This EU Won't Work

A précis of previous posts on this theme

This is the next in our series of posts reviewing our comments on major themes regarding the European Union. Each brief comment is followed by a link to the post to which it refers. The linked posts are presented in chronological order.

Not long after the UK Referendum Der Spiegel interviewed two of the EU’s many presidents to get their views on the result. Jean-Claude Juncker (Commission) and Martin Schulz (Parliament) gave some clear – and some not-so-clear – answers to the journalist’s questions.

The first question concerned the plan put forward by Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SDP) to turn the European Commission into a “proper European government”. Both politicians were cagey, arguing that the time was not propitious for such a move.

J-C then pointed out, correctly as we have argued, that Britain has never been fully committed to the Union. Schulz implied that the Conservative government should not have asked the people and regretted that member governments were not fully cooperating, instead blaming the Commission for everything they can’t agree on.

Both were clear, if not explicitly, that firm government from above is necessary to get Europe working.

The Great Deception Continues (15/07/2016)

The EUObserver is a useful source of supportive, if sometimes critical, journalism on the EU. In this post (linked below) they report on the secretive way in which EU laws are made. Regretting this secrecy, and implying that some blame for Brexit must lie with it, the EUObserver concluded that good governance should give citizens a reason for wanting their country to stay in the Union rather than giving them an excuse to say ‘leave’.

Law-making in Secret (01/02/2017)

One of the most readable, and for us enjoyable, books outlining the history of the European Union and its predecessors is The Great Deception by Christopher Booker and Richard North. Much of the book concerns the deceit that has characterised the development of the EU since it was first dreamed up by Jean Monnet and others early in the twentieth century.

In this post we quote selections from one chapter that highlights the process by which EU laws regarding the Single Market were concocted and imposed over the judicial systems of the member countries.

We end the post with a quotation from Lord Lamont, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in a Thatcher government in the 1980s. He had not been able to see any economic advantage that Britain had gained as a result of its membership of the EU.

Practising to Deceive (21/08/2017)

The next post we draw on is one of a series looking at EU documents to provide evidence for our claims concerning the aims and methods of the EU. This post focuses on the ways in which the EU covers its true agenda and why we believe that the EU continues to manipulate fact and opinion.

The first claim we examine is the EU has brought peace and prosperity to Europe. They use this and related claims to support their rigid tactics in the Brexit negotiations, citing as their overall objective the intention to preserve the Union’s interests.

They argued (and continue to argue) that in the absence of an orderly withdrawal (by which they mean leaving on their terms) UK businesses will “lose the predictability and certainty that come with EU law.” It’s astonishing that anyone (certainly anyone in business) could believe that there are such things as predictability and certainty, but there are such people; some are called Remainers.

Propaganda, Deceit and Lies (02/10/2107)

Next we look at a small but characteristic example of how the EU is willing to overturn even its own treaty obligations, by denying access to information that their treaties say should be accessible to all. Once again we turn to the, usually supportive, EUObserver to dig out the facts and reveal the deceptions. Their journalists challenged the European Parliament to publish their documents that proposed reforms to the way MEPs are allocated expenses.

Senior MEPs and civil servants refused to comply, citing the need to respect the confidentiality of internal discussions. However, the Treaty on European Union specifically states the principle that all documents should be accessible to the public.

We conclude from this example, and others, that the treaties are a sham intended to deceive citizens into believing that the EU means well, when its behaviour flatly contradicts its supposed principles.

Expensives (25/09/2018)

In another critical piece for EUObserver, a former judge on the European Court of Justice (ECJ) looks at examples of corruption in the EU and offers a comparison with the fall of the Roman empire. He offers in evidence examples of misbehaviour of several member states and the ineffective response of the EU. He implies that ‘connections’ determine who and what get challenged or left unchallenged.

The former judge concludes that the way the EU bends its rules in favour of the well-connected “infuriates” the public and causes them (i.e. us) to lose interest in, for example, participating in parliamentary elections. As an insider, he urges the EU to reform to protect its interest in survival; as outsiders we predict that the EU will not reform itself and so will decline into irrelevance and termination, as he warns.

We shall watch with interest the participation rate in the forthcoming elections for MEPs and the appointments of senior EU officials who will retire this year.

Timely Judgement (10/10/2018)

More deceptions and more breaking of their own rules are highlighted in the next linked post. Sometimes rules are broken for apparently sound reasons – an example is given from the financial sector in the event of a ‘no deal’ Brexit. But more often than otherwise the breach is covered by some dissimulation and a pretence that it is not done to please some well-connected party.

The post below points to other posts that illustrate this corrupt behaviour. The EU has elastic rules, when it suits.

Rules are Rules (17/11/2018)