In this post we tease out some of the evidence that supports our claim that the EU is founded on contempt for its member nations and disdain for its citizens (see also Foundations).
Here is a sample of views of those who would rule over us, rather than represent us.
“Europe’s nations should be guided towards the superstate without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.” (Attributed to Jean Monnet.)
“I have never understood why public opinion about European ideas should be taken into account.” Attributed to Raymond Barre, former French premier and European commissioner.
These quotations accurately, honestly and succinctly characterise both the original and the current attitudes that underpin the whole European Union project. The edifice is a castle built on the sands of elitist disdain for the peoples of Europe and their democratic regimes.
Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, said, “the only alternative for the Union is political chaos, the return to national egoisms, and in consequence, the triumph of anti-democratic tendencies, which can lead to history repeating itself“.
Tusk warned just before the UK referendum that Brexit could be “the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also Western political civilisation in its entirety.“
Tusk links the EU, without any supporting evidence (because that doesn’t exist) to the survival of democracy (which has already been abandoned by the EU) and – magisterially – to the survival of Western civilisation.
“There must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price … otherwise other parties will want to leave the European Union”, Francois Hollande.
That is the thinking behind the EU’s stand in the Brexit negotiations. A proper Union would understand that rather than there being a price to pay for leaving there ought to be a treasure to gain from remaining and its efforts should only be directed towards that. Underlying Hollande’s thinking is a hidden realisation that there is no treasure or no chance of finding it in a timescale most citizens would accept.
The main goal of the EU is in plain sight and yet it is mendaciously obscured. Voters are confused: what they can plainly see is different from what they are told so they lose confidence in their ability to understand and many would rather leave the decision to better-qualified people, such as the mandarins in Brussels, and London. And this is exactly what the mandarins require to sustain their project.
Why and how have reasonably honourable people, including previous UK Prime Ministers, deceived us? It is because they are patricians who believe they are acting for our good, in spite of our weak minds. This is true of EU leaders in general, as their high-handedness often demonstrates, even attempting to override national referendums that counter their plans. British politicians are not immune to this disdainful attitude:
“The British people must be led slowly and unconsciously into the abandonment of their traditional economic defences, not asked.” Peter Thorneycroft, former UK government minister.
Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission offers occasional insights into the deeper recesses of EU-think (http://juncker.epp.eu/my-priorities):
“Too many politicians are listening exclusively to their national opinion. And if you are listening to your national opinion you are not developing what should be a common European sense and a feeling of the need to put together efforts. We have too many part-time Europeans.”
Notice the slippery absence of “exclusively” from the second sentence and the consequent accidental slip into something more close to the truth; national leaders have to listen to their national opinion otherwise they would not long remain national leaders. Jean-Claude seems to argue that they should not and should focus exclusively on a “common European sense”; he doesn’t say where that is to be found or how it might be measured but we may assume that he has in mind the EU’s founding principles, the real ones or the propaganda ones.
Unsurprisingly Jean-Claude is not keen on listening to his citizens:
“I’m fundamentally not a big friend of referendums”.
In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung he was more frank:
“One always breaks out in a sweat when someone dares to ask the opinion of the people“.
Well, yes, unless we can manage people’s opinions it’s better not to ask what they are. Or, if we have the misfortune to know what they are then we must pretend that we share those opinions and are working towards achieving what the people want.
In September each year Jean-Claude Juncker has given a presentation to the European Parliament entitled State of the Union. In what follows we pick out some evidentiary quotations from his 2016 and 2017 addresses and offer some commentary (there is much more in our State of the Union posts – see [1] and [2]).
The 2016 speech can be found here. It is of course a political speech with a clear agenda to push on with increasing union and diluting the internal opposition. The ideology shows through despite J-C’s best efforts to disguise it. Here is one peek through the veil.
“Europe can only work if we all work for unity and commonality … Only then will leaders of the EU institutions and national governments be able to regain the trust of Europe’s citizens in our common project … What our citizens need much more is that someone governs.”
We can translate “unity” to mean that we need to buckle down to the ideology and “commonality” to mean that we should accept being governed from above and not expect to change that. Not many will believe that working for unity and commonality will be sufficient to “regain the trust of Europe’s citizens” in the EU. He goes on to ‘prove’ that the EU does deliver; not many will believe that either, since only a few can measure the benefits they experience. As for “someone governs”, that rips through the veil to reveal the naked truth, that he (and his like) want to govern us all, forever, without recall. At least he doesn’t pretend that this is what we want, just that it’s what we need (and therefore should want). So “regain” is the most interesting word here. J-C knows that he and his co-conspirators have lost the citizens’ trust, or at least that “our citizens” are wary. Why is that? Is it because he believes citizens don’t trust that the EU is achieving unity and commonality fast enough? 
The evidence looks like the opposite. Presumably he means that when unity and commonality are eventually achieved citizens will wonder why they ever resisted. They will have lost their cultures and identities but imagine what they will have gained – er!?
The English text of Jean-Claude Juncker’s 2017 address to the European Parliament can be downloaded from here, and our commentary is in [2].
“I have mentioned just a few of the initiatives we should deliver over the next 16 months. But this alone will not be enough to regain the hearts and minds of Europeans.”
So he is aware that Europeans’ hearts and mind have been lost (or never won). This despite the reams of propaganda, specious claims and lies that the EU puts out in its self-defence. Perhaps he feels a need to say this but does he really feel a need to take action? As so often, there is a large gap between what he feels he has to act on and what he feels he has to say. This gap, involving flat contradictions, characterises the EU and the distance between its true objectives and its declared ones. Not to mention the distance between its peoples and its leaders.
This EU Won't Work 