How the European Union Is Governed

by Dr Bruno Bandulet, Bad Kissingen, Germany (*)

In the following we print the script delivered by Dr Bruno Bandulet at a meeting in Zurich. He had been invited by the European working group ‘Mut zur Ethik’ to talk about the nature of the European Union. Mr Bandulet, a financial expert with many years’ experience as a journalist, has published a number of valuable books and articles on the EU and the Euro.

With a razor-sharp analysis of the nature and ideology of the EU Bandulet gripped his audience. In his account of the development of European integration he analysed how the EEC was transformed into the EU. He pointed out, however, that even the beginnings had been undemocratic and had emerged from an idea of control. He drew attention to the influence of the Socialist International, which the majority of the EU prime ministers are members of. No wonder then that more and more socialist elements can be found in EU politics, while democratic concepts are so hard to find. His comparison of the EU with the former Soviet Union and Marxist ideology revealed astonishing similarities. He also mentioned the pact with free floating capital.

In the discussion, which followed his speech, the international audience confirmed the necessity for a change towards direct democracy in the European nations. Real democratisation can only come about ‘bottom up’, from the citizens who freely, independently and openly handle their own affairs and no longer leave everything up to corrupt politicians. Bandulet explicitly called for the export of the Swiss model of direct democracy to the EU countries as the only way of realising a Europe of democratic nations.

Ladies and gentlemen

I am a staunch European, I have always been one, but I vehemently oppose any attempt to identify the EU with Europe. In school, in the fifties and sixties, we were passionately pro Europe because the European idea was for us the guarantee that the dreadful civil wars that had been fought on our continent would never again come about. And furthermore, we regarded Europe as a bulwark of freedom against communism. It is a fact that the Europeans share approximately 80% of their moral concepts. Merely 20% are national peculiarities. But I must really ask myself the question today, whether the EU, due to the way it has developed, does not constitute a threat to freedom. A metamorphosis has taken place, or rather a reverse metamorphosis, the butterfly has become the caterpillar. How has this come about? Why did Europe, why did the EU’s development take such a course?

In the fifties and sixties, actually until well into the eighties, the EEC, as it was called at that time, and then the EC was an economic community that achieved remarkable things. First a free trade zone was created, the tariff barriers were abolished, then free movement of capital was introduced and the single European market was realised. These measures actually brought back a situation that had existed in Western Europe in the 19th century since in the later part of the 19th century free trade and free capital transactions had already become a reality in Europe, a fact that people often forget.

Then however, little by little, bureaucracy grew in Brussels, the budgets became bigger and bigger. In 1970 the EU budget was only 9.5bn D-marks. Today, it amounts to approximately 200bn D-marks. Everything became increasingly bureaucratic, and, of course, corruption grew together with the bureaucracy and the subsidies. Basically, the European Community has taken exactly the development that Ludwig Erhard predicted in his classic ‘Wohlstand für alle’ (‘wealth for everyone’). Already at an early stage he distrusted Brussels’ bureaucracy and warned against such developments including the single currency. Today, Ludwig Erhard would be regarded as anti-European, of course, although he was the better European.

What I am trying to say is that this European Community has become a structure that tends to be hostile to freedom. This development started to become visible after the end of the Cold War, which is almost paradoxical, because the end of the Cold War represented the bankruptcy of socialism, evident for everyone. And in quite a strange way, which I will deal with in detail, the attempt to bury socialism after its failure did not succeed. It was made socially acceptable again, as it were, by using the back door. Wits have said that the politburo simply moved from Moscow to Brussels.

I had the pleasure recently to read an ordinary agenda of the Moscow politburo and to get an idea what they had actually been dealing with. It was a centralised state of a gigantic size. I am afraid I must tell you that the content of this agenda hardly read very differently from the agenda of the Commission in Brussels.

The fact that in the nineties the EU changed its face of course also has to do with the political staff of the EU since all political phenomena depend on the people who are behind them. It is, for instance, impossible to introduce a market economy without free-enterprise economists or entrepreneurs. In the case of Russia this fact was completely overlooked in the early stages. Paradoxically, after the bankruptcy of communism, in many Western Europe countries former communists came to power, which is really quite astonishing. Today there are still communists in the government in Paris, and there were communists in the government in Rome until not long ago, and there are also former communists or at least fellow-travellers in the Berlin government.

Why is this so significant?

I am not disputing anybody’s right to revise his thinking. It is ennobling for somebody if he becomes wiser and revises his thinking, but the problem here is that no break with the past can be found in the biographies of many of these people. If somebody converts, like in the case of William Schlamm, who having been a communist became an anticommunist, it must be possible to find a break with the past, a caesura in his biography. If not, this can only mean that this person has ceased to be a communist because it is inopportune.

The case Jospin

Take the case of Jospin in Paris. He has so far given the impression of being quite an ordinary Jacobin, i.e. an egalitarian politician in the tradition of the French Revolution, until it was revealed that he had been a Trotskyite for over 20 years. What is particularly interesting is that he was still a Trotskyite when he became a member of the socialist party. He acted as a Trotskyite undercover agent in the socialist party, so to speak.

Trotsky was the man who was murdered in Mexico by one of Stalin’s agents. What is the essence of Trotskyism though? Trotskyism is communism proper, but above all it postulates permanent revolution. If one looks closely enough one will find that this principle of permanent revolution is also being employed within the EU. For instance there is no EU treaty, in contrast to the NATO treaty, that has permanent validity. The EU treaties are in fact being altered in ever quicker succession. Just look at the texts of the Treaty of Amsterdam, the Maastricht Treaty, the Nice Treaty, and all you will find are simply amendments to the previous treaties so that you never know what is now really valid. Nobody has a proper overview of the situation, not even the politicians in Berlin. Nobody knows these treaties properly. But the EU sees itself as a process, as a permanent revolution, and this is a very interesting point. One must keep that at the back of one’s mind.

It was not until the nineties, as I have already pointed out, that summit after summit, and treaty after treaty followed. Each treaty lasts only a few years, the next one is supposed to appear in 2004. In terms of international law this is a very strange phenomenon..

It is similarly strange that those signing these treaties apparently do so for all eternity. The normal procedure in the case of an international convention is that it is intended to be in force for maybe 20 years, and that after that there is a possibility of renewal. But why are these treaties supposed to endure for all eternity? Why is it not possible for one to withdraw from a treaty any more? It is a fact that in these treaties no provision is made for withdrawing from them. I will come back to this extremely important point later.

The EU, a monster

First, let me explain how the EU is actually governed - I will take the risk that you already know most of it. But there are some details that you may not yet be aware of. Secondly, I want to examine the underlying ideology behind the EU with which an attempt is made to justify its legality or legitimacy. Thirdly, I want to briefly touch upon the future, how long all of this will last, and what can be done against it.

First of all: how is the EU governed? Here one observation is very important. The EU is legally a hermaphrodite, actually an juridical monster that is very difficult to grasp. The EU is neither a confederation nor a Federal state. And it will not become either in the foreseeable future. This is where the problem starts. But I suspect that the EU was intentionally constructed in this way.

If I had to put it precisely I would say it was a democratically non-legitimated soviet government dictatorship since decisions are made in committees, councils and commissions. It is a bit embarrassing that my choice of words is reminiscent of a no longer existing system.

Why is the EU not a Federal state? A European Federal state would require a legislative assembly summoned by the people, a constitution, an elected European government and this would mean that a new sovereign power would then arise. Then we would have a European Federal state. But if this was the case, the French or English nuclear capabilities would naturally no longer exist. They would of course have to belong to the Federal state, the European government. They would have to be in charge. It is very unlikely that France could keep its seat in the permanent Security Council and its prerogatives as victorious power. This would also have to be Europeanised, of course.

The Germans are in favour of a Federal state. Whether this is right or wrong, practicable or not, is a very different question. Personally I don’t think it is feasible because a Federal state, a sovereign state, requires an electorate in Europe capable of communicating with one other, by means of a common language, too. It is a sad fact that nowadays in Germany far fewer students are learning French than in 1963, when the German-French Treaty was signed. This Federal state will never come into existence.

A confederation as De Gaulle and also Adenauer envisaged might be an alternative. But, this confederation would of course render the entire EU-Commission in Brussels as well as the entire bureaucracy with its 20,000 employees superfluous. The same goes for the enormous budget and the entire common agricultural policy. From the point of view of international law one would get an absolutely perfect solution if a confederation were formed. Then all the states would remain sovereign, working together as closely as possible, but as sovereign states.

However, neither this nor the other solution was chosen, but instead what I call the juridical monster was chosen. And in the end what we have is the situation today, a Europe that is not democratic but that is governed by councils, commissions and committees.

The difference between the EC and the EU

A fine distinction: the difference between the European Community and the European Union. Several years ago, as if in unison, the press suddenly stopped talking about the European Community and spoke only about the European Union. I know from contacts in some newspapers that the instruction for this change came from above. The only explanation I can think of for this is that the name ‘European Community’ had become tarnished by association with all the negative images like milk lakes, stressful animal transport, subsidies and such like.

So the name ‘European Community’ was carrying this handicap. ‘European Union’ sounds better and bigger. It carries echoes of the USA. But in fact the European Community is still in existence; it was never abolished. We have both the European Community and the European Union. Previously it was called the European Economic Community, and before that at some point it was called the European Communities. There were in fact three: the European Economic Community, Euratom and Montanunion, the Coal and Steel Community. This last, moreover, was the very first European association, dating from the Fifties, and the intention behind it from the beginning – there can be not the least doubt of this – was that France should control Germany. At that time people thought that the way to control another country was through coal and steel, not through computers and things like that. So the dismal truth is that there was a negative intention at the heart of this first move towards European integration. One country wanted to control another country. And even now there is a lot of negative thought mixed into it, even though the interests to be served are quite different. These three European Communities (in the plural), were then renamed the European Community.

And what is the difference? The European Community consists of everything bound up with Community Law, with bureaucracy and the two million sheets of paper produced annually by the Commission. The Community Law itself in the narrow sense of what the east Europeans must now accept, letter by letter, fills 80,000 pages.

That is the real problem with this Europe. I found this out when the Maastricht Treaty and the Treaty of Nice were being voted upon in the German federal parliament. The members did not read the documents beforehand; they did not know in detail what is in them. And that is understandable since nobody has the time to do so. The only question is whether this total incomprehensibility is deliberate or just accidental. After all, confusion and the creation of chaos are established military strategies.

The three pillars of the EU

The official view is that the EU and the EC have three pillars. The first pillar is the EC with the European Law, the budget, and all the guidelines, the directives, the subsidies, etc.. The second pillar is the intended common foreign and defence policy. This does not involve the Commission, but has to be worked out between individual governments. The third pillar is that of the intended common judiciary and immigration policy, which will be of great importance in the next few years. These also concern the governments rather than the Commission.

If the EU were now to submit an application to become a member of itself, it would certainly be turned town. Why? Because according to its own criteria only democratic countries can be accepted. The EU would not be accepted because within it what we normally regard as the essentials of democracy are turned upside down. It is not just the traditional separation of powers between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, which is largely set aside; the EU goes one better: those who make the laws are members of the executive. Moreover the executive itself, namely the Commission, consists of people who are appointed, not elected.

As for the Judiciary, which consists of the European Court of Justice in Luxemburg, it does not just interpret existing laws; it continually creates its own. The most dangerous and perhaps the most important principle at the heart of the EU is that EU laws override national laws. But that was never originally set out in any treaty. It began as an interpretation by the European Court. It was not regularised until the treaty of Amsterdam. In 1993 the German federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe challenged this principle and threatened that it would give precedence to German national law in any conflict between the two systems. If we pose the question of whether the EU could break up, then we have to think back to this Karlsruhe judgement. That is a possible fault-line which could lead to huge conflict. If a constitutional court, whether in Germany or elsewhere, were to take a principled stand against the EU, this could be the principle bone of contention.

At the centre: the Commission

But, to return to the remarkable ‘separation of powers’ in Brussels. At the middle, as everyone knows, we have the 20 Commissioners. According to the Nice treaty, which is not yet in force since Ireland refused to ratify it, the number of Commissioners will be raised to 27. So, with 27 member states, each country would have a seat in the Commission. The situation at present is that the bigger countries have two each, and the smaller countries one each. And if more than 27 countries were to be accepted into the EU, then there would have to be a system of rotation, since it has been decided not to have more than 27 Commissioners.

The Commissioners have enormous power even though the Commission is not a proper government. They have no army and no police. They have no national administration, which would require a lot of civil servants. They distribute instructions to the administrations in the individual countries, and can impose huge fines if the instructions are not put into effect. Officially, they are regarded as the guardians of the treaties. In the economic sphere, for example, they have great power embodied among other things in the competition laws. The present Commissioner for Competition is one of the most powerful men in Europe, we need to be quite clear about that. Often these Commissioners do absolutely nothing, whereby they make the least mistakes. For instance Commissioner Bangemann, who allowed his Chief of Cabinet to do his work. Bangemann was notorious for driving to Danzig to go sailing. Incidentally, he twice allowed his official car to be stolen on these trips.

But it is not just the Chief of Cabinet who is sometimes left to do the donkey work. He in turn passes on the Commissioner’s word-of-mouth instructions to the General Directorate. There are more General Directors than Commissioners and it is here, in the General Directorate, that the donkey work is done. When the Commissioner wants a new Directive, he tells his Chief of Cabinet, and the Chief of Cabinet tells the General Director and his minions sit themselves down – and every year fill two million pages of paper. That is how it works.

What Brussels produces

What all comes out of Brussels? First of all there are the Directives and Guidelines. These are important, naturally also for Switzerland, since the Directive is the strongest form of European lawmaking. A Directive which comes out of Brussels must immediately be put into effect in the whole of the EU. There is no further discussion. Nowhere can it be set aside by a referendum. Even Ireland has never set aside a Directive. The Treaty of Nice was something quite different; it was a treaty under international law.

Directives are issued without the normal parliamentary procedures. This is because, and please do not lose sight of this, the European Parliament does not have the right to initiate legislation. And thereby, naturally, it lacks an essential precondition for a proper parliament. In its procedures for approving proposals it is constrained in a highly complicated manner which it would be tedious to explain here in detail. But it cannot initiate legislation, and, what is worse, it cannot repeal laws. That would be much more beneficial than making new ones. This is actually the most remarkable thing about the new government in Rome: it is busy striking out laws and directives. That is something new.

After the Directives come Guidelines, and they are a bit different. When a Guideline comes out of Brussels, the national parliaments must translate them into national law. That means that the Federal Parliament must come together, examine the Guideline, and make it into a law. It is obliged to do this. I cannot think of any Guideline which has not been made into a law. At most, there is protraction or delay, which soon brings a reprimand from Brussels saying, ‘Get on with it!’

And then there are Decisions, Recommendations and Position Statements. Jacques Delors, the former powerful President of the Commission, once said that if we had proceeded along democratic lines, we would never have got as far as we have. He also once said that 50% of all laws in the EU come out of Brussels and 80% of all economic laws. And of course the economic laws are by no means the least important. What does this mean in plain English? It means that fifty or eighty percent of the laws enacted by the elected representatives in the national parliaments have been nullified. Naturally I often wonder if perhaps I am taking too pessimistic or too dramatic a view of all this. I quote below an impeccable witness, as it were for the Crown.

Maastricht, an Enabling Law

For thirty years Herr Lamprecht was the correspondent for Der Spiegel in Karlsruhe, and he did nothing else but observe the Federal Constitutional Court. He was a first-class jurist, with no particular political leanings. Only in 1999 did Rolf Lamprecht set out clearly and accurately just what is going on here. He stated clearly and openly that the Maastricht treaty is an Enabling Law.

It may be noted in passing that the whole thing is based on the assumption that ordinary people are too stupid to make up their own minds. Just as in the present case of Ireland’s referendum, the politicians were saying ”They didn’t understand this” or ”That wasn’t long enough discussed” or ”That wasn’t grasped”. The Irish were portrayed as if they were too simple-minded to hold a referendum. So they will have to have another referendum. I am just waiting for somebody to use the same argument in reference to elections to the German Bundestag, when they don’t produce the expected result. Always this suspicion that the people are more stupid than the politicians. In that connection I can only draw attention to the following circumstance: the Hitler dictatorship was officially established by the Enabling Law of March 1933. Only then did Hitler become a dictator. But the Enabling Law was passed by the politicians. That was not a decision made by the people! It was decided by 82% of the members of the German Reichstag. The last time that the voters had their say, namely in November 1932, the Nazi party only obtained 33.5% of the mandate. Incidentally, take note of the fact that it was a certain stripe of politicians, not the people at large, who were responsible for the great catastrophes which overcame Europe in the last century.

How independent is the EU Commission in fact? It is not officially obliged to take account of the instructions of the member governments. It certainly has a strongly French character. The whole technical way of working, the procedural language, and the manner in which the administration is constructed, all reflect the spirit of the French system. It goes to the length that Chiefs of Cabinet or General Directors in the EU – extremely important people – are often at the same time chairmen of government commissions in Paris. Naturally, this is a wonderfully effective intermeshing of French and EU interests.

The power of big business

Brussels is not ruled by Germany, above all when it comes to the politics of trade, which indeed are highly important for Germany, the biggest exporter in Europe by a wide margin. The Germans have allowed themselves to be shouldered out even in the sphere of trade. Even more dangerous is the power of big business in Brussels. In my researches I have made some astonishing discoveries. One must know that the EU Commission is incredibly important for the big corporations which are active all over Europe. It is in Brussels that the most important legal framework for the conduct of trade is constructed, no longer in the national capitals.

The string-pullers of the Round Table

The big corporations provide the European Commission with interns free of charge. It is by no means uncommon for EU laws to be drafted by the very concerns which will be affected by them. There is extremely close intermeshing being practiced here. A member of the Commission once said to me with slight exaggeration, ”The big businesses themselves write the Directives which affect them.”

Recently I stumbled upon a highly influential organisation: the European Round Table of Industrialists. It is a completely informal club in Brussels, with an undistinguished building. There, the top men of the European economy meet, not representing their firms, but as individuals. There you will find the chief executives of Nestle, Unilever, Philipps, Royal Dutch, and so on. They meet regularly, and try to bring pressure to bear on the formulation of policy under consideration in the Commission. This Round Table seems to have enormous influence. The English liberal paper, The Guardian, once opined that the Commission is ‘in the iron grip of the Round Table’. This ‘parallel government’ as I like to call it, was founded back in 1983 by Fiat chief Agnelli.

Then there is yet another secret group which shuns publicity but whose members are known: the so-called Coreper, made up of the permanent representatives, i.e. the ambassadors of the member states in Brussels. That is an extremely powerful group.

As has already been pointed out, we have in Brussels on the one hand the Commission, and on the other hand the Councils of Ministers. These are the ministers sent by the various capitals. They are the actual lawmakers, and the Commission is in effect the executive.

One must try to imagine the course of procedure. When the Ministers fly into Brussels from their own capitals on a typical Monday morning – one having neglected his homework, another suffering from lack of sleep, a third with a hangover – they are not always particularly able or eager to make decisions. Then they just put their initials on whatever Coreper has put on the table in front of them. Thus Coreper becomes the secret lawmaker of the EU.

What is a constant worry is the non-existence of a proper separation of powers. When the Coreper people meet together there is often someone from the Commission at hand. This makes a mockery of any pretence of separation of powers. Even somebody who regards the EU as a wonderful thing has to admit that all this has little to do with democracy. A luxury that we should take upon ourselves is that of refusing to be mocked by those who live off us.

What always greatly concerns me are the parallels with the Soviet Union. I was truly surprised when I learnt about the following incident. In 1994 the President of the Commission at that time, Delors, was in Moscow speaking to the Russian government. They told him that they had decided to abolish the Rouble Clearing System set up for trade purposes throughout the Eastern Block. And listen carefully to what Delors said to that. Delors cried out, ”But how can you abolish something which inspired us to bring in the Ecu? Our Ecu is a European copy of what you were doing in Comecon.” Is that not interesting?

Back to the question of how the EU is ruled. I have already given you a lot of figures. 21,000 people work for the Commission itself; the figure for all EU and EC civil servants is about 30,000. The EU parliament sits in three different places. How strange. That is, as far as I know, the first parliament in Europe which has no power to decide where it will sit. Sittings take place in Brussels and in Strasbourg. Each establishment cost many billion, in which corruption, big corruption, played a part. The administration sits in Luxembourg – that makes another 3,500 people. Up to now I have said little about the European Parliament. That would be essentially a theme in itself. I have discovered, for instance, that a European MP has a turnover equivalent to that of a middle-sized company. Each one gets cost reimbursements amounting to DM 450,000, that is without counting the allowances. That is riches indeed. One must try to understand what it would be like if the Middle Europeans now came in. When, for instance, a politician from Estonia becomes an EU Commissioner, then he would earn fifty times what he would get at home. That is a form of bribery, just like the gigantic subsidies which are doled out. Look, even compared with what he might get in Germany, an official in Brussels nets double. That is an means of preserving power. The simplest way to get and retain power is to buy it.

The ideology of the EU

But now we must tackle a somewhat more important question, namely that of the ideology underpinning the EU. The reason for this is that men feel the need for a moral justification for everything they do, even if it is a false one. That is how ideologies are born. Men want not just power, but also morality on their side. So the EU decked itself out in a new ideology in the Nineties. The outlines of this new ideology are now clear. I would like to say something about it. I believe that it is this ideology which makes the EU so dangerous.

This ideology came out of the shadows in the first place in connection with the sanctions against Austria. For that reason we need to recapitulate what happened. From a legal point of view, these sanctions against Austria were not EU sanctions; they were bilateral sanctions imposed by fourteen of the fifteen EU countries. It was only later, in the treaty of Nice, which has now been rejected by Ireland, that a so-called ‘Lex Austria’ (not, of course, the official term for it) was agreed upon,a new Article which laid down the procedures for imposing sanctions. One more good reason for hoping that the treaty will fail.

The new ‘Lex Austria’

Let me say what is in Article 7 of the Treaty of Nice, even though it is not yet in force. Through it a member state of the EU can be deprived of its voting rights and also certain other rights. And this can happen through a qualified majority vote of the EU Council. The EU Council consists of representatives of the different governments. Qualified majority voting calls for some explanation. It is not exactly true that each country has one vote. Every country has a different number of votes according to its size. At present a qualified majority would consist of about 72% of the votes distributed among the fifteen countries. With the Treaty of Nice, that would be modified to about 74% of the votes. On the whole the Treaty of Nice does not bring any serious changes to majority voting, merely a sharpening of some aspects. In brief, with a majority of between 72% and 74% the EU Council can impose or repeal sanctions. But now what is thought-provoking is that at the same time the affected member state still has to fulfil all its obligations. It still has to pay and to obey the directives. And, what to my mind is the worst thing of all, it cannot opt out. It cannot say, ”OK, that’s it! Goodbye!”

The decision to impose sanctions on Austria in January 2000 came about at a secret meeting which was ultra vires; there was no provision for such a meeting in the European treaties. It contravened international law insofar as it was a so-called irregular expedient. That is something we should not be afraid to keep repeating. Overall it is clear to me that getting back to normality in the world, whether we are talking about the Balkans or anywhere else, can only be achieved if everyone conforms to international law. There is no civilised alternative.

With the Austria decision, international law was indisputably violated. And the next question is, why. Professor Hondrich, a sociologist from Frankfurt, has put forward an interesting explanation. He suggests that there could be a deeper meaning in the Austria decision in that it expressed the desire to find a European identity, and, in addition, a society which finds itself in crisis tends to need a scapegoat. Naturally we can substitute ‘concept of the enemy’ by ‘scapegoat’, and it is true that such concepts help build up a self-image, an identity. That was indeed how NATO's identity emerged, through the enemy, which was then the Soviet Union, an enemy that they did not have to invent.

Return to Stalin

Now, what is interesting is that the identity of the EU that is being sought is no longer based on the traditional values of Europe, as it was in the times of Adenauer, Erhard, or de Gasperi. Instead, a strange mixture of new values has been concocted. Antifascism belongs to this mixture; not anti-totalitarianism, which was the feeling of agreement in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Anti-totalitarianism used to be a basic conviction for democrats, i.e. the rejection of any system that opposed liberty. It is known that antifascism, in contrast, was the brain-child of Stalin and the Komintern in the 30s. This fact must not be forgotten! Antifascism was contrived as a propaganda concept and incidentally was also used against the SPD, the so-called social fascists.

Antifascism was used extensively by the GDR. It a tried and tested tactic to make out the opponent is in the wrong and to insinuate that someone is a Hitler sympathiser. This antifascism does not disassociate itself from all forms of dictatorship, in particular not the communist form. And this is the direction in which the EU has moved. This is not just some fabrication of mine, evidence exists. Why was it that Mitterrand told Gorbachov in 1991 that France would never do anything to help bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union? Why was there this interest in the continued existence of the Soviet Union? Or why the continual threats against anybody who wants to have a referendum? Austria was threatened when discussion arose about holding a referendum. The Czech government was warned by Brussels not to have a referendum. And then the reactions to the referendum in Ireland.

If one has a normal understanding of democracy, one cannot deny a people the right to vote on its own affairs. Stalin himself never tired of saying: we are the true democrats, the others are not democrats. This comes closer to the core of the matter.

In fact it is my belief that there are a lot of Marxist borrowings in the new EU ideology. Now I am not claiming that the EU commission consists of Marxists; it does not. But there are many borrowings from Marxism.

Borrowings from Marx

I will give you a few examples. It is known that the basic principle of Marxism is materialism, and the denial of God, etc. Materialism claims that humans and all proceedings in the world are governed by material things. This, however, is essentially also the belief of the EU. The EU defines itself primarily through economic interests. Look at their charter of fundamental rights, which is meant to be kind of a constitution. It was France that prevented any mention of God. Neither is there any reference made to natural law. The spirit of materialism pervades the whole charter.

Another principle of Marxism is historical determinism which is the theory that history follows a predetermined path, independent of our actions, which leads to the victory of socialism and communism. And it is precisely such images which are constantly used in the EU. The former German chancellor Kohl for instance liked to use the image of a train that has just left the station. It might just be possible to jump onto this train, but if you don’t jump then hard luck. What is not clearly explained is which destination the train is heading for...

One thing that one is never allowed to discuss are the possible alternatives to the present EU structure. Of course, alternatives exist, there are lots of alternatives. And I have found another thing the two have in common, the theory that nation states will gradually die out. This is pure Marxism. Read Lenin. The most dangerous part of Marxism is Leninism. Lenin is the one who provided the blueprints for action. Lenin always said that in the end the State will vanish, and obviously nations as well. Marxism, of course, has always rejected the sovereignty of nations. And this is exactly what the Europe ideology also does. So where is the difference?

Europe and the Nation

According to the Europe ideology, the idea of the nation is suspect from the very beginning - it has to relinquish sovereignty. The propaganda used to support this idea says: nations cause war. In one speech, former Chancellor Kohl tried to make the Euro palatable to the Germans with the argument that without it there will be war. Who though is supposed to go to war against whom? Will Portugal attack Spain, or will France attack England? The First World War was, as every historian knows, a result of the imperialist system at the time, but it is not identical with the system of nation states. But regardless of what happened in the past: which nation today wants to attack another nation? This claim is simply repeated and also partially believed because people have been intimidated. Naturally, everybody wants peace, so if you tell them that there will be war if nations continue to exist, then they will be frightened. Germany, too, will never again attack France for the reason that the German army is not capable of doing so, but primarily because nobody wants to do it. It’s an absurd idea.

Personally, I do not think that the nation is sacred or the only conceivable principle. Perhaps, one day there will be a European state. At present, however, this is hardly imaginable. But, I am sure about one thing: at present, in Europe, nation and democracy are inseparable. If nations were deprived of their power, democracy would suffer accordingly. And it is a fact that in Europe democracy emerged together with the idea of a nation.

Another similarity between Marxism and the Europe ideology is the antifascism on which the GDR based its phoney legitimacy until the very end. The Europe ideologists also attempt to obtain legitimacy from this antifascism. This was the case with the sanctions against Austria.

And as a fifth point, there is a parallel in the recourse to humanist ideals, which is the most clever method, and also explains why so many western intellectuals fell for Stalin. The phrase community of shared values is used for instance. The recourse to humanist (one should say, pseudo-humanist) ideals runs like a thread through communism. Yet it has not prevented communism from setting up the Gulags.

The Charter of Fundamental Rights

The new Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which is supposed to be something like the basis of a constitution, is interesting to read. There are no statements whatsoever in this charter that espouse conservative values. Of course there is no ban on abortion or other ”old-fashioned” things. Anything relating to upholding the family and native countries is totally missing. Instead, the core of the charter is a totally different one. It is an article prohibiting discrimination. This is an age-old trick from the 60s, the method of cultural revolution, which goes back to Gramsci. Gramsci is very important because he thought further ahead than Stalin. It was for this reason that he also fell out of favour.

Exposing alleged or genuine discrimination, and combating it, and by combating it changing society has been part of the arsenal of culture revolutionaries since the 60s. For this reason it is astounding that all this appears quite openly in the charter of fundamental rights. And this is the proof for me who has been at work here. It is exactly the same people whose idols used to be Mao, Ho Chi Min, or other communist dictators. This is unbelievable! These are individuals who in all probability never really broke with their past.

So now fifteen types of discrimination are listed that must be banned by the EU and against which the Council of Ministers has to take action. The first and the last forms of discrimination that must be combated are interesting: the first is discrimination based on gender, the fifteenth and last is discrimination based on sexual orientation. This is interesting because they are two very different things. One’s gender is something one is born with, whereas sexual orientation is something that to a large extent is a matter of free will. It is not stipulated which sexual orientations are still allowed and which are not. A law professor in Rome wrote about the subject and asked then whether paedophilia also belonged to this category and consequently must not be discriminated against.

The direction of assault is the family. Much of what the EU does is simply a copy of what its member countries do. This works beautifully. It is not always the EU or the Commission that thinks up these things, it is also a majority of the governments that are members of the Socialist International and who, I am convinced, want to complete the cultural revolution they started in the 60s.

This is all very clever because it mainly takes place using the anti-discrimination article, and because most people don’t see what is really going on. Looked at superficially, you can’t be in favour of discrimination. Of course, everybody is against discrimination. However, one has to understand that the concept here is one of combat, and that the idea behind it is to nullify something. And what is to be nullified is freedom of speech. When that happens one can easily get into trouble for saying the wrong thing. One example is that of a German priest who publicly denounced homosexuality and was then dragged off to court and had to suffer having his house searched. This is the context one has to see the whole thing in.

There is another important article in the charter of fundamental rights which is really frightening. In article 52 it states that fundamental rights (like freedom of speech) can be suspended if it is ‘necessary’’ and if this accords with the ‘objectives’ of the EU. Professor Schachtschneider has said that this charter takes us back to before the 18th century and the Enlightenment.

In Summary

Let me summarise: First, I have pointed out that the EU is not a confederation, nor is it a federation, but rather a new kind of construct without historic precedent, namely a bureaucracy lacking a clear separation of powers and devoid of democratic legitimacy.

Secondly, I have explained how in the 90s the EU transformed from an economic community that established the common market, and from this point of view also really achieved something, into a kind of ideological organisation, and how Austria became the first victim of this ideology, and how a great deal was borrowed from Marxism – Marxism being the dominant ideology of the 20th century. It cast its shadow over the entire century.

Thirdly, there is the question of the EU’s stability. And here one must realise that it is in a crisis. This crisis is characterised, for instance, by the still unsolved problem of the eastern expansion. The whole question of how to finance the eastern expansion is still very much in the air, and in Nice no solution could be found. And this crisis is also characterised by peoples’ increasing resistance, for instance the latest case in Ireland, where people rejected the Nice treaty in a referendum. This means the treaty cannot come into effect. The treaty will only come into effect when every single one of the 15 countries decides to ratify it.

What can be done

What can be done? We can only stand up, undeterred, for the few essential principles, for democracy, law, and freedom. It is as simple as that. Positions that are no longer upheld simply vanish. And one should not forget that history always runs according to the principle of action/reaction. The rulers of the EU acted in Maastricht, Amsterdam, and Nice. They attempted to create new facts in Europe. To some extent they succeeded, as they did with the Euro. But various populations are beginning to react increasingly clearly. Approval of the EU has never been as weak as it is at the moment. In Germany too, it has now dropped below 50%. The Euro is as unpopular as ever. We have witnessed what happened in Denmark and Ireland, and this clearly shows that the reaction from the grass roots level is already visible.

On the positive side I increasingly observe a growing European awareness, a genuine European awareness, among Europeans that rebels against this bureaucratic regime. I notice it when talking to people in Ireland, or Denmark or England, wherever. I am full of hope that the EU will end up provoking exactly what it does not mean to, namely a European awareness in the positive sense. And this grows out of the resistance against this kind of exercise of power.