24 Mar 2019

The European Union - A step towards or away from democracy?

In a genuine democracy, the People have proper control over the legislation and regulations which govern their way of life.  However, the larger a system of government becomes, the more it tends to shift away from democracy, lending itself towards increased bureaucracy, reduced accountability and corruption.

British government today is undeniably far from perfect, but the fact remains that the People of Britain currently have the right to elect and recall parliamentary representatives capable of initiating, amending and repealing legislation. Additionally, no legislation may bind successive British governments and no government may remain in power for more than five years without reelection by the People.

Nominally there are three decision-making bodies in the European Union. They are the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the European Council of Ministers.  However, the real power rests completely within the European Commission, which is selected and issues its diktats in such a secretive and random manner that it draws strong comparisons with old Communist Russia.

This EU Commission comprises 28 member countries and is re-formed once every five years, within six months of elections for the European Parliament.  An essential point to be aware of is that the EU Commission is totally independent of all national governments.  Its sole purpose is to represent and uphold the interests of the entire EU as a single entity.  The main consequence of this is that the EU Commission is a law totally unto itself.  It is accountable to nobody and exercises its own absolute power.

The president of the Commission is elected not by the People but through secret deliberations between the governments of the member states. The Commission President is the single most powerful political position within the entire EU. He or she has vastly greater powers than any individual country’s President or Prime Minister.

You might imagine that there would be uproar if individual democratic nations like Britain, Spain, France or Germany selected their presidents and prime-ministers in such a manner. Not through proper elections, but by back-door horse-trading between political parties. Only the Soviet Russia of old, Communist China and other Communist countries like North Korea elect government in such a fashion.  Yet in the EU this is considered acceptable by all its member states.  This has given rise to a growth in anti-EU political movements who believe in transparent democracy and the importance of national sovereignty.

Once chosen, the President selects the other Commissioners, again through secret discussions with the member state governments.

It should be stressed that the EU President and its Commissioners are not MPs, MEPs, or democratically elected officials in any way. Most have never been elected to any office in their lives, yet they hold absolute and arbitrary power in the EU solely on the basis of having been secretly appointed to the Commission.

It is only then up to the European Parliament of elected MEPs to ‘approve’ the appointment of the proposed Commission members – not individually, but as a whole block of 28 people – amazingly by secret ballot and without debate.

With many MEPs being lackeys of the governments of member states – and with the secret ballot facilitating behind the scenes ‘influencing’ – this ‘approval’ is nothing more than a cynical ‘rubber stamp’.  It is done this way every time there is a new European Commission.

With arbitrary and unchecked power, the European Commission alone dictates what legislation to initiate, amend or repeal. Commission diktats (directives or regulations) are formulated, again, in covert negotiations with interest groups, advisory bodies, non-government organisations (NGOs) and other unelected ‘public service’ busybodies and power-brokers.  This offers obvious and serious potential for corruption and unacceptable influence without any form of counterbalance.

Once drafted through this process, any new legislation is presented to the European Parliament. It in turn assigns various Committees of MEPs to examine the detail. Yet even the make-up of these committees is determined indirectly by the Commission’s choice of which “competence” to use as its justification for the legislation in question.

One such committee is known as "COREPER" – the Committee of Permanent Representatives. 

"The core of the EU’s business is done through COREPER – the Committee of Permanent Representatives – a gathering of senior national officials which handles 90 per cent of EU legislation. Its proceedings are treated as state secrets, its documents usually classed as ‘non-papers’, which means they cannot be accessed by the press or the public despite the EU’s supposed open information rules." It's communiqué documents known as Council Conclusions "are a compact between leaders that overrides the relationship between voters and their governments’. This is a key point. " (Ref)

Again, those committees work through secretive deliberations with EU ministers and civil servants, who give directives to political groups in the European Parliament so as to ensure the passage of its proposals. Such laws are presented to the European Parliament only at the discretion of the European Commission.

The European parliament differs from the British parliament in that its representative members cannot initiate, amend or repeal legislation.  In the EU, legislation is exclusively handed down by edict from the European Commission.

As can be seen, the real power in the EU lies with the unelected Commissioners who create the legislation in secret meetings with other unelected bureaucrats, all beyond the reach of the People.  A Member of the European Parliament can only draft legislation proposed by the European Commission, not the other way around. If the European Commission does not want a law, it simply does not propose it. The unelected and unaccountable Commissioners will only present laws that their superiors deem appropriate and in keeping with the EU plan.
"Power is vested in the unelected and unaccountable elite who make laws - in secret - to preserve the status of large multinationals at the expense of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Multinationals achieve their preferential status by spending enormous sums of money on lobbying. They create a complicated regulatory framework, which only large companies with their Human Resources departments can comply with. This drives small competitors out of business, destroys competition and encourages monopolies, forcing the consumer to pay a higher price for poorer quality goods and services." - Barrister and Research Executive, Matthew Ellery.
A new piece of legislation is only presented for an up or down vote in a set-up where there is virtually no debate – MEPs are allowed to speak for at most one minute per person. As the actual EU legislative history shows, this ‘parliamentary ratification’ amounts to nothing more than the proverbial rubber stamp.

From the European Parliament website - "On certain questions (e.g. taxation) the European Parliament gives only an advisory opinion (the ‘consultation procedure’)."  The European Parliament has no say in how much tax citizens will pay. The unelected unaccountable leaders will decide that.

MEPs are nominated by political parties in various European countries, so they are not personally elected directly by voters. The EU parliamentary elections only decide how many seats will be allotted to each party. The actual choice of the MEPs is entirely up to the party, not the voters.

This naturally means that – except for a small number of anti-EU parties – MEPs are generally lackeys of the EU.  Under such circumstances there is no more opposition to the dictatorial Commission in the European Parliament than there was to Stalin in the Supreme Soviet.

The final decision-making body in this international democratic sham is the EU Council of Ministers.

Unsurprisingly the composition of this Council is also skewed. Member states assign to the Council those ministers who are most acquiescent to the EU and will most readily go along with any diktat from the European Commission. Again, the history of EU legislation demonstrates that the Council of Ministers lacks any real authority whatsoever.

Once EU laws are approved by the Council of Ministers and become European Law, they are presented to the British and other national parliaments. Here they can be debated and notes made of certain provisions.  However, this is pointless because the only effective response an elected parliament may have is to invoke its ‘national veto’.  Originally a ‘national veto’ was supposed to guarantee the sovereignty of each EU member state but, as it is virtually never used.

The final chilling note is that EU legislation is supreme to the member States’ legislation, superseding national statutory legislation, unlawfully giving no regard to Britain’s Common Law Constitution.  

Over the years, by ceding power to the EU, the British Government has broken its own statutory constitution - the 1689 Bill of Rights, which clearly states that no power of government can be surrendered to a foreign authority:
"I doe declare That noe Forreigne Prince Person Prelate, State or Potentate hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority Preeminence or Authoritie Ecclesiasticall or Spirituall within this Realme Soe helpe me God."
More importantly, the British Government has breached the Common Law Constitution (1215 Magna Carta) which defines the British People's authority under Common Law to control the laws and Statutes which govern their lives. 

If British sovereignty continues to be handed over to Brussels by a misleading and dishonest Establishment, future Britons will be subject to whatever legislation is imposed upon them by an undemocratic foreign system with unknown intentions. Intentions which are predictable based upon the nature of the true powers behind the birth and evolution of the EU.

A People without any real power to control the legislation which governs them cannot be truly free. This is an essential truth that is being masked and out-ranks all other arguments for or against the EU.

We need to keep government small, but we also need to keep the influence of big business small, and we need to keep the power in the hands of the people, where it belongs. Big government and big business are not the only two alternatives.  A return to the dominance of the People's Common Laws in Europe and true Common Law democracies throughout the civilized and beautifully diverse European Nation States should be our core focus.