The Great Project started as an ideal “To develop a Continental environment where States cease to be dragged into war with each other”. The ideal was overtaken and subsumed by the ideology that this is achievable only if the single-issue is built up, by encompassing how States organise themselves and run themselves now, and persuading them (or conning them!) that they should give up many national sovereignty and their individual complex psychological features. Why? Because such features (ego-patriotism, traditions, characteristics, temperaments and leadership-inclinations and ambitions) can only lead inevitably and inexorably, and proven historically, to violent disagreement and war.

This gave way to the ultimate ideology that the future for Continental Europe could only be integration and supra-national authority: YOU, one State, give up many of your cherished national features including a veto so that a larger ‘body’ encompassing the ‘interests’ of individual states may direct the future for a Continent of 400 million people efficiently and of course peacefully.

It was the dream of Salter, Monnet and their supporters over many decades. Well before 1952, the rise of the ECSC.

Today, political egomaniacs, failed politicians in their own countries, careerists of long-lost principles, and lucky time-servers are spread throughout this Monster called the EU. They play some kind of parts, pontificate and vote Yes, and have a nice lifestyle.

Most MEPs (the majority of the 700?) are very fortunate in that no electorate can judge the effectiveness of their ‘performance’ in Strasbourg or Brussels.

Once in, discouraged to learn the fact of EU life, that they are not only expendable but they are not even a recognisable entity, they board the gravy train.

Politics in every country is filled with politicians who have feathered their own nests, in the ‘Mother of Parliaments’ most have expenses accounts of more than £100,000 a year besides their salaries.

As a national newspaper said recently, “Seldom in the history of British politics has so little talent been rewarded with so much money so quickly.”

It also mused that so many ‘politicians’ miraculously found themselves enjoying giant salaries and pensions benefits at levels they could never hope to reach in the ‘proper’ Civil Service or in private industry.

Kilroy-Silk has already caused a stir (even prepared to make himself look foolish) by speaking out, loudly in the EU Parliament arena, against the new Commissioners who included Mandelson.

The UKIP leaders have banged the table, too. Their calls are in unison: “Britain OUT of the EU”.

The EU is changing, that’s for certain. And it may now have reached its “peak” after which comes some form of dis-integration. Certainly, the golden days for France and Germany are now disappearing – and a two-stream EU is now on the cards.

Who knows if Salter and Monnet ever envisaged a “United States of Europe” with 25 nations involved, most of them very, very glad to be in such a body, for obvious reasons.

But it is a concept and its resulting organisation-in-charge which is a travesty of a) what the originals ideals were and b) what modern democracy would aim to be. It is out of control or, rather, IN the control of the machine, the system running itself?

It does seem to many that only a form of political violence will lead to change. In the light of true principles, that is quite unacceptable. But there is no doubt, human direction is confused and we have got ourselves into a real pickle.

So can it (the EU set-up) ever be “Reformed”? Can there eventually be direct democracy, using modern technology in all its forms? Can there ever be direct access democratic voting in many of the EU’s Institutions?

Or as Monnet, Salter and others always demanded – will autocratic rule by a small elite never be conceded? Why is such concession necessary? We only have to review the criticisms.

1. arose out of un-natural pressures, which arose un-naturally out of decent, worthwhile and commendable IDEALS following World War 1 and
2. the current EU arose out of secret, individualistic and (unfortunately) highly talented political extremists who played short-term and never imagined the consequences of longer-term!

The EU today is accused of being:

• A dictatorial even tyrannical body ruling 400 million people, yet its financial record is unapproved by auditors - for the last ten years. Corruption has been proven – billions of euros – and complainants and whistleblowers are still being forced out of office.
• A body which is supra-nationalistic and integrationist with intent for full super-state political status as soon as possible – though most populaces are unaware how much sovereignty, identity, commercial, economic and legal freedoms their countries have lost already.
• A body with an un-elected and unaccountable Executive (Commissioners) – among them many politicians of unsavoury pasts, some virtually failures in their own countries.
• Un-democratic, in that electorates have no form of Direct Access Voting other than voting mostly blindly for MEPs they have not met, heard about or know what they truly stand for.
• a body with 700 (elected) MEPs most of whom have no chance of understanding but a fraction of what they sheep-like voteYes for, hands up every few seconds during voting blitzes.
• as Salter particularly specified in the 1920s and wanted, the EU has a dedicated body of civil servants, increasing steadily in number and cost annually. Many of these ‘Sir Humphry’s’ of the EU bureaucracy are the true dedicated hidden rulers, such as they could never be if serving in their own countries.
• As with most civil services, it is point-by-point bureaucratic in its imagination and is a factory which is brilliantly-fast at producing a variety of products - but only Directives and Regulations, which in their majority have no capacity for wealth-creation.
• Now, in 2005, it is widely believed that the ‘EU process’ and ‘EU system’ is already irreversible, and that ‘the machine now runs itself’.

-------------------

But recently, MEPs in the European Parliament have flexed their muscles and found their voice.

A Commision was forced to resign completely. And lately, despite the unseemly subject at the centre of the uprising – one man’s religious views - another step forward for some form of early democracy in the EU was taken

The Directives and Regulations – 100,000 pages of them – may continue to be churned out. But the drive for further democracy (despite the attraction of the benefits aboard a gravy train), a primitive form of Direct Access Democracy, may also be just around the corner?

-------------------

A Great Vision – turned into something else

This, the greatest ‘political project the world has experienced', is facing voluminous criticism over its policies on agriculture, fisheries and immigration policy, its great designs for one-stop Justice and Foreign Policy and “Defence”, its wishful thinking over one-stop currency, and - far, far in ideological ineptitude, its “red tape”.... its “committed civil servants, serving only the one State”. Which has destroyed business equilibrium caused destruction of and misery to hundreds of thousands of small businesses: Britain has caseload after caseload.

Some believe it is all too late; no real, realistic, effective change is possible; the EU even if it fails in the face of seemingly unsurmountable problems, will not reduce and return to a mere ‘Free Trade Area’. What is left?

-----------------------

Some, American analysts and others for instance visualise the EU as being on the same path as communist empires – destined to fall. They see the EU falling apart within 10 to 20 years.

Human nature, despite what you hear, does not change at its core: the ego. Ego, in politics as elsewhere, often overcomes ideals – witness Monnet! Ego can determine our actions and our acceptances.

“I see the EU as a nice job, much money, an important lifestyle –  I am going for it” can come secondary to “What is my Country? What does it stand for? Is the EU real or artificial? Under what system of government do I want me, wife and my children to live?”

-----------------------

And lately, the question is “Can this hybrid called the EU offer anything REAL to 25 very different EU Nation-States?”

But the benefits to a nation, such as the British nation, of belonging to the European Club, enunciated by the Europhiles (and well disputed as spin):

• The EU overall accounts for 20 per cent of all world trade.
• In the six years to 2006, Britain will have received some £10billion in Regional funds.
• Several million UK jobs are linked with our EU trade and services
• Sixty per cent of our trade in goods and services is with the rest of the EU
• Eight of our top 10 trading partners are in the EU.
• Some 700,000 British companies trade in Europe
• Most of 2m cars made in the UK are exported to the EU
• Some 350,000 Britons live in europe
• Some 95,000 young Britons have studied, trained or worked in the EU over the last 10 years

Is it possible that, by the force of political idealogy alone, peoples who have immense differences can become one State, the United States of Europe?

The answer surely depends of TWO factors: the natural growth of feeling for others, for my nation, for “Europe”; and secondly a voluntary agreement. Enforcement does not work.

-----------------------

Yet, surely, ‘Human nature’ and its very strong self-centredness pays homage to its own.... it has been thus 5,000 years... the European Union, at this moment, is ruled just as self-centredly, whether by and for the individual or for a Nation... or for Nations... 25, 27 of them, in a so-called “EU”.

Human nature will out, which means the “EU” will not develop into a true Union of States within Europe, a development which could be NATURAL.

But if truer democracy, direct access democracy can come to prevail, then individual or collective egos will not dominate ... the true direction will be service to the greater.

The 1920’s dream becomes possible... of a very different Union of States within Europe, a Europe of United States.

In the meantime, Eurosceptics, press on for Britain’s withdrawal. I do not believe the EU is reformable, it is not a natural evolving phenomenon in world politics. It must come down, like the Berlin Wall. Out of that arose a new Germany, one out of two. Or, in the future, independent countries in Europe linked by Treaties.

It’s funny, but there is talk around Europe of ‘intergovernmental working more harmoniously and effectively within integration’ – now what could that mean?

Remember, there are many Kilroy-Silks just around every political corner. They certainly enliven the democratic political scene. They make us think. Consider. And remind us that we must be vigilant. For today’s political charisma is shadowed by yesterday’s ghosts of charisma-past. We must be vigilant.

------------------------

Bill E James - an independent site