US Corruption engulfs Europeans in Poverty and Decline
Action, not new legislation, is required to save Europe from global corruption
Two-thirds of Europeans think that corruption is widespread in their own country, according to the EU’s own Eurobarometer poll.
Corruption remains a serious concern for EU citizens: 68% believe that corruption is still widespread in their country. In focus are national public institutions, where 74% of respondents increasingly believe that corruption is widespread, followed by political parties (58%) and local, regional and national politicians (55%). At the same time, Europeans are pessimistic about actions taken at national level to address corruption as a crime.
Corruption threatens democracy. It threatens justice. It impoverishes honest citizens.
If so many Europeans feel the weight of corruption in their home country, what about at EU level?
The poll did not ask that question. But it is an adage that official and public corruption follows the leaders’ example. The fish rots from the head down.
What the leaders get away with, the administration is forced to follow. Functionaries then apply their own rules for their own advantage. They get taxpayers to paying for their political parties without asking the public. They bloat the budget, by tax and debt, so that largesse pours out to their friends.
The EU Commission proposed on 3 May measures to fight corruption at home and abroad. Four members of the Commission made the announcement:
Josep Borrell Fontelles (Foreign Policy),
Margaritis Schinas (European Way of Life),
Vera Jourova (Values and Transparency) and
Ylva Johansson (Home Affairs).
The proposal also deals with worldwide corruption affecting Europeans.
‘In parallel to the Commission’s initiatives to strengthen the fight against corruption within the EU, I am proposing to establish a new CFSP sanctions regime targeting serious acts of corruption worldwide,’ said Common Foreign and Security Policy Commissioner Josep Borrell.
These new measures go beyond bribery which is already covered by existing legislation.
Borrell leaves the stage
In the Q&A, the Commissioners were asked:
In the absence now of Mr Borrell, how is the EU reacting politically and morally, when it has documentary evidence, that a major partner is being corrupted by another foreign power, namely China? There is documentary evidence of bank transfers to the US president’s family from China and there is email evidence as well.
How are you reacting internally and how are you protecting European citizens?
Although the question was targeted on home EU affairs, the Commissioners said they would leave this ‘legitimate question’ to Mr Borrell (now absent). He would answer.
The following email was sent.
Hello Peter,
I asked a question at today's press conference about the internal EU repercussions of the bribery evidence in US Administration and China (family banks transfers to nine members of the president's family and emails). This was after HRVP had left.
The three Commissioners still present chose not to deal with this internal aspect and referred me to you to get a direct answer from Mr Borrell about both internal and external aspects.
I enclose a link with my question at 38:20.
https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/video/I-240652
I would appreciate if you could obtain the direct reply from HRVP. Borrell.
Many thanks for your help.
The reply did not come from Mr Borrell but one of his spokespersons. It did not actually deal with the stated fact that measures against bribery do not need the new proposals to be agreed by the European institutions and the Member States.
Dear David,
In principle, the proposed regime would allow targeting those responsible for serious acts of corruption wherever they occur, to the extent that those acts seriously affect or risk affecting the objectives of the common foreign and security policy as set out in Article 21 TEU.
However, it is premature at this stage to speculate about the possible use of the regime that the HRVP is proposing in relation to concrete cases.
It is for the Council to decide first on the adoption of the proposed regime and then on its possible use in concrete cases, based on CFSP considerations and priorities and legal soundness.
The dangers involved in the spread of corrupt American relations to EU policies extends far beyond the Biden family. It involves more than just the destruction of Europe’s energy options whether
the Nordstream pipeline sabotage,
obstructing a democratic European Energy Community that would make the Atlantic the power house of democracies,
the Chinese manipulation of energy policies that turned the Continent into a crucible of war.
Congress exposes corruption
The day after the EU press conference on corruption, investigators in the US Congress released the following letter.
The lack of effort by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, to prosecute the case shows either extreme incompetence or institutional bias. The same goes for the ‘laptop from hell’ of Hunter Biden that is full of emails that would normally lead to more than four hundred cases for crime, many involving money from China and Ukraine and his father. The lawyers at Marco Polo have done a thorough analysis of it.
Hearings in Congress have now nailed far deeper corruption. The 51 former chiefs of the various US intelligence agencies (CIA, NSA etc) wrote a letter published just before the Biden-Trump TV debate and the 2020 US presidential elections. It was decisive to swing the results between 5 and 10 percent in favor of Biden.
They said unanimously that the withheld Hunter Biden laptop had ‘all the appearances’ of Russian disinformation.
Nothing to see folks. Move on.
On the contrary, it now proven that the intelligence chiefs’ letter had ‘all the appearances’ of a partisan plot to influence the elections. It therefore amounted to a treacherous conspiracy against democracy by the chiefs of the Intelligence Community (IC).
The IC conspirator who collected the signatures, Mike Morell, admitted under oath to Congress that it was an operation to have Biden re-elected by burying the treasonous information that Trump would take advantage of in his anti-corruption platform.
So what is Europe going to do if the US bureaucracy is acting to support a family deeply implicated in Chinese conspiracy?
Europe’s first step
How about a full-scale review of Europe’s energy policy, gas, coal, nuclear and imported Chinese wind and solar power, that leaves Europeans in the cold and in poverty.
How about asking how China builds massive amounts of coal power plants— half the world’s stock.
How about reviewing the Minsk Agreements and the causes of war in Ukraine that splatter blood and death, dollars and euros, and boost profits of arms firms?