Welcome to the Emerging Giscardian Empire
These days, euro-integrationists use American imperialism to justify the creation of a 'United States of Europe' — a superpower Europe that could stall US global aggression. (Or perhaps compete with it, or even complement it!)
That's just one of many games they play in Europe, and they're all aimed towards building a so-called federal entity. And in a language other than eurospeak this entity may be described as a single state— Or an empire, in view of the assimilation of nations that takes place beneath one European Centrum.
In charge of this empire building is Europe's own Benjamin Franklin, ex-French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who's been entrusted with presiding over the 'Convention of the Future of Europe'. And helping Giscard we find the oblivious masses of Europe who, together with the mainstream media, are enticed to play euro-games in order to give the whole project a semblance of democracy.
The Treaty of Nice
One particular game is the EU referendum game. Here, aided by lackey heads of state, the EU plays by it own rules:
'If you win, we play again. If I win, I win forever.'
That's what happened in Ireland when the Nice Treaty was rejected in a referendum over a year ago. And now, mid-October, that same Treaty was again presented to the Irish people in yet another referendum, this time accompanied by a fair amount of state funded prop. Ireland was the only state that had a referendum on the Nice Treaty. And this second time the Irish people accepted it, thereby paving the way for the Nice Treaty to take effect across the EU. On this specific issue, the game will not be played again.
The Nice Treaty is no joke. It is not the ultimate European Treaty, but it certainly is the penultimate for this epoch. The ultimate treaty (at least for this epoch) is the Constitutional Treaty, ostensibly being debated by Giscard's Convention on the 'Future of Europe'.
Yet before we venture any further, what exactly is the Nice Treaty?
That itself is an issue under heated debate, even if it's like debating whether the earth is flat. Indeed, some idiots from the pro-EU movement in applicant Malta publicly branded a few Maltese activists as "traitors" (my wife in particular) for traveling to Ireland during the referendum to help the Irish No2Nice campaign. They are "traitors" because in the eyes of the Maltese europhiles (as in other applicant states) the Treaty of Nice is a generous "enlargement treaty" that paves the way for the Maltese government's dream of membership in 2004. Had the Irish voters rejected the Treaty of Nice, they believe that enlargement would have been jeopardized.
In reality, the Treaty of Nice despotically erases any prospects for a small State to actually survive nationhood inside the EU. The Nice Treaty eases the way for enlargement only insofar as it disarms the applicant countries from the power that small member states like Ireland have thus far possessed. It diminishes the power of small member states so that by the time the EU is enlarged these states would not be able to detract the aspirations of the larger states in the creation of the Euro-Centrum.
As such, an enlarged EU will be more politically structured. The national veto is practically dead, and political power is further proportioned according to the population size of each member state (a process effectively begun with the 1992 Maastricht Treaty).
When the people are blinded, you can feed them crap and tell them it's 'processed food' and they'll thank you for it.
"See! There's the power of small states in the EU," an idiotic lawyer and budding politician exclaimed during a recent TV debate here in Malta. "Ireland has the power to stop enlargement by rejecting the Nice Treaty," he said, without realizing the irony that that's exactly what the Nice Treaty takes away. And if you happen to be a provincial lawyer like the prime minister of Malta, you'd see the Nice Treaty as the key to the doors of paradise. He had even publicly called the Irish "selfish" for voting against Nice a year ago!
It's a fool's paradise, you see—
The tidal wave towards a superpower EU
The EU is aiming high. The heads of European states connive towards this aim, while some heads are as oblivious as the masses they lead. Yet scattered around Europe one finds EU-critical activists who campaign for a different EU, an alternative EU. But many people across Europe cannot perceive these alternatives because the EU has hijacked the so-called 'Debate on the Future of Europe'.
And the people follow this vision. The majority of those who are active within the YES movement in Malta, as in all applicant states, have not even analyzed the Nice Treaty, let alone viewing it from a different angle. For these people the EU debate does not go farther than EU membership. Beyond this panacea — through the haze of the secretive and complex workings of the EU — they see only seductive bright sunshine. To them the EU is a benign club of star nations that enhances, rather than erodes, the sovereignty of its members. We find professors and so-called intellectuals making a fool of themselves to posterity by uttering these stupidities, while perceiving anyone who is eurosceptic as some provincial retard.
It is not fashionable these days to be EU-critical. For the euro momentum behind this massive tidal wave of state-funded propaganda has overwhelmed much of the so-called intelligentsia, together with the masses that follow. Meanwhile, the mainstream media has become an expert in eurospeak without even realizing.
A "New Europe": The Giscardian Empire
On October 28, the Convention on the 'Future of Europe' was presented with a "skeletal outline" for a future Constitutional Treaty of Europe. An "outline" for the "beginning of a new Europe," as Convention president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing described it.
The reaction from EU critical camps was immediate.
"An EU Superstate is in the making, planned in a top-down manner by Mr Giscard's Convention. It is a stab in the back for democracy. This will lead to a deeper legitimacy crisis for the EU," remarked Hans Lindqvist from Sweden, the coordinator of The European Alliance of EU-critical Movements (TEAM).
Giscard's draft for a European Constitution is a 46-article "basic structure" that is to be debated and filled in by the end of 2003. It is a development of the mysterious document I wrote about in the article A Watchdog for Byzantine Europe?.
The draft structure starts with providing for a "federal basis" in article 1 to the "Decision to establish [an entity called the European Community, European Union, United States of Europe, United Europe]."
See how broad Giscard's bracketed nomenclature goes? He could have even included 'European Empire' had it not sounded so rash and archaic.
This, of course, is the first step towards single statehood; or empire, depending on how you look at it. Here, where I reside, members of the Maltese intelligentsia tell me that there's a difference between a single state and a federation. My reply to such nonsense no longer mentions the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany as examples of federations that are indeed single states. Nowadays I give Nigeria as an example.
Sure, even Nigeria is a federation—
Taking on from the American tenth amendment, article 8 of Giscard's draft states that "any competence not conferred on the Union by the Constitution rests with the Member States". Indeed! Perhaps member states may retain such competences as waste disposal, vehicular traffic management, the beat cop and the building of more prisons— always under the supervision of "EU Directives" that govern such competences, of course.
The competences of the European Empire's Centrum will be of a higher order.
First, a true empire requires an army backed by a mighty sword. In article 30 the Giscardian paper provides space for a "common defence policy to defend and promote the Union's values in the wider world".
An empire, of course, cannot have neutral states such as Ireland, Austria, Sweden and puny Malta, fooling around and saying they don't agree with such and such a war. And yet, to this very day, the EU Commission still gives its verbal guarantees of neutrality inside the EU. And the prime ministers of Ireland and of Malta still relay this guarantee to the herds they lead!
Apart from a common defense system, an Empire would also require a "common foreign and security policy", which is provided by article 3. Here again, foreign policy is either common, or you have neutral states fooling around.
Also in article 3 one finds a provision for the "creation of an area of liberty, security and justice." This "area of liberty" is ostensibly attained through article 4, which provides for a "single legal personality." This of course requires the total centralization of "justice and home affairs" — a single criminal justice system— perhaps as 'effective' as that of the USA, and more—
And another higher competence is that of taxation. So in article 38 this draft provides for direct taxation, so that "the Union budget is fully financed by its own resources." That is to say, an emperor is never worth his cause if his subjects he does not tax directly with his own currency.
Finally, of course, an empire requires individual subjects to protect, control, tax and punish. In this regard, article 5 of the draft structure proposes "dual citizenship," which refers to "national citizenship and European citizenship". With a twist of irony, the paper asserts that Europeans would be "free to use either, as he or she chooses; with the rights and duties attaching to each." Dual citizenship, of course, is a transition step towards sole European citizenship, especially when the people realize that one passport is more than enough when it comes to attached "rights and duties".
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing emphasized that the debate should be on "structure and not on substance." Structure is what decides who controls what and how. Having established the structure, substance is easily filled in according to the desires of those who rule the empire. So this "outline" provides a "structure" which is supposedly to be filled through dialogue and debate. But since the structure is essentially there, it is rather more like a crossword puzzle, than a game of scrabble— if you see what I mean.
One structural aspect is Giscard's proposal for a "Congress of the Peoples of Europe." That sounds as archaic as the Soviet "Peoples' Congress." It is not clear, however, whether this will substitute any of the main European Institutions — the Commission, the Council and the Parliament — since Giscard's draft also mentions the amelioration and democratization of these three institutions.
Then of course we find the question of the Presidency. Although the draft gives a mention, this is something that was delved upon verbally by Giscard prior to the presentation of the draft. His expressed wish, at least "temporarily," is that the elected representatives of the nations of Europe elect the president. If it were for Giscard, and that is probably how it's going to be anyway, Europe will have an emperor who is elected by a senate. Yes, just like the Roman Emperor.
WhWhat is of particular interest here is that Giscard's draft also provides for a debate on an exit clause for members that wish to leave the Union. Could this mean an empire with an open door policy? I will come to this further on.
The alternative: Verheugen's Choice
So what are the alternatives for the future of Europe? And if no future Europe exists apart from that "outlined" in Giscard's "basic structure," will any European State outside the EU have a right to meaningfully coexist with member states? Does Europe exist at all outside the EU?
With this EU you're either in or you are out.
It's a Hobson's Choice, really. But it is only so because the EU autocracy itself has chosen it to be.
This past October, Enlargement Commissioner Günter Verheugen, who has become some sort of a guru for the Maltese euro-obsessed, remarked that Malta has no choice other than EU membership. The alternative, according to Günter, is isolationism, pure and simple. And the other week he was on Maltese national television telling the people that had he been a Maltese national he would have been worried at the prospect of Malta remaining outside the EU. And the Maltese europhile lemmings crawled all over each other to quote Mr Verheugen's stark warnings and lament the lack of insight of eurosceptics like us! Then just before Herr Verheugen left Malta, he used the terrorism incident in Bali to warn us Maltese lemmings how dangerous it would be for us to refuse to submit to his empire's protection. (Perhaps by becoming an EU frontier-rock Malta would have better prospects, Herr Verheugen? Perhaps "the terrorists" would not dare spill their spoils on the Maltese rock for fear of your euro-watchdogs?).
We don't have to invent a new word to describe this situation for we can use an old one: 'imperialism'.
They may call it the United States of Europe; they may call it a federation; they may call it a loose con-federation or even a Europe of Nation States. But the political finality of the European Union is a single State. And since this single State will comprise of different nations, then like its dead Soviet predecessor, the European Union will become an Empire.
Alternatives, they say—? But what alternatives!
One fundamental alternative fraternalizes the European family of nations without usurping their right for self-rule and without creating Very Big Brother to control them. But this vision does not measure as an alternative in the eyes of the European imperialists.
So today, we find this insolent travesty where the European Union plays the role of the Beacon of Freedom and Democracy, pretending to safeguard human rights and to promote peace worldwide. But the European Union is only doing what it needs to do. And what it needs to do is to empower itself further. As an emerging empire the European Union affords to play no war games, especially the Judeo-fundamentalist wars the United States government is embarking upon.
Thanks to the US government and the terrorism it provokes, the masses of Europe, including many so-called civil libertarians, flock around this beacon of freedom like moths blinded by false sunlight. Meanwhile the European empire self-empowers, self- consolidates and strengthens itself at the expense of the freedom of European nations.
ThThis European vision allows no alternatives. For any alternative would be a complete negation of its well being as an empire.
A democratic way towards Empire
We have now come to a situation where democracy itself may be used as a justification that serves the EU's imperial purposes. You see, a democratic political structure within a single Political Union requires the proportional representation of every community and every nation within the Union. But national representation is today unsatisfactory. In fact, this is one of the reasons why the current European Parliament is just a rubberstamp parliament and not a legislative parliament. If the European Parliament were to be truly representative, for every Maltese Euro-Parliamentary seat, you would need 200 German seats. As it stands, according to the Nice Treaty Malta is to get five seats, while Germany will only get 99 (and not the proportionate 1000 seats).
The Maltese europhiles take this as proof of how small-state friendly the EU is. I say, wait until 'true democracy' enters the veins of the European political structure.
In fact, the problem of national representation could be solved by the introduction of regional, rather than national, representation. This would be instrumental in the political eradication of national boundaries and the nation state. With regions of, say, three to six million people, nation states like Denmark and Ireland would be demoted to a regional status. And Malta, with 400,000 population, would practically end up becoming a sub-regional province.
So the regionalization of Europe might be projected by a future EU as an alternative that solves the problem of democratic representation. But this would be no alternative, since it would all form part of empire building.
Ultimately, the regionalization of Europe could also apply to any second or third representative chamber that might replace the present Council of the European Union (where Malta has been assured of three seats) or the Commission. Or indeed Giscard's own "Peoples' Congress" (incidentally, this also sounds like Gaddhafi's "People's Congress" in the Libyan Jamahariya).
Even so-called European inter-governmentalism, that is said to preserve the powers of national parliaments, can be demoted to the regional level — all ostensibly in the name of democracy (and the eradication of the nation state).
MeMember states may still retain the title of 'State'. But it is the practical side of politics that counts, not the nomenclature. In this context, the EU has learned a lot from the ex- Soviet empire, and I'm sure it's also learning from the American so-called federation across the Atlantic.
Domination or banishment
So what is to lie outside this empire? What of those European nations that say "Thanks, but no thanks, Monsieur Giscard"?
Let's start with Giscard's exit clause first. Article 46 provides for a debate concerning "the possibility of establishing a procedure for voluntary withdrawal from the Union by decision of a Member State, and the institutional consequences of such withdrawal.
Not a bad thing. I mean, if you're in prison and they say you can leave anytime you like, it cannot be that bad a prison— unless there lies a catch somewhere.
Given today's circumstances, however, I would describe Giscard's exit clause as an exclusionist clause.
For starters, in an in-depth interview he gave to the German magazine Der Spiegel a few days before he presented the draft, Giscard expressed his wish that there should only be a one-time opportunity of forming part of the future Europe under his Constitution. That is, you either sign in, or be damned forever! The criticism that Giscard faced over this exclusionist clause must have deterred him from including any mention of it in the final draft.
Yet there was mention of an exit clause. Which sounds different, given its voluntary twist of leaving the Union. But is Giscard tying this 'exit voluntarism' with the 'entrance voluntarism' provided by his Constitution?
Giscard's vision excludes two categories of European States. In the first category, it excludes those member states that choose not to submit to a European Constitution. In this case it excludes them by retaining them within the European Union as second-class members, dominated by a 'Constitutionalized', federal inner core.
It is not quite clear whether Giscard wants the Constitutional Treaty to nullify all other treaties, including the Nice Treaty. Questions over the legality of such a tactic arose, since no treaty may be nullified without the consent of all its signatories. And yet, the Nice Treaty itself provides for so-called "enhanced cooperation", which is eurospeak for the concept of allowing a group of member states to integrate further with or without the consent of the other member states. This "enhanced cooperation" is what creates an inner dominant core, and this is provided by the Treaty of Nice.
In the second category, it excludes those States that choose not to join the EU at all. And it excludes them by banishing them from the European family of nations, having practically hijacked the European continent. What we don't yet know is whether this banished zone will ultimately include a dissolved "outer EU" comprising of those member states which reject the Giscardian Constitution in 2004.
So what relationship will there be between the European Union as a single political entity and these forsaken countries that choose not to join the EU or to form part of the Giscardian Empire?
Article 42 of Giscard's draft provides a space for "provisions defining a privileged relationship between the Union and its neighbouring States, in the event of a decision on the creation of such a relationship."
So the first hurdle is a decision as to whether to create such a relationship in the first place. In this context, current attitudes do not bode well.
Enlargement Commissioner Verheugen himself, during his recent Malta visit, gave us an idea of how such matters are tackled by the Euro-autocracy.
In Malta, the Labour opposition party has proposed 'partnership' with the EU, rather than 'membership'. But when asked for his views on this alternative relationship, Günter Verheugen was dismissive, implying that this is no alternative at all. According to Verheugen, the Labour Party proposal simply implies "normal bilateral relations" and in Malta's case this would mean "isolation". The EU would deal with Malta just as it would deal with any other country in the world.
That's banishment from Europe. It's Verheugen's self-fulfilling isolation prophecy.
Herr Verheugen's choice is worse than a Hobson's Choice. In Malta's case, if we choose to join, we would be renouncing our present 'independent' status to become an EU island province. But if we choose to stay outside the EU, then we are threatened with isolation.
WhWhy is this? Is isolationism some kind of punishment that the EU has set aside for those dissenting states that refuse to submit to the European Empire? Will the debate at the Convention, now given further impetus by Giscard's draft, take the same line as Herr Verheugen's imperial remarks? Or is it just the consequences of empire building that automatically create such a punitive stance?
Tomorrow's European freedom fighters
If I have focused on Malta, one reason is because Malta is a microcosm that illustrates much of the ill effects of a homogenized European State. Malta is supposedly a constitutionally neutral state that actively seeks peace in the Mediterranean and beyond. Yet its present government fails to see this alternative road because this road has long been covered with the weeds of inactivity.
Today Malta is on the road of falsehood. From a neutral state it is fast becoming an EU frontier. From here on things will be moving faster. By December 12, all "negotiations" with the ten applicant states will be concluded. Early next year the EU referendum game will start being played in each of these ten applicant countries, and Malta might just be one of the first.
If we vote YES then we're in. But the Europe that these applicant countries will join in 2004 will be a Europe that has squarely faced the Giscardian Constitution that is being concocted right now. Representatives from these applicant states are also included in the Convention that debates their future. But the Convention is a travesty. Delegates exist to go with the flow. Anyone who's not flowing is simply ignored.
It is then largely up to the national governments of the larger states to decide whether to allow this Giscardian vision to become a reality. But with the past as a measure of the future, we know today that national governments exist to sell the EU to their people, and their people to the EU.
Today the blinded masses of Europe are complacent. Only the very few are fighting back. Yet it's surprising what time can do to a cause. It can kill it as much as it can invigorate it.
Today we are EU-critical, we are politically incorrect and we are called eurosceptics, nationalists and traitors. Tomorrow we might be called dissenters, anarchists and troublemakers. And the day after tomorrow we might find ourselves on the wrong side of the empire's law and end up having to fight our way to freedom under the label of terrorists.
This is not the alternative road we seek. But whether today's eurosceptics are the seeds of tomorrow's freedom fighters is something only the EU can decide.
Sources
EuEuobserver.com:
http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=9&aid;=8161
http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=18&aid;=8165
http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?sid=18&aid;=8057
Document: Preliminary draft Constitutional Treaty, presented by the Praesidium of the European Convention to the Plenary session in Brussels, 28 October, 2002; CONV 369/02
Other Works by KeKevin Ellul Bonici
from The Laissez Faire Electronic Times, Vol 1, No 39, November 11, 2002