Happy birthday Eurabia

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome The Brussels Journal is reprinting a lecture on the nature of the European Union given by Paul Belien:

In the history of Europe the idea of integrating policies on a pan-European level – in other words the idea of European political integration – is a fairly recent phenomenon. In Europe the word “Europe” has now become almost a synonym of the term European Union. Originally the term Europe stood for a cultural concept. There was a defined European identity and even a feeling of European unity, but it was a cultural unity.

During the Middle Ages, a sense of common allegiance had grown among the citizens or subjects of the different political entities on the European continent. This allegiance transcended the limits of their own village, city, region and state, and encompassed other people living on, and even beyond, the continent. This sense of the larger cultural European community was defined by “Christendom.”

The latter was the common denominator for the civilization of all the cultures influenced by the religion of Christianity and by Judaeo-Christian ethics. The United States, colonized by Europeans, belonged to this European civilization as fully as the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden or Poland.

In the late 18th century the cultural concept of “Christendom” or “Europe” unraveled. After the French Revolution it was replaced by the geographical concept of “Europe.” The latter concept excluded the U.S. In a sense the old cultural concept of Christendom lived on across the Atlantic. This is why I often argue that America is more genuinely, I mean traditionally, European than Europe.

North America was colonised by freedom-loving people who brought the political institutions and traditions from Europe to a new continent across the sea. Many of them left Europe because they wanted the freedom to live according to their own conscience instead of having to submit to the centralist absolutist rulers of the new age that swept across Europe from the 16th century onwards. Their traditions were rooted in the late Middle Ages and the Aristotelian philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Europe’s Middle Ages had been characterised by an absence of central power, while the citizen was bound to multiple legal systems, such as the legal order of his city, that of the land, that of his guild, that of the church. There was not one monopolistic ruler, as in China or in the Muslim world, but there were many, which guaranteed greater freedom for the individual. The philosophy of Aquinas, moreover, was centered on the individual. God had called man to be free from sin, but in order to be free from sin he had to be virtuous, and in order for virtue to have any value it had to be voluntary, implying that the virtuous man had to be free in every aspect of his life including, as Aquinas’ followers later pointed out, his economic activities. The powers of the state had to be limited.

America still stands for this older type of Europe, as do some pockets of the remaining old mediaeval political order on the continent, such as Switzerland and, to a certain extent, England. When the Americans rebelled in 1776 they rebelled against absolutism in order to keep their old freedoms. Theirs was a conservative revolution.

Europe had its own series of revolutions from 1789 onwards, but these were revolutions of a different sort. Along with the ruling absolutists they toppled all the remnants of the old political order, to replace them by absolutists of an even extremer form: totalitarians. These totalitarians were not satisfied with controlling their subjects’ political and economic lives but also wished to control their minds and souls, in other words to become their god.

Here lies the origin of the European disease, which arose from the loss of faith in the Judaeo-Christian God and the Judaeo-Christian moral legacy, and an increasing reliance on the State as the source of order, authority and legitimacy. After causing two world wars this disease culminated in the creation of the European Union as a superstate, the God to absorb all gods, with a nihilistic and atheist agenda that was finally exposed in the recent and (so far unadopted) European Constitution.

[. . .]

At this stage the term “Europe” no longer meant Christendom, but Enlightenment, or National-Socialism, or Communism, or welfare statism. “Europe” became the rallying cry, first of Napoleon and then of Hitler, when they tried to expand the new political order which they had achieved at a national level across an entire continent. Both dictators recruited troops from other countries to fight in Russia by telling them that they were defending “Europe”. Both Napoleon’s and Hitler’s attempts at European unification ended in military collapse. However, if these dictators had won their wars, European political unification would have been achieved, either in 1815 under French or in 1945 under German leadership. Britain fought to counter both unification attempts. Russia fought them, too, but only after first having allied itself with Napoleon and Hitler until the latter were so foolish as to invade Russia in their attempts to expand “Europe” into Asia.

Today we are witnessing the third attempt at European political unification. It is tempting to interpret it as a joint Franco-German initiative to subjugate Europe after France and Germany had come to realize that they could not do so on their own. Of course, there is also the more idealistic, Christian-Democratic, interpretation – the Novalis interpretation, so to speak – which holds that European unification, with France and Germany integrating, is the only way to prevent another Franco-German war.

No matter how one interprets it, however, the Franco-German alliance is the engine of the European unification process. It is also true that most of the politicians driving this engine are deeply influenced by the mentality of the French revolutionaries. Their ideology is secularist, universalist and constructivist. They are rationalist technocrats who deeply believe that the state is the legitimate bestower of liberties to the people and is to take care of the citizens from the cradle to the grave. They also believe that they know better than the people what is good for the people. Most of them are genuinely convinced that they are leading the Europeans to a perfect democracy. And, paradoxically, because they genuinely believe this, they cannot tolerate that the people at this very moment decide democratically about their own future.

Like the two previous attempts to politically unify Europe, the third attempt is utterly undemocratic. The former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was the chairman of the European Convention which drafted the European Constitution that was rejected by the French and Dutch voters in referendums in May and June 2005. In a lecture at the London School of Economics on 28 February 2006 he declared that the “rejection of the Constitution [by the French and Dutch voters] was a mistake which will have to be corrected.” Referring to earlier EU referendums on the Maastricht and Nice treaties where Ireland and Denmark were forced to vote over and over again until they accepted the texts imposed by the EU, he said that “if the Irish and the Danes can vote yes in the end, so can the French [and the Dutch].” “The Constitution will have to be given a second chance,” he added, because the electorate had voted no out of an “error of judgement” and “ignorance.” He made it quite clear that “It was a mistake to use the referendum process, but when you make a mistake you can correct it.” He also predicted that the Constitution would be a stepping stone to further integration later, arguing that “adoption of the Constitution will not be enough to complete Europe’s political union,” and that the Constitution is for this generation, but for the next generation “there will be something else.”

[. . .]

Unlike the two previous attempts at European unification, which were attempts by military means, the third attempt is an attempt by economic means. The roots of the present European Union are the European Economic Community (EEC), which was established on 25 March 1957 by the Treaty of Rome, and which explicitly states that the aim is to foster “an ever closer union of the peoples of Europe.”

Economic integration has to lead to political union. Economic activities, however, cannot result in a predetermined political goal without enforcing strict economic controls and centralist planning. The controlling and planning body of the EU is the European Commission, which is based in Brussels. The commissioners are not elected and are unaccountable. This is not just an historical accident, as some might think, a flaw that needs improving. No, it is a deliberate democratic deficit built in as a structural part of the EU. An unelected and unaccountable structure makes it easier to impose centrally-driven change on a society.

[. . .]

The European Commission is based in Brussels. This is not without significance because Brussels is also the capital of Belgium. Belgium is a country which is inhabited by three nations: Dutch-speaking Flemings, French-speaking Walloons and a minority of Germans. It is often seen as a prototype for a European state, encompassing different nations. The country is an artificial construct which originated in 1830 after a revolution led by Frenchmen separated it from the Netherlands. The French revolutionaries wanted to annex the Belgian provinces to France. When the international powers vetoed this the revolutionaries found themselves with an independent multinational country for which they had to find a raison d’etre. In the late 19th century the Belgian establishment developed the ideology of “Belgicism.” This “Belgicism” bears a striking similarity to contemporary “Europeanism.” Just listen to what the Belgicist ideologue Léon Hennebicq, a Brussels lawyer, wrote 102 years ago, in 1904:

“Have we not been called the laboratory of Europe? Indeed, we are a nation under construction. The problem of economic expansion is duplicated perfectly here by the problem of constructing a nationality. Two different languages, different classes without cohesion, a parochial mentality, an adherence to local communities that borders on the most harmful egotism, these are all elements of disunion. Luckily they can be reconciled. The solution is economic expansion, which can make us stronger by uniting us.”

Hennebicq’s words foreshadow the Europeanist project of the 1950s which aimed for political unification through economic integration. After a few unsuccesful attempts at nation-building the Belgicists tried to foster a Belgian nationality by imposing an undemocratic social-corporatist welfare system on the country. In this system the adherence of the Belgians – at least a sufficient segment of them – to their artificial state was literally bought. Since 1919 economic and social policies in Belgium are no longer decided in parliament, but in a consensus between the so-called “Social Partners.” These Social Partners include the Federation of Belgian Employers, which is the official representative of the employers versus the state, and three specific trade unions (a Christian-Democrat, a Socialist and a Liberal one), which are recognised by the state as the only official representatives of the employees. Economic and social policies are decided in a tripartite consensus between the government and the employers’ and employees’ federations, rather than in Parliament. The management of the entire welfare state has been delegated to the Social Partners.

This concept has now been copied by the European institutions. In the EU, too, policies are decided not in Parliament but by the Commission, usually in consultation with officialised employers’ federations and trade unions. Article I-48 of the European Constitution, titled “The social partners and autonomous social dialogue,” states: “The Union recognises and promotes the role of the social partners at its level, [...]. The Tripartite Social Summit for Growth and Employment shall contribute to social dialogue.” The individual EU members states are copying this model on their own national level as well. French president Jacques Chirac proposed on 10 October 2006 that all future labour law reforms be preceded by obligatory negotiations with the “social partners.”

What will be the ultimate outcome of all this?

The former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has predicted that the Europeans will end up with an EU dictatorship, an “EUSSR.” “It is no accident,” he said, “that the European Parliament reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similary, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Soviet Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all. When you look into all this bizarre activity of the European Union with its 80,000 pages of regulations it looks like Gosplan. We used to have an organisation which was planning everything in the economy, to the last nut and bolt, five years in advance. Exactly the same thing is happening in the EU.”

Belien sums up:

Vladimir Bukovsky likens the EU to “a shotgun marriage.” When the Danes voted against the Maastricht Treaty and the Irish against the Nice Treaty, they were made to vote again and again, until they approved the treaty with the slightest majority. Similarly, Giscard d’Estaing will force the French and the Dutch, who rejected the EU Constitution, to vote again and again until they correct “their mistake.” Meanwhile Brussels itself is destroying the democratic process – the process whereby mistakes are rectified. Perhaps this is the greatest mistake of all.

I recommend reading the entire essay for the full historical perspective.

There is one important, in fact critically important, factor that Belien has missed. The demographic time-bomb which is ticking away at the heart of Europe. The falling birthrate of ethnic Europeans and the skyrocketing birthrate of Muslim immigrants (as well as massive Muslim immigration).

The European political elite is creating the transnational political union which an Islamic Europe will use to form a continent wide caliphate under sharia and possessing the industrial, military and nuclear capabilities of modern Europe.

We worry about Iran doing the R&D to build a primitive atomic bomb. What if a much larger more populous and wealthier nation which was as radical, or even more so, than Iran has possession of France's Force de frappe and the UK's ballistic missile submarines? We are talking about the ability to deliever thermonuculer warheads to any point on the planet in the hands of people very little different from the "Blind Sheikh".

Yet everyone just seems to slumber away.