Cyprus bank account grab exposes EU's new feudalism

by Marc Glendening
 

The peasants of Cyprus are now truly revolting, following a decision by Angela Merkel and the other Eurozone heads of government to force Cyprus to grab private bank savings to contribute €5.8 billion towards an EU-IMF bailout. 

This edict demonstrates that the rule of law accounts for very little in the European Union. 

One of the big claims always made by supporters of Brussels-based governance was that the individual EU member states would be subject to a system based upon predictable and impartially applied rules, enforced by a Commission and Court of Justice above sectional, national interest.

The EU, they have argued, was therefore a continuation of the political project commenced by the European Enlightenment in the late eighteenth century. It has heralded, allegedly, another move away feudalism of the ancien regime. 

However, the situation in Cyprus proves what some of us have been arguing for some time. Namely, that the brave new world of the EU represents in reality a return to pre-modern, pre-democratic Europe. 

By Brussels fiat, savers' private property has been seized in an act of retrospective taxation. This is an arbitrary act of raw power befitting Louis XIV. A decision taken in private, passed on as a fait accompli to the EU's local agent in Nicosia, 'president' Nicos Anastasiades, and then imposed by him without reference to the national parliament - the same elected body that last week voted against divesting savers of their already taxed income. 

How convenient that Brussels and the Cypriot president have found a (constitutional?) way to circumvent the impertinent reservations of parliamentarians.

This is not the first time Brussels has made it all up on the hoof and disregarded the apparent rule of law that supposedly lies at the heart of the treaty. 

In 2003, Germany and France both broke the Stability and Growth Pact  rules that supposedly accompanied the single currency. No action was taken by the Commission for exceeding budget deficits of 3% and levels of national debt exceeding 60% of GDP. Portugal and Greece did, however, have their collars felt.

As many politically dissident Germans have argued, the various euro bailouts have contravened the supposedly strict Maastricht rules designed to prevent members of the single currency from becoming responsible for the debts of others. They claim, as a result, the EU treaty is now incompatible with the Germany constitution. 

When Alastair Darling was summoned to Brussels to discuss the eurozone crisis the day after the British general election in 2010, he thought there was no way Britain as a non-euro member could be forced to contribute to the bailouts. Wrong! The European Court of Justice and the Commission suddenly decreed that Article 122 of the EU treaty - a measure originally related to helping member states that had experienced a natural disaster - now covered those countries experiencing economic problems. Our then chancellor was forced to stump up £11 billion in loans.

At the beginning of the Cyprus bailout scandal we were told that this savings grab would be a one off. Now we learn from Jeroen Dijsselbloem, chair of the eurozone finance ministers, that this 'solution' might indeed be applied to other single currency countries as well. 

In Brussels anything goes and anything is possible. The European Enlightenment was about the rule of law and making the exercise of power accountable and transparent to the people. The EU is about reversing this process.

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written by Marc Glendening - Campaign director, Democracy Movement

For the latest campaign news and EU developments, follow us on Twitter: @DemocracyMovemt

Our politicians can't stop the EU budget rising

Amid the entertaining political theatre of yesterday's EU budget vote lies a far more fundamental debate than whether the amount Britain's pays into the EU budget should be frozen or cut. 

A debate that will soon come much more to the fore.

Much of the Westminster Village reaction to the government's defeat in Parliament last night by 13 votes is inevitably rotating around whether David Cameron is in control of his party; whether he will wield his veto to block a rise in the EU budget; whether Labour will support that veto and what will happen if the Prime Minister tries to secure MPs' approval for a deal that does not involve a budget cut.

Throw in some simplistic comparisons to John Major's Maastricht woes in the early 1990s and a mixture of the above is what the political commentariat are serving up for today's consumption.

But all that is a side show. Sure, a bit of discomfort for David Cameron and the fate of a few billion pounds rests on one option or another and the Democracy Movement, more than most, wants to see Britain's payments to the EU cut - in fact, far more dramatically than anything currently being considered.

Back in 2005, when the EU's last 2007-2014 Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF) was being debated, the DM launched its Stop the Cheques campaign, contrasting the cost of the EU with various cuts being made then to public services (see campaign postcards pictured above). A theme that is today, thanks partly I'm sure to our efforts making the case to MPs over the years since - but no doubt mostly due to the subsequent financial and debt crisis - a very strong aspect of debate on the subject among MPs across the party divide.

Impossible freeze  

No, the real punch to today's events will be delivered when the EU meets to hammer out a deal on the EU budget on 22-23 November.

For David Cameron to deliver his policy he must very likely veto an EU deal, but even then the EU budget will continue to rise with inflation anyway. It is certainly beyond his power to deliver Parliament's view that there should be real-terms cuts, as demonstrated by yesterday's vote. 

Then, or soon after, all the current chatter about EU budget vetoes, freezes and cuts will be shown to have been pointless. The various positions over which our Goverment (freeze or veto), Labour opposition (cut but no veto) and Parliament (real terms cut) have so publicly clashed this week will be revealed as a total waste of time due to the nature of the brave, new, post-democratic EU in which we are currently embroiled.

Pointless veto 

The domestic democratic agony we have just witnessed will have served only make more glaring the reality: It is actually impossible to freeze, and certainly to cut, the EU budget. There is nothing our Government or Parliament can do - even if working in unison - to stop the amount we hand over to the EU rising without completely re-writing our treaty links.

Seventeen of the EU's twenty seven member countries are net recipients from the EU budget, changes to which must be agreed unanimously. If no agreement is reached, the budget reverts to a cut-and-paste, year-by-year agreement with an in-built increase in line with inflation.

It is blatantly in the interest of the vast majority of net recipient countries to block any attempt to freeze the EU budget and certainly to cut it since, if unanimous agreement is not reached, the budget rises anyway.

The system is loaded in favour of the budget recipients and a perpetual increase. Both our Government and Parliament will be shown to be completely impotent, their views on the changes that should be made to the budget over-ruled and self-serving EU treaty clauses enacted to keep public cash flowing to Brussels at an ever-increasing level.

Real question

Our financial exposure to the EU will be demonstrably out of control, regardless of the cuts being suffered by public services. Our democratic institutions powerless to secure change. So what then? What does this say about democracy in today's EU-dominated Europe and is that powerlessness a future we wish to pursue?

Thanks to the brilliant work yesterday by MP Mark Reckless and supporters of his amendment, this is the far more fundamental question that will shortly hit home about Britain's relationship with the EU than would have hit the headlines through any fleeting debate about whether we should hand over a bit more, or a bit less, cash.

The soon-to-be-apparent real achievement of yesterday's events will be to have highlighted to a fuller extent the nature of the increasingly post-democratic state in which EU member countries are currently confined. 

So bring on the EU summit later this month and the start of the real debate - about how to secure a more democratic future for Britain and hopefully Europe too.

Revealed: The reason the pro-EU lobby don't want a referendum

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by Marc Glendening
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'We can't have a referendum because I can't think of any good arguments for the EU': The true anti-democratic nature of EU-elitism exposed!

Gaby Hinsliff had a very interesting and revealing article in The Guardian ('Ed Miliband, you stoke this anti-Europe fire at your peril', May 21) earlier this week.

She was commenting on the growing number of prominent Labour figures - Peter Mandelson, Ed Balls, Alan Johnson and now new party policy supremo, John Cruddas - who have all recently argued that there will need to be a referendum on EU membership.

The possibility that Ed Miliband might boldly go where Harold Wilson dared to venture during the two 1974 general election campaigns and cause havoc for Cameron and Clegg by making the promise that he would, if prime minister, give the British people the chance to decide who governs them, fills Gaby with fear.

Why? Because, she concedes: "Any future yes-to-Europe campaign is now seriously short of compelling arguments." Yes, the project of building a centralised, top-down, Brussels based system of government has indeed, some of us would argue, been rendered redundant by the liberalisation of world trade, the shift in power from west to east, the new technology and demographic change (among other factors).

Gaby is like a mystic who having seen her belief in supranatural powers demolished by the onward march of science still cannot let go of her pre-modern faith. This would be fine if this was just a personal matter. She could happily wrestle with her inner contradictions till the cows come home.

However, there are sinister implications in relation to her opposition to an EU referendum. She is effectively saying that she wishes the political class will continue to deny us the right to decide who gets to make the key decisions over our lives, because she does not have the arguments to persuade us to share her EU dogma.

There is an implicit, well perhaps not so implicit, authoritarianism with many - but by no means all - on the pro-EU side. While there are honourable pro-EUists, such as former Europe minister Keith Vaz and Ian McKenzie, director of the People's Pledge EU referendum campaign, who do believe the people should be entrusted with a say, the likes of Shirley Williams and Denis McShane are adamant that we should not be given a vote on this question.

The majority of EU-elitists are up-dated versions of nineteenth century Tory elitists who thought the working classes and women were too imbecilic to have the franchise extended to them.

Sadly, Gaby Hinsliff appears to come in this category too. At the conclusion of her article she writes: "It's immoral to refuse a vote on Europe lest the people give the 'wrong' answer': but it's certifiably mad to start this fight without knowing you could win."

This is classic Guardian 1984 double-think/newspeak, professing to believe in democracy whilst simultaneously ruling it out unless the right result can be guaranteed beforehand.

At least the trad Tory opponents of universal franchise had the grace to honestly and proudly proclaim their anti-democratic politics.

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by Marc Glendening
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EU's response to election results risks Europe's stability

The weekend's election results in Greece and France have demonstrated more clearly than ever that the European Union and its austerity policies, designed to preserve its flagship euro currency, are feeding a rise in the popularity of extremist parties.

In Greece, the two centrist parties Pasok and New Democracy together received just 30% of the vote compared with almost 80% three years ago, while a 'radical' left-wing coalition called Syriza secured 17% and the openly fascist Golden Dawn gained 7% giving it seats in the Greek parliament.

France also was not immune to such forces, with Marine Le Pen and her Front National party gaining almost a fifth of votes and coming third in the country's presidential contest - an improvement of more than 2.6 million votes on her father's result in 2007.

Continuing a trend that was already in evidence, voters turned to alternatives to the centrist parties as they refused to budge from the Brussels doctrine and appeared unable to provide people with the responsive government they crave.

As the editorial in today's Guardian puts it, "Democracy matters. When Brussels or Berlin loses sight of that simple fact, voters reach for simpler and uglier solutions."

Stability at risk

For the EU's advocates, who claim the organisation is responsible for preserving peace in Europe since the Second World War, this impetus being given to ultra-nationalist forces by the inability of countries locked within the euro to quickly restore competitiveness and growth to their economies should give pause for thought.

The EU's critics on the other hand have long argued that the only true guarantor of continued peace and stability between European nations is effective democracy, where people feel they have meaningful influence over the rules that affect their lives.

Since the EU's fundamental ethos is political integration, which aims to centralise political decision-making in its largely unaccountable Brussels institutions, it's no surprise that growing numbers of people are coming to realise that the EU system is in reality working against goals of peace and stability by driving Europe away from its post-war democratic revival.

Arrogant elite

Such an idea appears far less shocking when leading EU figures are seen stepping in immediately following a public vote in another country to slap down the result.

Take Peter Altmaier, the chief whip of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat party, who said that France's president-elect Francois Hollande needed to learn that while his election victory may herald change in France, it would not be allowed to change anything on the EU level.

Almost glorying in how people and their votes no longer matter when it comes to directing their own political future, Herr Altmaier said: "It is very important indeed to send a message to the markets that nothing will fundamentally change."

Germany's chancellor herself has also stressed her opposition to Hollande's key campaign pledge of reopening the euro fiscal pact, telling the Berlin media "that's just not on."

"We in Germany are of the opinion, and so am I personally, that the fiscal pact is not negotiable. It has been negotiated and has been signed by 25 countries," she said.

Turning her fire on Greece, Mrs Merkel insisted that Athens must also comply with the stringent terms of its £100bn bailout even though more than 60% of the Greek electorate had voted for parties rejecting those terms.

The European Commission has also weighed in, telling the new French leader that all previous agreements between France and EU were binding despite the election.

"We expect agreements to be ratified. That is the very basis of the EU," said a Commission spokesman. Yet isn't the ability of a new president or parliament to overturn the decisions of a predecessor in response to a majority of public votes the very basis of democracy? Can there be any further doubt that the EU and democracy are fundamentally incompatible.

Post-democracy?

The moment of truth now looming is not just an economic one over the future of the fiscal pact and the euro, but also a civil and democratic one that goes to the heart of political power on our continent.

Who truly decides how European countries are governed: voters in elections or the technocrats of the EU?

If the EU elite continue on this course of slapping down events in which people cast their votes and expect things to change, they will be playing increasingly dangerous games with the future of Europe.

When those who govern either cannot, or will not, respond to public votes, the necessity of a radical change in course away from EU centralism and its outdated, 1950s goal of political union becomes even more urgent.

Birthplace of democracy experiences Brussels 'regime change'

by Marc Glendening

The European Union has always boasted that it is a force for democracy; a guardian against a return to the authoritarian politics that have haunted various parts of our continent.

This, of course, as recent events in Greece have confirmed, is total nonsense. The EU elite power system is, and always has been, the major post-war threat to liberal, democratic values.

The whole edifice was designed, as John Laughland demonstrated in his seminal book The Tainted Source: The Undemocratic Origins of the European Idea, to limit the capacity of citizens to hold their rulers to account.

The idea of a pan-European government was driven in its early, post-war days by prominent individuals who had been associated with the fascist politics of the inter-war period. People such as Robert Schuman, who was an official in Petain's Vichy government, and Paul-Henri Spaak (active in the Belgian fascist movement).

The European Commission's original name, revealingly, was 'the Higher Authority'; a non-elected body that was meant to preside over the elected member governments; as indeed it does, albeit together now with the European Council, the grouping that brings together the political heads of government.

Post-democracy

The EU is now returning the peoples trapped within it to a pre-democratic situation. Recently, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has articulated very directly what is expected of the governments and the peoples within the Eurozone.

Referring to the short-lived decision by the Greek prime minister to consult his people in a referendum as to whether or not they wanted to proceed with the EU/IMF bailout programme, he came out with this piece of typically Euro-Orwellian 'double-think';

"Giving people a voice is always legitimate, but [here we go] the solidarity of all Eurozone countries is not possible unless each one agrees to measures deemed necessary."

Deemed necessary by who? EU leaders who have no electoral mandate whatsoever in Greece? Further demonstrating the thinking inside the Brussels machine, an EU official who refused to be named commented in a similar vein;

"We are at war. The crisis is that bad. And its time that Greece put party politics aside and demonstrate national unity."

The logic of these sinister authoritarian statements is that no electorate should be given the ability to contradict the priorities of the Euro-elite, who will decide all the key policies relating to public expenditure levels, which industries should be in the state and private sectors, rates of taxation and so on.

'Party politics' must be put aside, apparently. Where and when did we last hear these sentiments in Europe?

Regime change

BBC Newsnight's Paul Mason also alluded to the fact that the Euro-elite is now explicitly engaging in 'regime change' when he took on the French president at a press conference last week over the democratic implications of what was taking place. He asked Mr Sarkozy;

"It's evident that you and Angela Merkel, the two most powerful governments in Europe, are trying to change the governments of Italy and Greece. How is that just? And once started, where does it stop?"

This was met with an outraged response from Mr Sarkozy about Mason coming from an island and "not understanding the subtleties of the European construction". It would only have been marginally less crass had Mason come back with insults about Sarkozy sharing an obsession for pan-European government because he comes from the same country as Napoleon.

Mason also revealed rumour that, during the week prior to Italy accepting IMF oversight of its public finances, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had phoned the Italian president to explore the possibility of a change of government and that, according to Mason;

"EU officials have certainly been in contact with the Greek opposition to explore the creation of a national unity government."

EU placemen

Not content with imposing an austerity programme on the Greek government, the Euro-elite have also evidently been intervening to help to manufacture a revolt within the Prime Minister's centre-left PASOK party designed to remove him from office and bring about a new coalition government.

The aim was clearly not just to block the bailout referendum that George Papandreou had announced but also to prevent an election being called that might have thrown up results inconvenient for the Euro project.

To replace Papandreou, the EU elite have been pushing for Lucas Papademos, a former official in the European Central Bank and also wants another of its trusted old boys, former commissioner Mario Monti, to replace Signore Bunga-Bunga in Rome's hot seat.

The plan is now to concentrate new powers with the Euro-elite and to do this in a way that means there is no requirement to hold referenda or even, in most countries, debates and votes in national parliaments.

No say

Article 352 of the EU treaty will be invoked to force through most of the proposed changes, including Commission surveillance of national budgets, while it is likely that the EU will in December also have to announce a new mini-treaty for bigger measures like the Financial Transactions Tax.

Heads of government, including David Cameron, hope that by bringing about the forthcoming transfer of powers this way, calls for an EU referendum will be neutralised. The argument will be that the treaty is too insubstantial to amount to a constitutional change.

Of course, Sarkozy and his fellow anti-democratic elitists have form in this area, having himself back in 2005 ignored the overwhelming French rejection of the EU Constitution in a referendum and then used his majority in the French assembly to steamroller through the tactically renamed Lisbon treaty.

The exact same thing happened in Holland following a vote of 62% against transferring new powers to the EU and, on two separate occasions within the past ten years, the Irish people have voted against new EU treaties only to be told that they must vote again.

Yet with its new policy of regime change, the EU's anti-democratic inclinations are now being taken to new, extreme heights. So when the European Movement next go on about their beloved institution's great commitment to democracy, just laugh out very loud, please.

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written by Marc Glendening

EU funds directive shows who governs

Only days into office, our new Con-Lib coalition government has been humbled by those who have actually long been in charge - the European Union.

It appears that the EU cannot be prevented from making a new financial services law that threatens to drive Britain's hedge funds industry offshore and cost us billions in tax revenue.

Quoted in Frankfurt's FAZ newspaper, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made clear the mirage of Britain's influence in Brussels and the state of democracy within the EU when she said: "Unfortunately we have to overrule the UK, but that is possible with a majority."

Given our government can be completely over-ruled by the EU, many would be forgiven for wondering why we bothered so recently to elect a government of any political colour.

It seems it was not to govern.

What election?

Once again we are shown that a majority of ministers from other European governments are in charge and all our new 'leaders' in Downing Street seem to be able to offer in response is shrugged shoulders and mutterings about battles they can't win.

Worse, their response shows no interest in actually seeking to change this anti-democratic EU situation and to regain the power to prevent severe damage being caused to a key British business sector.

How do our politicians hope to restore public faith in our democratic system if they continue to appear in this way to be little more than puppets, unable to control a Brussels regime making damaging laws that both business and government oppose?

Do David Cameron and George Osborne actually want to govern, or do they only want to posture - to occupy lofty positions, but only tinker on the margins while major decisions over how the country is run are made in Brussels by ministers in other governments that no-one here elected?

Media failure

While the response of our new leaders has so far been little more than pathetic and embarrassing, the issue at least reflects accurately the state of national democracy under the EU regime.

Yet, perversely, the EU remains largely unrecognised by the 'Westminster Village' - in which I include political journalists in the mainstream media - as a major contributor to today's lack of public faith in our political system.

Not once during the election campaign did we see or hear mention of how wriggling in the most blatant way out of a clear election promise to hold a referendum on the EU Constitution - when it returned repackaged as the Lisbon Treaty - undermines trust in election promises being made by Labour or the Liberal Democrats, in particular, this time around.

Not once during the election campaign, despite the amounts concerned overshadowing considerably other points of economic debate, and despite the waste of it being crystal clear, did we see or hear mention of the scale of cash Britain will hand over to the EU this coming financial year - £7.6bn (net).

No candidate was asked to justify this, while economic debate focussed on much lesser amounts.

Naturally, the politicians don't want to admit the extent to which they've marginalised themselves by handing ever more powers to the EU.

But, worse, the media seem complicit in their game that day-to-day government in this country has not become little more than a charade.

Critical cash

Has the print media, in particular, even considered that their falling revenues may to some extent be explained by the fact that political journalism appears to have drifted away from reality, occupying the same bubble as the politicians?

Sure, much news is now obtained online. The rise of the internet is undoubtedly also a factor.

But if it appears that the mainstream print media are failing to hold politicians to account - by failing to puncture their spin and to challenge them with the big questions about their credibility - why then should anyone bother buying a newspaper?

It seems a first step in putting greater pressure on our politicians to seek to govern again may be to pressure our media to burst the bubble of our leaders' increasing powerlessness.

It's a fair bet that for them to do so more robustly than at present may even be in the media's own best financial interest.

Reality check

What Nick Clegg and the rest of our new government must conclude from this early losing power clash with the EU is this.

Electoral reform without rebalancing the EU's powers back in favour of elected governments - as the pre-coalition Conservative manifesto pledged steps towards - would merely be rearranging the deckchairs while democracy, and public faith in our political system, carries on sinking.