Why is EU suppressing its Charter of Freedom?
Is the European Commission afraid of its citizens and Democracy?
Did Europe’s Founding Fathers, like Robert Schuman, create a system where ideological politicians and anonymous bureaucrats were in charge above citizens and common justice?
No, not at all.
Does Europe have constitutional guarantees similar to the US Bill of Rights or Britain’s Magna Carta?
Yes it has.
Where then is the EU’s guarantee to prevent technocrats, ideologues or covert committee-kings overruling people’s rights?
Where is the European equivalent to the British Magna Carta?
Europe’s Magna Carta
After World War 2, when Western Europe was threatened by ideological communism and the Soviet Red Army, it defended itself by distinguishing European values of freedom and honest government from Communist or Nazi rules. Free European leaders gave citizens powers to break any tendency towards out-of-control bureaucracy, technocracy and tyranny.
Did it work? If so, why did Brexit happen? Britons said they chose freedom outside the EU system. Today the EU clearly lacks democratic integrity.
The first European Community Treaty was signed on 18 April 1951 in Paris. The stated objective of the signatory States of the Treaty of Paris was to ‘make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible.’ They succeeded. They did so through the Community institutions. It brought Europe both internal peace and democratic strengthening of universal values. It defined five representative institutions that exist today.
The Treaty that the Six founding States (France, W Germany, Italy and the Benelux) concluded and ratified includes the Charter of the Community. It stipulates that the populations should set the objectives they wished to pursue and define the means to do so. Its stated aim was to resist government without consent of the governed.
This Charter section of the Treaty of Paris laid a legal foundation for freedom of choice. It spelt out guarantees and open government principles. This Charter tied all aspects of the European Community directly to the legal guarantees of the Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, signed a few months earlier at the Council of Europe (a separate and independent institution.) It contrasted intentionally and starkly with the fraudulent ‘People’s Democracies’ of the Soviet bloc with their ideological constraints, enforced materialism, secret committees and Politburos.
All procedures of Community institutions and their later development must follow the free choice of the population. That is, the institutions must be open, fair and just, working for the service of free people who decided the objectives and the means.
This one criterion of legally guaranteed free choice distinguishes real democracies of free people and associations from those societies enslaved by
Communism or
fascism or
any form of technocracy,
theocratic dictatorships or
globalism.
Free People, Freedom of Information, Accountability
A people with free choice has access to information. It has records of full discussions of its representatives so they can be held accountable. The Parliament, the Councils and the Committees must be open to the public and the press. Only exceptions would be security issues and the deliberations of the Court and an impartial European Commission when it is acting as arbitrator with confidential information of the parties concerned.
The Treaty Charter was the outcome of joint discussions of the Six founding States who confirmed their full assent to the French Proposal to governments a year before, the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950. This declared that governmental agreement would involve the birth of a new democratic and free Europe. This powerful, totally original, supranational form of unifying government brought West Europe’s longest internal peace and the greatest prosperity that Europe had ever known. A supranational Community provides a multilevel European democratic framework to reinforce postwar national democracies.
Why then have today’s European politicians refused to re-publish these legal instruments reinforcing democratic answerability and Human Rights? They are the means to correct a slide to irresponsible technocracy and to improve accountability and transparency.
Citizens of Europe want to know why. And why have the Charter principles not been applied for decades while the thousands of closed-door committees soared beyond count and accountability? How come taxpayers suddenly have to face new EU budget bills expanded by trillions of euros?
Did the legal instruments giving citizens the control of autocratic government fail? Or is there a murkier story?
Why was the Charter buried in the dark recesses of the archives of the French Foreign Ministry?
One way to find out was to ask the European Commission itself. It should know. The Commission claims it is the Guardian of the Treaties.
The time is ripe. French President Emmanuel Macron had called for a year-long Conference on the Future of Europe delving into public discontent, Brexit and the Democratic Deficit.
The following is the letter I wrote and sent by registered mail to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on 9 April 2021. I, and half a billion Europeans, are still awaiting for the Commission to publish its founding documents that outlaw technocracy and tyranny and provide citizens with the means to resist abuse of power.
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Schuman Project
Schuman.info
David H Price, Editor 9 April 2021
Dear President von der Leyen,
It is 70 years since the signature on 18 April 1951 of Europe’s founding document for peace, the Treaty of Paris. This created the European Community. It changed the destiny of Europeans who had gone to war every generation for more than two thousand years.
As the European Commission and the other institutions ponder the Future of post-‘Brexit’ Europe in the Conference to be opened on 9 May, I have one request to the leaders, the media and the public.
It is necessary to recall the founding principles of that peace and prosperity. This is not hidden. It is not something that can be changed by our generation. It was written in a document, signed by the plenipotentiary representatives of the Six founding States: France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.
What seems shocking to me is that the European Commission and the other institutions have not published this document. Schuman, a life-long student of democracy, called this the ‘Charter of the Community’ (Pour l’Europe, p146). It describes the Community method and the democratic principles that Europe must build on, in the same way as the United States applied the same eternal laws of human nature and worldly politics.
Schuman’s use of the term ‘Charter’ reflects that of the Magna Carta as a foundational document for British democracy. It distinguishes democratic Europe from the fraudulent ‘People’s Democracies’ of the Soviet eastern bloc. The Charter gives the litmus test of true democracy.
About a decade ago I spoke to the French Minister for Europe about publishing this ‘Charter’. He kindly supplied me with a copy from the French Archives. It was published on my website, schuman.info in 2012.
Although I pointed out this remarkable and important document to the Commission President at the time, the full text of the Schuman Declaration and the Charter of the Community has still not been published on the Commission’s own website. The lack of full information about the beginnings of European democracy is a disservice both to the general public, academics, the press and political leaders.
Secondly, while the European Commission has published the ‘full text’ of the Schuman Proposal, a governmental instrument, it has not published the text of his oral Declaration. The Commission website confuses the two: the governmental Proposal is aimed at other governments. The Schuman Declaration includes the explanation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Declaration includes far-reaching clarification of the original proposal agreed by the French Cabinet and signalled simultaneously to other European States via French diplomats or Schuman’s meetings with ambassadors and parliament in Paris on 9 May 1950.
It would be fitting that the foundational documents should be fully published on official websites and recorded in the Official Journal.
Madame President, I am therefore requesting that these historic texts about the Future of Europe be published before the opening of the Conference on Europe on 9 May this year.
Thanking you in advance for your attention to this matter, I remain,
Yours sincerely,
David Heilbron Price
Annexes.
Annex 1.
Charter of the Community also known as
Community Declaration of Inter-dependence
Déclaration de l'Europe
Paris, le 18 avril 1951
Called CHARTE DE LA COMMUNAUTE in Schuman’s book: Pour l'Europe, p146.
Foundational Statute of Europe basing its Growth and Development on Supranational Principles and the Free Choice of its citizens.
Full text in English on https://schuman.info
Déclaration commune des Ministres
représentant les Gouvernements signataires du Traité
Le gouvernement de la République fédérale d'Allemagne, le gouvernement belge, le gouvernement français, le gouvernement italien, le gouvernement luxembourgeois et le gouvernement des Pays-Bas :
Considérant que la paix mondiale ne peut être sauvegardée que par des efforts créateurs à la mesure des dangers qui la menacent;
Convaincus que la contribution qu'une Europe organisée et vivante peut apporter à la civilisation est indispensable au maintien de relations pacifiques;
Conscients que l'Europe ne se construira que par des réalisations concrètes créant d'abord une solidarité de fait et par l'établissement de bases communes de développement économique;
Soucieux de concourir par l'expansion de leurs productions fondamentales au relèvement du niveau de vie et au progrès des oeuvres de paix;
Résolus à substituer aux rivalités séculaires une fusion de leurs intérêts essentiels, à fonder par l'instauration d'une communauté économique les premières assises d'une communauté plus large et plus profonde entre des peuples longtemps opposés par des divisions sanglantes, et à jeter les bases d'institutions capables d'orienter un destin désormais partagé,
Ont décidé de créer une Communauté européenne du charbon et de l'acier.
L'œuvre que nous venons de consacrer par notre signature est due à l'intelligence et à la ténacité de nos délégations et de nos experts; nous leur disons notre très grande gratitude.
Avant même d'être entrée en action, cette oeuvre a déjà, par la vertu de l'idée qui l'inspire, créé dans nos pays et au-delà de leurs frontières des espérances et une confiance tout-à-fait exceptionnelles.
En signant le traité qui institue la Communauté européenne du charbon et de l'acier, communauté de cent soixante millions d'habitants européens, les parties contractantes ont marqué leur résolution de créer la première institution supranationale et de fonder ainsi les assises réelles d’une Europe organisée.
Cette Europe est ouverte à tous les pays européens libres de leur choix. Nous espérons fermement que d'autres pays s'associeront à notre effort.
Pleinement conscients de la nécessité de donner tout son sens à ce premier pas par une action continue et du même ordre dans d’autres domaines, nous avons l'espoir et la volonté de mener à bien, dans l'esprit qui a présidé à l’élaboration de ce traité, les projets qui sont actuellement en préparation. Les travaux se poursuivront en liaison avec les organismes européens existants.
Ces initiatives, dont chacune est limitée dans son objet, devront rapidement s'inscrire dans le cadre d'une communauté politique, dont l’idée s’élabore au Conseil de l’Europe. II devra en résulter une coordination et une simplification de l'ensemble des institutions européennes.
Tous ces efforts sont guidés par la conviction croissante que les pays de l'Europe libre sont solidaires les uns des autres, participent à une destinée commune. Nous consoliderons ce sentiment en associant nos énergies et nos volontés, en harmonisant notre action par des consultations fréquentes et des contacts toujours plus confiants.
Telle est la signification de cette journée. Elle sera comprise, nous n’en doutions pas, par nos opinions publiques et par les Parlements qui seront appelés à se prononcer sur le traité. Les gouvernements ici représentés seront auprès d’eux les interprètes de notre volonté commune de construire et de servir ensemble une Europe pacifique et prospère. »
Annex 2. Schuman Declaration – What Schuman declared 9 May 1950
This is followed by the Schuman Proposal agreed by the French Government of Georges Bidault.
Full text in English : https://schuman.info/9May1950.htm
Annex 3.
Schuman speaks on Europe’s democratic principles for political union at the signing of the Treaty of Paris 18 April 1951
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