There are three principal characteristics of a fascist society and the European Union has just shown all three in tooth and claw.
1. The State is all powerful and democracy irrelevant.
2. The State combines with corporatist interest groups (and other States) to rule over the people and nations they have brought under their control.
3. No rule or law can be allowed to frustrate the “triumph of the will” of the corporatist powers. (The fact that no national electorate of any EU member has EVER voted constitutionally – ie by two thirds majority – for ANY European Treaty or set of rules makes the assumption of breaking such rules without democratic reference so “natural”!!)
GERMAN STRONG-ARM TACTICS
The twelve countries in the Euro zone have – at the “request” (ie the threats and bribery) of France and Germany voted to allow France and Germany to break the economic rules for the Euro laid down in the Maastricht Treaty, the Nice Treaty and the proposed European Constitution. (The “Constitution” therefore has been overturned even before it has been signed!)
In February 2002 Berlin successfully blocked an official early warning letter from the EU being sent to Germany and to Portugal – both having breached the stability pact rules. Schroeder has recently threatened other EU member states in the crudest possible terms with a reduction in subsidies if they try to challenge German interests in the EU – in particular the very favourable voting regime for Germany under the new constitution and the reduction in the number of EU commissioners for the smaller countries:
“Whoever wants to change anything in the compromise which the EU Draft Constitution represents must consider the connection between their position and the EU financing negotiations which begin in the same year. Whoever does not see that connection must learn that such attitudes will not go unpunished”
Doubtless the same strong arm tactics have been at play in the matter of not enforcing the budget deficit rules.
The twelve ministers meeting in Brussels voted against the European Commission’s enforcement of the rule on budget deficits. France and Germany have broken these rules for the last three years! No wonder that among others the Poles object to the way Germany acts in Europe. They rightly say why should the poor Poles not qualify for subsidies from the Common Agricultural Policy when Germany and France are effectively subsidising their economies by breaking the rules on deficit spending?
To such legitimate remarks the German Brussels Gauleiter Guenther Verheugen (one of the most arrogant and fanatical eurofederalists) recently said: – “If this is the way Poland begins its membership in the EU, I
regret my efforts for Poland”, he said.
As EU Observer reported: The Commission (represented by economic and monetary affairs commissioner Pedro Solbes) and the member states (represented by Italian finance minister Giulio Tremonti) seemed unable to agree on anything at all. Solbes said that if the ministers’ text is adopted, they will be following “neither the spirit nor the letter”. The storminess of the meeting was evident as seemingly neither Mr Solbes nor Mr Tremonti could bear to look at each other during the press conference.
The text of the agreement had to be approved by the whole EU (ie not just the 12 Euro members but the 15 EU members) and Germany and France have used their power and patronage to bully many of the smaller states into supporting this betrayal of the treaties they all signed. The result is that those disagreeing could not overturn the “qualified majority” which had already voted to waive the rules.
Four countries – Austria, the Netherlands, Finland and Spain – voted against this surrender to blatant power over constitutionally agreed rules and it was the Austrian finance minister, Karl-Heinz Grasser who neatly summed up the inevitable – perhaps terminal – crisis in the Euro-zone when he said: “I can only say that smaller countries – and also the Austrian taxpayer, should not pay the bill for the exploding deficits of large countries, in this case, of France and Germany”.
But that is of course precisely what the member countries of the European Union who joined the Euro agreed to do. Indeed it was Germany’s fear of having to pay for the deficits of “lesser” and more economically incompetent countries which led to the rules being put in the Maastricht Treaty in the first place. But as enormous power has accrued to the Franco-German axis as the true meaning of these treaties was hidden from the electorates of Europe, so Germany and especially France have broken all the rules AND MADE EVERY OTHER MEMBER PAY FOR THEIR ILLEGALITY.
France for instance has continued to pay massive subsidies to its steel, telecommunications, energy and computer industries and of course its highly subsidised farmers, thus putting workers in those industries in Britain and other countries out of work. Whenever there is a pensions crisis or government subsidised loss maker or State owned monopoly or even a strike in any member of the Euro-zone then all other members citizens have to pay for it. Once you share a bank account with those you cannot control then you pay for their liabilities and they benefit from your assets.
At last these elementary truths seem to be coming home to the extremely dim politicians of the members of the European Union. Unless the Euro breaks up soon there will be “the mother of all crises”.
