The Canadian National Newspaper: France Wakes up to the power of the Euro-State

by Rodney Atkinson, British International Relations Columnist

Not long ago the French newspaper Le Monde (February 2007) reported a judgement by the Conseil d’Etat -- France’s Supreme Court for administrative justice -- which granted European law an effective "constitutional immunity". In other words any French law which was in conflict with European Union (EU) law, would have to be repealed.

We British constitutional democrats (i.e. those who believe in the sovereignty of the voter) have known for decades that European Union Directives and regulations, once transposed into existing national laws, would have legal supremacy. This tardy recognition by the French of this constitutional subversion of democracy, is both extraordinary and welcome.

For decades the European Union has used standard tactics to "persuade" electorates (on the rare occasion when the peoples of European nations were given a vote). EU leadership has sought to cajole national parliaments in continental Europe (whose grasp of constitutional democracy tends to be slight) that they ought to surrender their democratic sovereignty in favour of the alleged "utopia" of bureaucratic technocratic Euro-state. Documented tactics have consisted of the six methods I identified in chapter 1 of my book Fascist Europe Rising.

One of the more insidious technique was the “pragmatic interest group”, whereby charities, business and labour groups as well as professional associations were persuaded to agree that EU laws granting them some assumed profit, protection or immunity was given as a reason for “joining Europe”. The interest group were basically tricked into thinking that they were making a political judgment about a specific issue, but they were of course agreeing to the wholesale surrender of their constitutional right to decide those issues in future.

The Labour Government in Britain has just this month recruited the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCCP, a child cruelty charity, to mouth some supportive platitudes about enhancing child protection if even more democratic sovereignty is surrendered in the latest Lisbon Treaty (or European Constitution as it used to be called when it was comprehensively rejected by the French and Dutch peoples).

The sponsoring euro-federalist class in France, Germany and Italy knew what they were doing. It was best summed up by a Frenchman, the former Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson “..the great steps in the construction of Europe would not have been taken had we first had to hold a referendum” To what extent this covert surrender through numerous treaties now amounts to the wholesale destruction of the countries, parliaments and democracies of the members of the European Union, is the object of continuing debate in politics and the Law -- but not among the peoples of Europe who at every opportunity show their determination to assert their sovereignty which they rightly regard as inalienable.

The latest examples of the lies and deceit with which the Euro-State “project” is being covertly forced on the once free nations of Europe concern the attempt to re-introduce the European Constitution -- comprehensively rejected by the peoples of France and the Netherlands -- in the form of the “Reform Treaty” and pretend it is something different because the word “constitution” has been removed. Dr. Garret Fitzgerald, the former Irish Prime Minister has said:

”As for the changes now proposed to be made to the constitutional treaty, most are presentational changes that have no practical effect. They have simply been designed to enable certain heads of government to sell to their people the idea of ratification by parliamentary action rather than by referendum...”

The Chairman of the Conference which drew up the original Constitution was the former French President Giscard d'Estaing. With due contempt for the peoples of Europe and the democratic process (France's President has medieval powers and the French Parliament is toothless) he said of the new Treaty "the legal experts for the European Council have taken the original draft constitution, blown it apart into separate elements, and have then attached them, one by one, to existing treaties. The Treaty of Lisbon is thus a catalogue of amendments. It is unpenetrable for the public."

It is not surprising to those of us brought up in Anglo-Saxon legal systems, that it has taken the French so long to awaken to their euro-federalist fate. Indeed, the French concept of the State, which has a power and credibility in French politics which contrasts with the views of the average truculent and relatively libertarian Brit, has provided a political cultural context for the French elite driven assimilation of France into the EU.

The EU has acquired its power by extending bureaucracy in the name of “rational” administration -- unaffected by the democratic sovereignty of the voters. Having secretly and without democratic approval achieved the central power there has been a recent emphasis on top down “human rights”, defined of course by the Euro-state and therefore removable by that same authority. The English (and hence for the most part the British) legal development has been based not on rights but on freedoms (à la Magna Carta) and the slow development of more freedoms through common law. An individual came to court, the judges gave a judgment in his favour and the State, or other power, was controlled.

An accumulation of such cases produced the Common Law which in turn instigated legislation by Parliament and acceptance by the State - i.e. bottom up emancipation. The State did not justify and control the people, the people through their freedoms under the Law justified the State. Universal suffrage therefore meant not the authority of the state, Monarch and Parliament but the sovereignty of the people and the enormous un-codified (but no less powerful for all that) written Constitution accumulated since the 13th century. This explains the resentment of the British people towards the enormous uncontrolled and unconstitutional power of the European Union -- a resentment not hitherto obvious in France, Germany or Italy.

But even the French may now realise that (as democratic nationists in Britain did in 1972) that the French Constitution de facto no longer exists. And what de facto (in effect) no longer exists is not long for this world de jure (in law)! We are used to profound constitutional losses being confirmed by courts in relatively minor political matters and this French case involved greenhouse gas emissions in the steel industry. Since this was recognised as a matter of EU "competence" the Conseil had given over the power of decision to the European Court of Justice.

It is even more remarkable that a French Law Professor, Dominique Rousseau, interviewed in Le Monde, had taken so long to wake up to the fact that "this decision seals the primacy of Community law over the collection of national law. European law, whether it be direct or derived, from now on will enjoy constitutional immunity." Where has he been for the last 40 years?

Where have the French people been as their political class drove the "European project"? Well, where the French voter always is in continental European politics - nowhere. The corporatist political classes rule, the only function for the people is to vote in such a way (various forms of proportional representation which prevent real change) that they can be marginalised. The State and its political class carry on regardless.

But then, unfortunately (and the Germans were hopping mad at the decision to bring democracy into the Franco German EU stitch-up) the French made a mistake and asked their people to make a democratic decision -- should France accept the European Constitution? They said, resoundingly, NON! Now they have their respected Constitutional Court letting the cat out of the bag -- the French Constitution no longer exists and with it France! Will the nationalistic French tolerate that? I doubt it. The EU's days are numbered. No wonder the German Bundesbank held on to its Deutschmarks!

The whole EU project was based on the Franco German embrace but it was an embrace based on mutual suspicion and contempt. They had to cling to each other in a desperate attempt to control each other. France occupied German territory under the Napoleonic conquests and the Germans occupied France in two World Wars. The Franco-German border is one of the least crossed borders in Europe. Each saw in the EU an opportunity to out-do the other.

The French supported the EU so long as they ran the Brussels administration - they no longer do. The French supported the EU when they were pleased to see "two Germanies" -- now there is one Germany - with 20million more Germans than French! They supported it so long as Germany was bound up through the Euro and majority voting - but Germany has gone its own way in Eastern Europe, South East Asia, parts of Africa and Latin America, exploiting the EU's closed market to bargain for new industrial and political conquests from countries which seek access to that market.

Germany is increasingly dominant and the new member states have little sympathy with France (It was President Chirac who said that the new Eastern European members of the EU had “missed the opportunity to stay silent”!) The Germans are suffering from the Euro, so are the French. The Germans are fed up of being patronised by the French and the French see their dominant subsidised agriculture being eroded by the EU Commission and the World Trade organisation. 70% of both the Germans and the French reject the Euro and its consequences, the great hope of integrationists.

But what can these French and German voters do? Unlike the British they have not been involved in the development of a common law establishing their freedoms and have been told that they are objects of the State which decides their “rights” and “protects them”. Their electoral systems do not give them much power to remove the anti-democratic elements in their Parliaments since proportional representation reduces the number of directly elected members who could be dismissed by a dissatisfied public. In Britain there is a cross party constitutional movement called the British Declaration of Independence which seeks to marshall the votes of the “true sovereigns” at a general election for those candidates who sign an irrevocable commitment to restore the democratic sovereignty of the people. LINK

In France and Germany and on the continent of Europe generally such a movement would be far more difficult because so many MPs are elected by the party apparatus and put on a “list”, arriving in Parliament without any electors ever having seen them never mind voted for them.

But the biggest hurdle for those who wish to restore democratic sovereignty (and hence democracy) to the countries of Europe is the assumption that voters are powerless, that “sovereignty has gone” and nothing can be done about it. This is of course nonsense - although it is encouraged by democrats who seek to dramatise the danger and by eurofederalist authoritarians who seek to demoralise their opposition (the people!).

In a universal franchise the people are sovereign. Their sovereignty cannot be alienated. It can be re-asserted. The first step is to recognise it is under grave threat. The second is to take power over those who purport to have handed the people’s sovereign rights to others. The French seem at last to have started on the first step.

Rodney Atkinson is the founder of the cross party international website Freenations, LINK and the author of three books on the European crisis: Treason at Maastricht (with Norris McWhirter), Europe’s Full Circle and Fascist Europe Rising (all available through that website).

Mr. Atkinson was for 6 years a lecturer at the University of Mainz in Germany before becoming a merchant banker in the City of London and an occasional adviser to British Government ministers.

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