Power Grab: The EU Political Elites’ Fig Leaf of Legitimacy

By Richard Cantillon (writing for The Dollar Vigilante)
Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The EU political elites were beside themselves with self-congratulation on Friday as the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee announced that this year’s prize was awarded to the EU for its contributions to peace.

Yet a quick survey of historical facts since the end of WW2 reveals that the EU’s institutions, policies, and politicians had little or nothing to do with maintaining peace and security in Europe. Rather, what they did have was an immense impact on the steady growth of centralisation of political power in a set of supra-national unaccountable and anti-democratic institutions legalised in a succession of treaties between nation state governments; and a commensurate erosion and alienation of democratic powers within Europe’s nation states.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, Germany was occupied by the Allied and Russian armies. Both Germany’s and France’s economic infrastructures were devastated. Across the entire continent many were destitute and near starvation. No one was about to start another war. Economic reconstruction was kick-started in Germany by the US government’s Marshall Plan aid. No one in Europe had the capital or resources to mount such an effort.

Soon after, when the Russians decided that Eastern Europe was now their preserve, they determined to remain in Berlin. The Berlin Wall went up and the Cold War began. The US and USSR faced off across Europe threatening each other with nuclear arsenals. This military strategy, known as MAD (mutually assured destruction), was a contingent equilibrium that prevented war in Europe. All of Western Europe’s military and defence planning and operations were controlled by the US-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Although both Britain and France had their own “independent” nuclear deterrents, in truth, NATO was the sole arbiter of defence strategy in the European theatre. EU institutions had no say in NATO.

Around that time (late 1950s), the institutional and political emergence of today’s (so called) European Union was nothing more than the creation of the European Coal & Steel Community (ECSC), soon followed thereafter by the European Economic Community (EEC), commonly known as the “Common Market”. This was in reference to its focus on free trade and open markets between its six (France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg, West Germany, Italy ) member states. These new institutions had zero involvement in military, defence or security matters.

Fast forward to the late 1980s. The economies of Western Europe had recovered from the depredations of WW2, participating in the benefits of growth in world trade, productivity gains from technology innovations, and expanding domestic markets underpinned by growing population, increased labour participation rates and higher real incomes. All of which contributed to financing not only a growing “welfare state” sector in all the Western European nation states, but also a fast-inflating set of EU supranational institutions, encoded into EU law as the treaties of Maastricht (1979), Madrid (1985), and Lisbon (2005); and equally fast inflating budgets and spending.

The people of Europe were rarely allowed to vote any of these transfers of sovereign power from their own countries to the power elites controlling the EU. When they did exceptionally have referenda (France, Ireland) they voted against these power grabs; only for their political masters to force repeat referenda; effectively instructing them to “vote the right way”, and thereby reinforcing the growth of a dangerous Leviathan.

The lesson for all to learn from these predatory acts was that the writing was on the wall for nation state democracies in Europe. The creation of a United States of Europe against the consent of the people, was and is the overriding strategic goal of all those allied to the creation and strengthening of the EU. Which in practice means the overwhelming majority of the professional political class in ALL member countries (now 27 in number) of the EU.

However, for those with knowledge of the founding history of the EU, the unbridled truth of its power grabbing goals were revealed from its inception. The entire history of the EU’s development was conceived in the late 1940s by a group of European elite intellectuals, centred around Jean Monnet. Their mindset and intent was always anti-democratic, centralising, elitist, and statist. Their intent was captured in the EC’s founding treaty, the Treaty of Rome (1954), which clearly defined the aim as the “ever increasing integration” of the member states. The means to this end were also carefully established in the Treaty, by solely allocating the power of proposing legislation to the bureaucracy, that is, the European Commission. This extraordinarily anti-democratic design means that the European Parliament can only debate and vote laws and budgets presented by the Commission. Parliamentary deputies are mere voting fodder. By design, ALL legislation voted in the Parliament sets out to extend, deepen, consolidate and render irreversible the centralising, statist, anti democratic, integrationist and authoritarian rule of Europe’s diverse peoples and multifaceted economies.

The vast majority of Europe’s populations have sleepwalked into this nightmare; not realising the profound implications of the elites’ actions and the associated treaties. Which was fine for those EU elites and their power grab ambitions. Until that is, the euro crisis broke.

It is not economically possible to have a sound and sustainable monetary union without at the same time having fiscal union. Nation state democracies have that combination and it is legitimised through having a political union. The EU introduced monetary union in the 1990s without either fiscal or political union. This was done surreptitiously, irresponsibly but deliberately. Most discerning observers at the time knew that the design was flawed and would eventually create a crisis. The political elites at the time were informed. They chose to ignore the design weakness; arguably seeing it as an opportunity to hasten political union at a later date.

This is where we are today. The EU power elites see the eurozone crisis as a once in a lifetime opportunity to irreversibly close the door on nation states political autonomy. The President of the EU Commission, Barrosso, has called for the creation of both a banking union and a fiscal union. “More Europe” is the clarion call for solving the eurozone crisis.

So are the populations of Europe benefiting from peace and security bestowed from above? Are they contentedly basking in the well being and sense of European identity that the EU power elites claim is the legacy of their benign supranational rule?

Absolutely not. Tension, conflicts, civil unrest, violence, suicides, and demonstrations are the order of the day in many of Europe’s capitals. The people in the benighted southern European counties are voting with their hard earned savings. Billions of euros have already been shipped out of bank deposit accounts in Greece, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese banks and sent to safer havens in Germany and Switzerland. Governments in Greece and Italy have already been toppled by Brussels and external appointees imposed. The Spanish government is being threatened and cajoled to bow to an EU bailout; meaning, imposed constraints on its powers to tax and spend.

There are new political movements emerging with anti-centralising, anti EU agendas, in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Bavaria (southern Germany). The majority of British, Finns, and Czechs are now eurosceptic in outlook. Even in France one party – Marine Le Pen’s National Front – has at last broken ranks and openly adopted an anti euro, anti EU Fiscal Pact, policy platform. An immense power struggle for the heart and soul of Europe is beginning.

The EU power elites are resolved and united to win this struggle. At any cost. That means even to participate in the active destruction of liberty and free markets in Europe as well as the institutions and tax and spend powers of national democracies. They have invested their entire careers in this EU Project, the United States of Europe. The disastrous consequences of their policies, actions and powers are evident to all those who wish to see. Except, that is, the Nobel Peace Prize committee and the EU elites themselves. Hubris is their blindness but authoritarian power their drug. These people are dangerous and intent on taking away our freedoms.

Source: http://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2012/10/16/power-grab-the-eu-political-elites%E2%80%99-fig-leaf-of-legitimacy.html