Democrat Broadsheet - Number 11
Brian Denny and Marc Glendenning warn

The political elite in EU member countries is transferring ever more power to unelected institutions in Brussels. This centralisation of power will free the politicians from any real accountability to the ordinary peoples of Europe. Real power will lie with big business and other powerful vested interests.

Alongside the emasculation of national political institutions, a series of measures are being introduced that are restricting freedom of speech and other basic civil liberties such as trial by jury and habeas corpus, which includes the prospect of being held without trial indefinitely. A police state is being constructed that will give Brussels the means to suppress serious political dissent.

European FBI
Following the attacks on the World Trade Centre, the eurofederalists launched severe attacks on civil liberties, created the embryo of a European FBI under the auspices of Europol and extended the Schengen Information System (SIS) to monitor citizens.

Civil liberties group Statewatch warns that the plans include an EU database to target `suspected' protesters and bar them from entering a country where a protest is planned and another database of all `foreigners' to remove third country nationals who have not left within the `prescribed time frame.'

The first database would lead to barring `potentially dangerous persons, notoriously known by the police forces for having committed recognised facts of public order disturbance,' according to EU documents.

The second database follows a call by the German government for the creation of a `centralised register' of foreigners.

Habeas Corpus
British Home Secretary David Blunkett has gone further, demanding the removal of rights that can be traced back to the Magna Carta of 1215 and the Habaes Corpus Act of 1640.

Mr Blunkett's Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security bill also contains clause 109 which will enable ministers to implement, by secondary legislation, decisions on justice and home affairs taken by EU council of ministers in Brussels.

As a result, EU plans for a single legal code, known as Corpus Juris, can be imposed through the Brussels doctrine of acquis communautaire.

There is plenty of evidence that Brussels was ready to exploit any external disaster such as the attacks on the World Trade Centre in order to further such EU centralisation despite growing public hostility to the `European project.'

The European Commissions forward planning unit even predicted back in 1996 that it would be `difficult to achieve political union without there being the perception of an external political threat. A terrorist outrage would contribute to the perception of an external threat.'

Harmonisation
In fact, September 11 was exactly what was needed to hurry along political and military union as well as legal harmonisation after Denmark and Ireland rejected the euro and the Nice Treaty respectively in referendums.

In short, the EU represents the biggest threat to freedom in Europe since 1945. Democrats from the left, centre-right, and middle of the political spectrum must put aside their philosophical differences and come together to defeat the relentless centralisation of power that is taking place in our continent.

No Democracy
The main decision making bodies - the Commission, the Council of Ministers, and the European Central Bank - have no electoral mandate and meet in secret. The Commission has the monopoly right to propose new EU laws. The Council then decides whether to approve of these measures. In reality, the vast majority of its decisions are taken by a permanent committee of civil servants (COREPER).

So called European Parliament
Elections to the so called European Parliament cannot affect the composition of the most important EU decision making bodies. The European Commission, the body that has the monopoly right to propose new laws in Brussels, remains unchanged following each election to the European Parliament. It's as if the Cabinet stays the same following each British general election, regardless of who has won or lost. In any case, MEPs are elected from party lists in multimember constituencies containing millions of voters. This means there is no real accountability to voters.

The European Central Bank which has assumed control over the most important economic decision making powers for those countries in the Eurozone is similarly unelected. Under article 107 of the EU treaty it is an offence for any elected politician to even write to the Bank requesting a change of policy. If Britain scraps the pound for the euro, all the most basic decisions concerning levels of public expenditure, interest and exchange rates, and control over the level of prices will be taken out of the democratic arena.

Threat to civil liberties
The EU is attempting to introduce a new legal system, Corpus Juris, which will be under the direction of a European Public Prosecutor. This will be a judicial system in which there will not be trial by jury or habeas corpus. The new treaty of Nice has taken a key first step towards this objective with the creation of Eurojust, the EU's embryonic prosecutions agency. Other key measures in this regard are the introduction of an automatic EU arrest warrant and the freezing of assets that it is suspected were the product of criminal activities. This will effectively reverse the traditional British legal principal of innocent until proven guilty as those accused will have to establish that their assets were legally obtained.

Article 52 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights gives Brussels the right to suspend any civil liberty in the `general interest' of the Union.

Suppression of free speech
The EU's Court of First Instance in Brussels ruled, in relation to the sacking of a Commission employee that had written a book critical of the single currency, that criticism of the Union was tantamount to `blasphemy' and that this would not be tolerated once the EU became a criminal jurisdiction.

The Commission has drawn up proposals for a new law against `xenophobia'. Given that the EU's own Orwellian Committee for the Monitoring of Racism and Xenophobia has officially stated that opposition to the single currency constitutes `monetary xenophobia', then presumably even Eurosceptics such as Tony Benn and the Green Party could find themselves being prosecuted. EuroPol already have the right to keep under surveillance individuals and groups alleged to be xenophobic.

Unaccountable police force
EuroPol, the EU's new answer to the FBI, is only accountable to its own management board based in The Hague. Its officers enjoy diplomatic immunity from prosecution for reasons that have never been justified. EuroPol will soon have the right to initiate and involve itself in criminal investigations in member countries.

Definition of terrorism
Under the EU's new proposed law any `act of intimidation' with the intention of `seriously altering political, economic or social structures' will be classified as terrorism. This definition is so broad that any act of what traditionally would have been defined as civil disobedience could now result in very long prison sentences for those found guilty.

Following the anti-globalisation counter-demonstrations, the EU Council of Ministers ordered EuroPol to `track and identify' well known anti-capitalist agitators to ensure that similar events were not repeated at EU summits. Tony Bunyan Statewatch has said in relation to this proposal: `there is a deliberate attempt to broaden the concept of terrorism to cover protest such as those in Gothenburg and Genoa.'

Removing the rights of political parties
The new article 191 of the Nice treaty will give the Council of Ministers the right to remove the funding and speaking rights of political parties in the European Parliament. The statute on political parties states that, at the European level, they have a duty to promote a `European consciousness'. Only parties that contest European parliamentary elections in at least a third of the member countries will qualify for public funding. There are no liberal democracies worthy of the name in which political parties can be handicapped in relation to their rivals because they do not adopt a particular ideological orientation.

Removing the voting rights of member states
Similarly the new article 7 of the Nice treaty will give the EU the capacity to suspend the voting rights of entire governments within the Council of Ministers. It is said that this power is necessary in order to prevent an extremist, anti-democratic, party from influencing the Union. This power was used illegally when the Austrian people voted for the right-wing Freedom Party two years ago. However, once that party and the coalition government of which it was a part, agreed not to veto the Nice treaty, Austria's representation rights were restored. This proves that Brussels was not primarily concerned with the freedom Party's racist or other domestic policies, but was really concerned with its rhetorically stated opposition to greater European political unity. The neo-fascist National Alliance in Italy has twice been included in coalition administrations in recent years and the EU has never threatened similar sanctions against Rome. The Italian far right, unlike their Austrian equivalents, are pro the euro and the idea of a single European state.

In their own words

We shall never make Europe until we take the plunge into the water, and that plunge is the making of European government.'
Oswald Mosley, leader of the fascist Union Movement, Europe: Faith and Plan, June 1958.
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Europe may once again grasp the helm of world civilisation if it can develop a modicum of political unity.
Benito Mussolini addressing the National Council of Corporations, November 14 1933.
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The euro was not just a bankers' decision or a technical decision. It was a decision which completely changed the nature of the nation states. The pillars of the nation state are the sword and the currency, and we changed that.'
EU Commission President Romano Prodi, April 1999
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Are we all clear that we want to build something that can aspire to be a world power? In other words, not just a trading bloc but a political entity. Do we realise that our nation states, taken individually, would find it more difficult to assert their existence and their identity on the world stage?
EU Commission President Romano Prodi, April 2000
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Our Europe, a National Europe, will be founded on the deepest sense of patriotism embracing brothers and sisters of the same stock and a 3,000 years tradition of European culture. We invite all to join in this struggle for the future of our common race and nation.
League Sentinel, journal of the fascist League of St.George, Summer 2000
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We now declare with pride our European communion of blood and of spirit that Europe a Nation shall forthwith be made a fact. This means that Europe shall have a common government for the purposes of foreign policy, defence, economic policy, finance and scientific development...
Extract from the declaration of the National Party of Europe, March 4, 1962. The NPE was a grouping of European fascist movements including the Italian MSI (now the Allianzia Nationale), the German Reichspartei, and the French Jeune Movement.