It all starts with a group, which self-identifies as Ardent Europeans, who by the way can be labelled as “europaths” as well. Most of them do not have the slightest idea of european history or culture, but they have one advantage: They call the shots politically. While pretending to look after the wellbeing of their subjects, they pursue a project, which is a purely power-political one. It seems that there is no one who can take them on.

In the beginning their ideology, europeanism, was the domain of the mass parties thoughout the nations. But after the turn of the millenium they were joined by the greens and the liberals (ALDE), who since then have developed into the most vocal supporters of a strong european federal state. In today’s EP only a few groupings on the left and the right stand apart.

It is a huge political cartel, which would have to be be dissolved immediately if it were a trust in the realm of economics. This strong position may have originated in an election process, but its position on european politics is not at all backed by the constituency. The motto of the elections, which brought the politicians to power, cannot be misunderstoood. It has been and still is: The European agenda is not up to the voters. The representatives of the cartel parties were elected on other grounds.

The europeanists’ lowest common denominator is a philosphical universalism, granting a semblance of idealism and good will. But it is an instrument of power and it makes the european governments extremely prone to the application of double standards and  the “Zwangsbeglückung” of others (making them happy against their will). It is very similar to the worldview of liberal imperialism in the British colonial era and to the ideology of the US empire in recent decades.

This modern western universalism does not correspond at all with its political “real constitution”, which has a striking resemblance with a certain communist model of exercising power: Collective leadership. Its most outstanding current example is the People’s Republic of China. But its origins can be traced back to Soviet Russia after the death of Lenin and Stalin. Core to this model was the central committee.

But it never lasted. It only prepared the way for the ascent of yet another dicator (Stalin, Brezhnev). In essence Collective Leadership means, that unfettered decision-making is restricted to a group of a few hundred people, in the case of the European Union: the governments of nation states, the figure heads of the  European Parliament and the power brokers of the commission and the monetary bureaucracy (ECB).

The European Parliament, which often is wielded as a beacon of hope for democracy, is a shackled institution. It does not suffer from a lack of power but that it has been put in chains by its own leaders. As a consequence EU law making has become highly intransparent. In the so called trilogue it has turned into a “black box”, evading public scrutiny and abetting all kinds of political horse trading and slick deals.

Even if the prerequisites for  a paneuropean democratic regime were in place (language, media), the european parliament in its current form would stay a captured entity.

The source of this mess is that the  MEP, who are technically supposed to execute the will of their voters, are in reality beholden to the political oligarchs, the “central committee”.

In fact MEPs are not tributary to the european parent organisations of political parties, but still to their national party leaders, the ones who decide over the “tickets” in the next european elections. But as those are members of the european oligarchy already, it makes no difference at all. If a MEP wants to keep his oder her job, (s)he better stay mum and do what (s)he is asked to do by the party leadership.

At the end I describe mechanisms of self-empowerment, by which national governments authorized themselves to change primary European law – so long as they act unanimously (Simplified Revision Procedure, Passerelle Clause). Apart from such extra goodies, which the governments dished out to themselves in the Lisbon treaty, there seem to be nearly undetectable legal time bombs, which have been planted in the treaty revisions and accession treaties many years ago.

One example is paragraph 23(e) of the austrian constitution, which had to be inserted when the country joined in 1995. Apparently this paragraph can be used to modify the Austrian constitution at the request of the european council. Given the determination and the “criminal energy” of Ardent Europeans it is unlikely that provisions like these are isolated cases.

“Volltext” of chapter 4 tomorrow, Friday morning at the latest. As always documentation and evidence in the footnotes of the german language text.