FREE EUROPE

20-04-2007
Lesson of the mountain republic

Membership of the EU can be good or bad for a country overall; but it is invariably good for some people within each country, namely its politicians, diplomats, civil servants and lobbyists. Brussels offers them hugely lucrative career opportunities. Most MEPs take home more than their prime ministers.
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14-04-2007
Constitution by the backdoor

The reborn constitution will not be called a constitution, but a basic treaty. But changing the name does not change the content. It is striking that they Holland and France seek to avoid asking the opinion of their people on any new EU treaty. This is also the policy of the favourite candidate for the French Presidential elections, Nicholas Sarkozy. He is the 'Coup d'Etat candidate', aiming to adopt a rejected constitution with no new consultation of the people. No more referendums! This is the lesson after the French and Dutch "No." They had the opportunity to vote yes, which they did not do and now they will not be asked again.
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29-03-2007
A Question of Peace or War in Europe

In spite of days of controversy, today's signing of the "Berlin Declaration" went ahead without amendment. The pivot and crux of the controversy is the announcement of an intended replacement for the failed EU constitution which will have the same content under a different title and is to be ratified as quickly as possible. This arrangement has occasioned great displeasure in several European capitals. The most influential German think-tank, the Bertelsmann Foundation, maintains that European unification must be driven forward; the greatly contested EU constitution is to be merely the "point of departure".
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20-03-2007
50th ANNIVERSARY OF THE TREATY OF ROME - TEN POINTS WORTH BEARING IN MIND

The thrust of the EU integration project is to erode the democracy of the nation States of Europe. Internationalism presupposes the existence of nations. The champions of EU integration are seeking in effect to erode the democratic heritage of the French Revolution - the right of nations and peoples to self-determination - in order to clamp a form of financial feudalism on Europe. Hence democrats in every EU country, whether they are on the political centre, right or left, have a common interest in taking part in the international movement in defence of national democracy against the EU.
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06-03-2007
European study says EU economy is 20 years behind that of the US

A report published on Monday the 5th of March says that despite the current economic upswing, the EU is still losing ground vis-à-vis its global competitors - " in particular with its current level of investment in R&D already achieved by the US almost 30 years ago. Also, the EU is on the wrong path to reach the Lisbon goals, being 3.4 years too late with regard to the target 70% employment rate by 2010. In addition, the level of productivity (expressed in GDP per employed) was reached by the US in 1989, the report said.
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22-02-2007
Is Free Europe waking up?

The philosopher Nietzsche once wrote that "thoughts that come on doves' feet change the world." Amidst all the raucous Leftist and Islamist ranting in Europe, one of those silent tidal changes may be on the way.

You might not expect a French blog to defiantly wave the American flag, but this one does.

Even in the grip of socialism many of the French remember the Enlightenment, when liberty was at least as inspiring as social welfare checks. The Enlightenment gave birth to John Locke and Edmund Burke in England, and Voltaire in France --- and ultimately to the American Revolution on this side of the water. Our basic political philosophy comes from that time. Apparently it has not yet been forgotten.
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07-02-2007
Giving Ministers the power to decide EU crimes and penalty

Government Ministers and the EU to be given power to decide to have Irish citizens fined and imprisoned without any need for Oireachtas permission - a Power grab by the Government and Ministers.
The European Communities Bill 2006, which has its second reading in the Dail on tomorrow, Thursday, proposes the most important ever amendment to the European Communities Act 1972. This is the Act which enables Ministerial regulation to incorporate European laws into the domestic law of the State.
For the first time ever this Bill would give Ministers the power to agree to an EU-wide criminal code, if that should be considered necessary to enforce EC law in every area of supranational policy. It would give Ministers the power to decide themselves, without reference to the Oireachtas, what penalties should attach to breaches of such a code.
To be blunt about it, this Bill proposes to give Ministers powers comparable to those which governments have under dictatorships, where there is no need to consult, not to mind get the permission of, elected Parliaments in deciding what are crimes and penalties.
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07-02-2007
EU accused of wasting Palestine aid cash

The EU has paid almost €4 million in bank charges on aid channelled to Palestine in a new "mechanism" set up in order to bypass the militant Hamas party after elections last January. Leading UK charity Oxfam attacked the EU system as an "aid fiasco" after it emerged the lost millions ended up in the coffers of London-based bank giant, HSBC, which wires the transfers.
European states are wasting millions of euros of aid to Palestine through this bureaucratic scheme. The way that European aid is currently being delivered is undermining Palestinian basic services and damaging a highly fragile economy," Oxfam director Barbara Stocking said.
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16-01-2007
EU threatening parliamentary democracy

Germany's state of parliamentary democracy is under threat from the European Union which is slowly taking away all the national parliament's powers, the country's ex-president has said.
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04-01-2007
Rumblings of Euro discontent

French and other officials are openly calling for the abandonment of the Euro in the sense of at least re attaining local central bank controls over interest rates. Presently, the ECB sets interest rates for the entire EU region. Believe it or not, there are actually Euro treaty contingencies to allow just that - retaking monetary policy control by nation. Of course, this would cause a lot of inter currency strife as nations compete with interest rate wars in the EU - supposedly having one common currency, but then having different interest rate agendas...basically such a retrograde move by the EU nations would cause a lot of turmoil, and possibly is not even manageable, but could possibly call into doubt the very viability of the Euro.
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04-01-2007
What is The European Union Good For?

While many think the EU will be a big help in stabilizing Iraq as the situation allows, the EU is nothing close to a super-power. As FSM Contributing Editor Adrian Morgan outlines, the EU came into existence artificially, and seems to specialize in creating thousands of unnecessary regulations. In fact, British citizens are now subject to 200,000 EU regulations, with 2,500 more added annually. Whereas the US has a set of values, all the EU can provide is a labyrinthine bureaucracy that would put Byzantium to shame. Do we need or even want their help?
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23-12-2006
Sweet Dreams

Carrying on with my earlier theme, again I will base my title and my article on a song from the eighties. Sweet dreams is one of the greatest ever hits released by a group called The Eurythmics. While listening to the song on my way to school, I thought about dreams; sweet dreams. I imagined a Britain, and indeed, a Europe in which things went as I wished and things were done when they needed to be done. Sweet dreams indeed.....
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08-12-2006
Euroscepticism and Europeism

Europe of the last fifty years can not be described by dominance of any one of - in encyclopedias well described - "isms" because each one of them is partial and expresses only one component of our multidimensional reality. The current thinking in Europe is based on a wider, more general and evidently heterogeneous doctrine. I call it Europeism. It is a doctrine which is not systematically formulated (de facto only some of its critics talk about it seriously). It is unfortunately not possible to refer to clearly defined sources, from which it could be "read". The text of the European constitution was a certain "summary" of Europeism but it is not a good source, because this text did its best to suppress many important features and manifestations of it.
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21-11-2006
The Real Face of the European Union

The EU has been sold to Britain as our best hope for the future... But behind the scenes, has another, more unsettling agenda been unfolding? The European Economic Community (EEC) began for Britain as a free-trade agreement in 1972. Today's European Union is well on its way to becoming a federal superstate, complete with one currency, one legal system, one military, one police force and even its own national anthem. In this shocking new documentary featuring EU insiders and commentators, independent author Phillip Day covers the history and goals of the European Union, as well as the disturbing, irrevocable implications this new government has for every British citizen. Whether the viewer is for or against Britain's participation, this film asks the troubling questions the mainstream media has refused to confront.
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09-11-2006
Eurocrats want EU army tied to Nato

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has given an interview to Sueddeutsche Zeitung in which she argues that the French and Dutch 'no' votes were not against the EU Constitution "per se". She goes on to insist that the EU Constitution must be rescued, arguing that although "I don't know either whether every German has a need for the Basic Law every minute? when one agrees on a platform of common rights and obligations, it is substantial". Discussing European defence, Merkel argues, "I do not want to go so far as to demand a European army. We are going in that direction already". Adding to the growing anti-Turkish feeling amongst some members of the EU, she warns that "we cannot promise full membership".
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26-10-2006
Europe: Don't Vote with Your Feet

If you are fed up with paying taxes, you'll certainly like the idea of tax competition. It gives the opportunity to escape fiscal pressure from your own government by eventually "voting with your feet" to other jurisdictions with more favourable tax regimes. And it gives strong incentives for governments elsewhere to lower their own taxes. But some governments are trying, through the European Commission, to impose tax harmonisation across Europe. The Commission has a very strange concept of free competition, with an absence of tax pressure defined as "state aid".
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14-09-2006
"Go West"

Last night, I sat infront of my computer with my geeky KOSS Portapro headphones listening to my usual selection of pre-1995 tunes when eventually, "Go West" came on. "Go West" is arguably one of the most famous Pet Shop Boys songs despite the fact that it's just a cover.Funnily enough, it got me thinking. "Uh-oh!" I hear you say, but don't worry I'll try to remain coherent....
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11-09-2006
Europe in Hibernation

As Madeleine Albright once said, "To understand Europe, you have to be a genius - or French." John Gillingham, author of Design for a New Europe, is definitively not French - as a matter of fact, he is an American historian - but he is undoubtedly one of today's most original thinkers on European integration. He sheds an outsider's light on Europe, which makes his views all the more interesting and valuable.
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01-09-2006
Au Revoir, Les Entrepreneurs

European media reported earlier this month that the French economy had grown by 1.1 percent in the second quarter of 2006, the biggest quarterly jump in five years for the country. Could this mean that France has become more attractive for entrepreneurs? Perhaps. But on the other hand, there are signs that the country's traditional obstacles for growth and innovation are still in place. Recently, the Washington Post ran a story about how wealthy citizens choose to leave France due to its punishingly high taxes on the successful. The article cites a government study which concluded that on average at least one millionaire leaves France every day to settle in a more wealth-friendly country.
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30-08-2006
Txt Msg Tax = :-(

In May, a senior centre-right French MEP named Alain Lamassoure suggested that the EU should levy a tax on text messages (SMS) and email messages to shore up the future financing of EU programs. The suggestion came at the joint European Parliament and national parliament conference on the future of Europe in Brussels and was later debated in the Committee on Budgets. It now appears increasingly likely that the proposal will be considered at the next committee meeting in September despite widespread opposition to the measure that eventually prompted even Lamassoure to distance himself it.
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29-08-2006
America: More Like Sweden Than You Thought

Things are actually looking pretty good for the US economy, then -- wealthier to start with, getting richer faster and productivity growth is also highest in the USA, meaning that this trend is only likely to continue. Looking at all of that it's really rather difficult to see that there's anything wrong with the way things are being managed (or not). Ah, but, we can always find something nasty in the woodpile. The US has the most unequal distribution of income of all the countries studied.
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21-08-2006
British Revolution

As a result of its 1973 entry into the European Economic Community, Britain gave up sovereignty over matters of trade to Brussels. Today, trade issues are subjected to qualified majority voting in the European Union's Council of Ministers, which means that powerful defenders of protectionism, such as France, are usually able to derail moves toward greater trade openness. EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson's pathetic inability to commit to further liberalization of agriculture was partly responsible for the derailment of the Doha round of trade negotiations. His pandering to special interest groups ranging from French farmers to Italian shoemakers harms European consumers and shows the shortcomings of the common EU approach to trade negotiations.
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16-08-2006
A Sheep in Wolf's Clothes

Thus, according to Vanhanen, the EU, originally conceived as the means for keeping Germany from invading France, today has only one remaining tangible reason for existence - to keep Serbs from invading Croatia. Now, there is a reason that an average voter in, say, Belgium can relate to. Given that it took NATO and the US to get the Serbs out of the game of killing their neighbors, while the EU stood by incapable of any meaningful action, suggests that it will take serious re-writing of history to get Vanhanen's ideas on sources for EU's legitimacy pass a first grade lesson in civics.
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15-08-2006
The list of EU scandals as reported in BILD: here�s how the EU squanders our money

Year after year, thousands of millions of our tax money disappear in numerous EU subsidy pots. Our good money evaporates like rain water on a hot stone. The above examples are only the tip of an iceberg. Not to mention the distinct help-yourself mentality of Brussels institutions. It's the peak of audacity that the EU parliament has nothing better to do - of all times, straight after the failure of the finance summit - than to quietly and sneakily decide upon a parliamentary allowance package of 60 million euros (₤40 million) a year.
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15-08-2006
96.9% against the Europe constitution in phone-in vote. Germany says NO!

No politician can get around this result! 390,694 BILD readers took part in the great BILD phone-in poll on the Europe constitution. 96.9% said NO! Only 3.1% are for the EU constitution.

If the dead could speak (by Peter Boenisch)
More devastating than the "Non" and the "Nee" is the German "Nein". According to the BILD poll, 96.9% are against the European constitutional treaty.
This is clear to understand. Annoyance with politics in the nations' own capital cities. Frustration over Brussels bureaucracy. Nearly 500 page constitutional treaty. Who, apart from the authors, is going to read it?
The American declaration of independence needed only 6 pages and that was sufficient for the multiracial mix USA to become a world power.

390,694 BILD readers voted on Europe!
That's a fantastic record; nearly 400,000 readers rang in the great phone-in action organised by BILD and RTL television - more than ever before!
The result is a resounding slap in the face for EU politicians; 96.9% have voted against the Europe constitution.
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15-08-2006
Friedman's Lessons for Europe

Milton Friedman - Nobel economist, arch-monetarist, barely five feet tall but still utterly ebullient - turned 94 this month. His thinking has a lot to tell Europeans about how to run their governments and their economies. It was Friedman who knocked the stuffing out of Keynesianism - the postwar consensus shared by almost all economists, that governments could guarantee stable growth through cheap credit and a few tweaks to the tax system. In fact, it delivered worldwide stagflation. That, said Friedman, was because the Keynesians had forgotten the importance of money - the stuff we hold in our pockets, cash registers, and bank accounts. Like anything else, the more there is of it, the less it is worth. And the more money the government mints and prints, the less it will buy. In other words, you get inflation.
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27-07-2006
Brussels commission makes power grab for control of crime and justice

Last month the Brussels Commission proposed that EU Member States should scrap their national vetoes in the field of police and judicial cooperation and adopt EU laws in this area by qualified majority voting. This means that crimes and criminal penalties could be decided at EU rather than national level, so that Member States would no longer be able to decide or defend the fundamental rights of their citizens. If adopted, this proposal would mean a further huge extension of of EU power over our lives. It would give more power to the EU Commision, that body of unelected supranational officials which French President Charles de Gaulle once described as "a conclave of technocrats without a country responsible to nobody". It would mean lifting a proposal from the EU Constitution which was rejected by French and Dutch voters last summer, and trying to push it through on the sly, supposedly on the basis of the existing EC/EU Treaties.
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27-07-2006
Two-thirds of Ireland's laws now come from brussels...

And Bertie Ahern, Enda Kenny, Mary Harney and Pat Rabbitte want this proportion to increase
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27-07-2006
EU constitution through the backdoor

There was no agreement at the mid-June EU summit EU summit on how to revive the EU Constitution which the French and Dutch peoples voted down last year. Germany, which holds the EU presidency in the first half of 2007, is to produce a report this time next year. There will be a new French President after May 2007. The Presidents and Prime Ministers will work on a grand rhetorical statement for next year's 50th anniversary of the signing of the Rome Treaty, which they hope may give a boost to the grand project.
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27-07-2006
What "Europe Day" (9 may) really stands for...the strategy of deceptive steps

The political objective of establishing a supranational European Federal State has been central from the start to the various stages of the integration project: Coal and Steel Community, Economic Community, European Community, European Union. "Europe Day"(May 9th) commemorates the Schuman Declaration on 9 May 1950, which stated frankly that the establishment of the supranational Coal and Steel Community was "a first step in the federation of Europe" and that "this proposal will lead to the realization of the first concrete foundation of a European federation."
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