Democrat May 2002 (Number 62)
Prodi calls for All power to Brussels
Report by Brian Denny
European Commission President Romano Prodi even managed to upset europhiles this month by openly calling for the end of national vetos and for the centralisation of all economic, legal and foreign policy under the control of the commission.
This blueprint for a federal Europe - continously denied by British eurofanatics - was rubberstamped by the Commission on May 22. Proposals to use majority voting over foreign affairs, security and use of the European Army, budget, justice and home affairs would remove the last vestiges of powers currently held by national parliaments.
Convention
In a submission to the so-called EU Convention for a Constitution, Mr Prodi said the Commission must become the "centre of gravity" in EU foreign policymaking. "These changes will have to be phased in, in the same way as economic and monetary union", the Commission statement said. The convention - chaired by Valery Giscard d'Estaing - must present a series of proposals within a year, which will then by submitted to a treaty conference in 2004.
A leading EU official claimed that the commission "alone represents the common interest" and decision must be made by the so-called "community method". These proposals are remarkably similar to the contents of the Nice Treaty - which the Irish have refused to ratify.
Sacking
In an example of this increasing arrogance, Prodi fired accountant whistleblower Marta Andreasan for daring to complain that the annual EU budget of £50,000 million was open to fraud and error.
The budget director was shifted after writing to Prodi and EU vice-president Neil Kinnock, making critical comments about the accounting system of the commission. "During the time I have been here I have been able to establish that the system is vulnerable, thus involving risk of errors and fraud", she wrote,
The commission said it regretted such criticism and saw it as a threat to the relationship of trust with her colleagues. "We will be putting her in another function, to put it mildly," a spokesman said.
Repeat exercise
The moves were similiar to the sacking of commission official Bernard Connolly, the British economist dismissed in 1995 for writing a critique of European monetary integration entitled The Rotten Heart of Europe.
The European Court of Justice ruled last year that the EU can lawfully suppress political criticism of its institutions and of leading figures, sweeping aside English Common Law and 50 years of European precedents on civil liberties.
Judge Damaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer ruled that criticism amounted to "blasphemy" and that this would not be tolerated once the EU became a single criminal jurisdiction.
Accumulation of power
Mr Connolly's book said the steady accumulation of power by European institutions had been guided by the "functionalist" theory of Jean Monnet. This theory maintains that European unification will never be achieved by the normal methods of political democracy; but can be brought about almost imperceptibly by transferring more and more governmental functions from national to European administrations.
However, more and more people have been alerted to the "functionalist" method of destroying democracy and even political elites in member states are feeling the growing tide of anger.
Commission proposals at a glance ** End of all vetos and opt-outs such as Britain's from EMU.
** A single EU foreign policy. EU foreign policy tsar Javier Solana to be absorbed into the Commission and role merged with external affairs eurocrat Chris Patten.
** Single EU constitution for an expanded EU.
** A single asylum and immigration policy.
** Commission to have power over national budgets, only to be overturned by unanimous vote.
** Commission to represent the eurozone on the world stage, such as the World Bank and the IMF.