[url="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8886498/The-EUs-architects-never-meant-it-to-be-a-democracy.html"]The EU's architects never meant it to be a democracy[/url]: The Telegraph, UK, 12 Nov 2011
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[size="2"]Greek police face the wrath of the people in Athens, the cradle of democracy.[/size][/floatleft]So, as headlines scream that vain bids to save the euro threaten us with ââ¬ÅArmageddonââ¬Â, the EUââ¬â¢s ruling elite has toppled two more elected prime ministers, to replace them with technocratic officials who can be trusted to do Brusselsââ¬â¢s bidding.
The new Greek prime minister, Lucas Papademos, was the man who, as head of Greeceââ¬â¢s central bank, fiddled the figures to enable Greece to get into the euro (against the rules) in the first place ââ¬â before being rewarded with a senior post in the European Central Bank. He is no more democratically elected than Mario Monti, who will most likely be Italyââ¬â¢s new prime minister and had hurriedly to be made a ââ¬Åsenator for lifeââ¬Â to qualify him for the job. Montiââ¬â¢s main qualification is that, as a former senior EU Commissioner, he has long been a member of the Brussels elite himself.
One of the few pleasures of watching this self-inflicted shambles unfolding day by day has been to see the panjandrums of the Today programme, James Naughtie and John Humphrys, at last beginning to ask whether the EU is a democratic institution. Had they studied the history of the object of their admiration, they might long ago have realised that the ââ¬ÅEuropean projectââ¬Â was never intended to be a democratic institution.
The idea first conceived back in the 1920s by two senior officials of the League of Nations ââ¬â Jean Monnet and Arthur Salter, a British civil servant ââ¬â was a United States of Europe, ruled by a government of unelected technocrats like themselves. Two things were anathema to them: nation states with the power of veto (which they had seen destroy the League of Nations) and any need to consult the wishes of the people in elections.
As Richard North and I showed in our book The Great Deception, this was the idea that Monnet put at the heart of the ââ¬Åprojectââ¬Â from 1950 onwards, modelling his ââ¬Ågovernment of Europeââ¬Â on precisely the same four institutions that made up the League of Nations ââ¬â a commission, a council of ministers, a parliament and a court. Thus, step by step over decades, Monnetââ¬â¢s technocratic dream has come to pass.
The events of last week were by no means the first time that an elected prime minister has been toppled by the Euro-elite. The most dramatic example, as we also showed in our book, was in 1990, when Mrs Thatcher had emerged as the biggest obstacle to the next great leap forward in their slow-motion coup dââ¬â¢etat, the Maastricht Treaty, creating the European Union and the single currency. Following her ambushing at a European Council in October 1990, when she was outnumbered 11 to one, the trap was sprung. An alliance between the European elite, led by Jacques Delors, and our own Tory Europhiles, led by Geoffrey Howe and Michael Heseltine, brought her down within weeks.
They had disposed of the greatest political obstacle to the onward march of their project just as ruthlessly as they were later to brush aside all those referendums expressing the objections of the French, the Dutch and the Irish to their Constitution. The one thing for which there has never been any place in their grand design is democracy. What a pity the Today programme didnââ¬â¢t wake up to that years ago.
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