit; they are all fellow politicians. Will they exercise restraint or will their hands be in the cookie jar? Both hands are already in the jar, according to many observers.

The Memo also asserts that the citizens will benefit because the Lisbon Treaty provides a ‘more democratic approach to EU decision-making (strengthening the role of European Parliament and national Parliaments.)‘

This is also patently not true. Look, I acknowledge that, so far, the politicians and their machines got their way after ten years of public disgust. Their chums got fancy jobs. But don’t say it is democratic, when the people weren’t asked. (The treaties both Constitutional and Lisbon, were written by politicians and agreed by politicians. The Lisbon Treaty was signed by politicians and benefits politicians. Europe’s founding treaty of 1951 wasn’t written by politicians — that’s another reason why the Europe Declaration which says so, has been hidden from public view. It describes how treaties for supranational Communities should be written, by whom and who should assent to them.)

Reform. The Lisbon Treaty does absolutely nothing to insure the Parliament reforms itself. (It is the Council that can refuse any reform.) At the moment the European Parliament and a number of national parliaments are unfortunately hardly exemplary debating chambers of free independent representatives of their electors. In previous times, parliamentarians made up their own minds. The best decided by what they considered to be the most enlightened moral criteria. Reform was often made in spite of politicians, not by them. Parliaments today have rather become political theatre for out-of-touch party political machines. The machines force parliamentarians to vote in one direction or another, according to party whips.

This is no way to run a highly complex, technical society when massively interacting issues have to be decided, and politicians admit they do not understand the technicalities of one issue (from global problems to how their own poor live) and are overtly partisan about other issues. This was one reason why Schuman introduced supranational democracy, designed to deal with complexity. Presently national parliaments can come up with half-baked and quite unfair decisions. Does it help? Even if they have a firm opinion, it does not really count in Europe. What is shocking is that the Commission made no comment that the national parliaments should have been intensively involved in all European legislation right from the 1950s. It was the dereliction of duty of governments that made this article necessary — as a reminder.

The Council abuse will continue. In the end, it is the Council, which decides in secret about what it really wants. The Council and the whole system is largely a European party political duopoly.

Whoever controls the parties, controls the dossiers of government ministers. Parties receive European funding from the taxpayers without asking the public’s permission. The Commission, now free of non party members, is the secretariat of the political cartel. That is practically the opposite of how supranational democracy is supposed to work. The Lisbon Treaty is a politicians’ wish-list, cooked up at night in secret by the Council’s politicians, a rehash of the rejected Constitutional Treaty. Hardly a model of democratic consent that their grandchildren could be proud of.

The Treaty shows that the Council still has not got enough courage to have open debates when it decides. Ministers think secrecy is best for their policies for Europe’s 500 million fellow citizens. That is paternalism. It does not reflect the original concept of five free and independent democratic institutions coming together to arrive in REASONED DEMOCRACY. Who knows what influences the secretive Council? What we have seen so far about their decision making procedures shows raw, ignorant power plays, not reason.

The Commission Press Memo asks: How will the Lisbon Treaty change the Commission’s role in economic and financial policy? It quickly answers — it hopes before the reader has time to reflect — ‘The Lisbon Treaty strengthens the Commission’s role as independent “referee” in economic governance.’

Nonsense. That is the reverse of the truth. It tries to cover over what is a political coup d’Etat by the political party cartel. The Commission is supposed to be as independent as the most impartial judge in the most impartial court of law. Politicians do not like independence — especially when it impinges — in this case heavily — on what they consider to be their own sphere of bombast. But the founding fathers said that the Commission should be INDEPENDENT — and for that it should NOT be composed exclusively of politicians but mainly of NORMAL human beings who inhabit Europe. I would not like to go to an independent Court of law based on the same principles — where the judge is also an interested party in the dispute. The founding fathers, mostly Statesmen, were able to discern that fellow politicians often cannot be trusted. They decided that the Commission should be INDEPENDENT because interest groups — call them lobbyists or cartels — were expert in influencing politicians usually to the detriment of the wider interests of the public.

The previous treaties did allow the original principle of independence to persist in THEORY. In practice, especially since the time of de Gaulle, it became just lip-service. Politicians gradually edged their way into the Commission. The first were honorable enough to resign from parties. Then once the politicians had made a bridgehead and gained a majority, they refused to resign from their political parties. Then they took over.

The fib in this reply asserting ‘independence‘ can easily be seen by the fact that today’s President of France was cock-a-hoop that he had got a very political Commissioner who would twist things in the way of French policy — or rather his own policy. He did not boast that France had the most impartial, independent and experienced candidate. That means he is the President’s messenger, contrary to European law. We should not blame the French president in isolation because many of the other governments do exactly the same. By the definitions in the treaties about independence, that is illegal.

The principle of independence of the Commission is defined in the early treaties. They should take no instructions from any government, nor any other interest group. At the moment the Commissioners are the puppets of governments/ political parties. How do I know? They are nominated in secret by governments.

Did you see any elections for so-called ‘national Commissioners‘ taking place? Or was I nodding off at the time? What of the famed Democratic countries? What of the Mother of Parliaments? If one country had a widely publicized election for ‘their’ Commissioner it would of course embarrass everyone else. What ever happened to democracy? It is all done with extreme rapidity in the hope that no one will notice how undemocratic the political parties in ‘democratic‘ governments were. They put in their chums. Some governments sent off political chums to cool their heels in Brussels, because they were no longer really wanted at home. No eminent Europeans who were not proud possessors of party cards had a ghost of a chance. Nobody!

All the governments send these politicians to Brussels with a clear understanding about what they should be doing and how they should act. The Commissioners then use the Commission as a stepping stone for a political career. They resign when asked by the governments to do so. That is contrary to the treaty. It is also immoral.

Clearly the writer of the Press Memo had not looked into the treaties. The original Commissioners had to sign up to an agreement that they would not take a job in any sector of their European competence for three years after leaving office. That ensured their independence. Even that shows the treaty writers were rightly skeptical about human nature. To compensate, Commissioners received a sufficiently high salary and severance pay. Ex-Commissioners could also take a normal job elsewhere. But apparently this is not sufficient for the present greedy breed of politicians.

I am waiting for the first Commissioner to say they are voluntarily refusing any similar job after they leave the Commission for a minimum of three years after. And then there is the other side of the coin. It would be nice also for them to sign a document that they would refuse to resign from the Commission — if their home government, that is, their political party — offered them a ministerial post in their State.

Oh, I have only got to the first two pages and there is much more of this kind of PR poison to follow. No doubt we will get back to it again. I have the feeling that the real debate on Europe is only now beginning. We had no real debate about what supranational democracy is. The Commission provided no information about how supranational democracy works. And then there was the conspiracy of silence across the road. The Council of Ministers refused as long as possible even to publish the text of the treaty so that the public could not debate it. They said they would publish it after everyone had agreed to it. What sauce! And the Hungarian Parliament passed it without even reading it!

Unfortunately like a complex money-making racket invented in secret by people who profess little understanding of supranational democracy, we are in for the practical demonstration of the flaws in the cartel’s coup d’Etat. Don’t expect riots to happen tomorrow. It took years of abuse by de Gaulle with scandalous wine lakes and meat mountains, and secret finances, to bring Europeans to their senses. By then the Mafia, with their mattresses stuffed from Community funds, had built up a stronghold in the Italian south. Democrats elsewhere were askance — and stayed away.

Schuman said that democracy is not something that can be improvised. He spoke of the thousand years it took for democracy to emerge in the history of Europe. May I live so long to see it come after all this! But it is sure that immoral rascals will not persist, and they will eventually be thrown out, one way or another. Democracy provides the means to throw the rascals out.

It is a great pity because all of us will suffer for the folly of a few greedy politicians. All Europeans are missing a far better form of democracy that would be of benefit to all around the world. And how the world needs it!

Subject: Europe’s foundational Declaration of Inter-Dependence
Communicating Europe with “old documents”

Dear President Barroso and Commissioners,
Congratulations on your new positions. During the coming months, the 60th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration to take place on 9 May 2010 must be planned. I hope that the entire Commission will give great thought to the preparations for this major event. The Member States are living through the longest period of peace in more than 2000 years of European history. We are faced with global challenges of the greatest dimension. Europe has to set the highest moral example as it did by creating a Community of peace.

Yet for the last decade or more I have asked the Commission’s information services to communicate in publications and on the web the foundational documents of Europe. This includes the FULL text of the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 and the Europe Declaration made and signed by all founding fathers on 18 April 1951 after the signing of Europe’s founding treaty. This Declaration of Inter-Dependence is equivalent in importance to America’s Declaration of Independence. I have never seen a publication of the Commission where this is printed. Why not?

In this regard, I am enclosing a copy of my latest letter to the Commission’s Communications services, who have not yet replied to my August request to publish these foundational documents. I hope that the first thing in office will be for you to publish “the real foundation of Europe” — to quote from the Europe Declaration.

My best wishes for your term in office to build supranational democracy.

Yours sincerely,

David Heilbron Price
Schuman Project

Extract from letter.
To Commission Communications services.

In August I again wrote that it was high time that the Commission published the EU’s founding public documents. I asked about its plans on the 60th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration in May 2010. This time they should publish the full text. For many decades the Commission has published only a censored version. It said it was the FULL text. It isn’t. To my knowledge the Commission has never published the founding fathers’ Europe Declaration on Inter-dependence of 1951. This announces and confirms the birth of Europe and its democratic principles.

I have received no answer. No explanation was forthcoming. Instead in the internal correspondence between officials that I was also sent, the question was raised: Why is this gentleman so obsessed with old documents?

It is a good question and deserves an answer.
I would first like to ask my own question as part of that answer:
Why are Commission officials so little concerned about the origin of the vitally important institution for which they are working? Do they understand the history and purpose of European construction?

Forgive me for my tone, but I have been waiting more than a decade for the Commission to answer. I have made many requests. These requests to publish the founding documents of the European institution are not for some academic knowledge. The Commission was the world’s first SUPRANATIONAL institution and the public has a perfect right to know what it is all about and how it affects their lives. It is up to officials to be able to explain this in detail. Supranational Democracy was not introduced as an academic exercise but to solve some of the existing problems like stopping more than 2000 years of continuous war between European peoples. It was also designed to tackle future global calamities facing not only Europe but all those on the planet.

This is what Robert Schuman’s long-term friend and colleague, René Lejeune, wrote: ‘The solution of the enormous problems, which future generations will have to face, largely depends .. on the {Community approach} of which Robert Schuman will be the initiator.’ He called it ‘the principal procedure for the future of humanity’.

Notice the future tense. If you do not know what process Robert Schuman started, if you do not know why he started it, or how it works, no civil servant is capable of serving the public.

The cost of NOT having a supranational democracy is enormous, both in human terms, its social disruption, its financial cost and in its global consequences. I wrote about this in a recent commentary on Your Democracy in Europe.

The sort of distortions, disinformation and falsehoods that the European institutions are propagating against the founders of those institutions is costing billions of euros and possibly trillions.

That is no exaggeration. Take one example in simple monetary terms. We have already lost untold trillions to the European economy because Europe has NO ENERGY POLICY. It has an intergovernmental wish-list at best with no democratic or legal basis worth speaking of. If officials had paid attention to the founding fathers and read the declarations and official reports, they would long ago have taken serious action to create an Energy Community (to follow the Coal and Euratom treaties). Why? Because lack of ENERGY INDEPENDENCE is Europe’s political Achilles’ heel. Instead all plans of the founding fathers towards energy independence were blocked, abandoned, side-lined or chloroformed.

The rise of oil from around $2 in the 1970s to nearly $150 a barrel cost the European economy multiple trillions. This ruined the economy in the 1970s and 1980s, and wiped out a colossal surplus balance of payments. It destroyed industries. It set back the introduction of the Euro by a decade. That alone amounted to multiple billions in wasted costs to the economy. Economists say that the oil cartel, by unilaterally increasing the price of every barrel of oil and gas equivalent by $25, dispossesses the EU of around $100 billion yearly extra for exactly the same goods. Another way to call cartel action is economic blackmail. And abroad, it set Africa ablaze with wars and corruption. That is why the founding fathers designed the Commission to be a strong anti-cartel agency.

It is shameful that the Commission succumbed to political pressure in the time of de Gaulle. Even more as it is still doing so. Is it on automatic pilot? It has for decades refused to publish the founding or birthday document of the European Union. That is the Europe’s Declaration of Inter-dependence. It was signed by all the founding fathers such as Schuman and Adenauer who had just signed the founding treaty of the European Community.

By that spineless act of hiding these documents from the late 1950s to the present, the European Commission has participated in the blindness of de Gaulle and similar autocrats believed that they alone had the intelligence to solve all of France’s, Europe’s and the world’s problems. He was proved wrong on most counts. The Community method involves open democracy with a multitude of counsellors to provide safety.

The Founding Fathers denounced the false and counterfeit ‘democracies’ behind the Iron Curtain where various parties (sometimes even called Christian Democrats, Liberals and Socialists as in the DDR) were a sham. Schuman called them a sinister caricature of democracy. A fistful of people controlled the people’s democracies. Whatever the people thought, whatever their opinion, the decisions were all made by political apparatchiks and functionaries in meetings behind closed doors. Those who suffered under dictatorships in both the east and west of Europe are familiar with this.

The Europe Declaration www.schuman.info affirms that Europe is open to all countries that have the freedom to choose. An institution that hides or controls information FROM the people FAILS the test of democracy.

Indeed, one of the main reasons why I founded the www.Schuman.info web site about ten years ago was to be able to publish the full text of the Schuman Declaration because the Commission had signally failed to do so, despite my and other requests. It failed also in its primary duty as Guardian of the Treaties.

The Commission will have to publish these documents one fine day. Will it be now or when it is covered with further shame? I am asking therefore that urgent reconsideration should be given to publishing these foundational documents in the immediate future.

I look forward to an announcement about the Commission’s plans for the sixtieth anniversary of the Schuman Declaration.

I am sending a copy of this letter to the Commission President and also to Vice President Wallström. I am publishing this as an open letter on several websites including www.schuman.info http://democracy.blogactiv.eu and http://eurdemocracy.blogspot.com .

Yours sincerely

David Heilbron Price
Schuman Project

Two sentences italicized added.